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Harvard Phd Vs. About.com over Gaming
MaryAlan writes "I don't know if anyone has noticed this, but About.com's Aaron Stanton is in the middle of a back and forth firefight with Dr. Thompson, a Harvard researcher who recently testified before the U.S. Congress about violent video games. She published a study that listed Pac-Man as being 62% violent. Stanton attacked in an article criticizing her research. Then, Joystiq.com contacted Dr. Thompson and got an interview and a response, published her rebuttal, in which she defends the Pac-Man rating and the study.
So today, Stanton attempted to tear the study apart, detailing why it's flawed even though Thompson claims otherwise. On one hand we have an established Harvard Phd, who has testified before the U.S. congress, against a game journalist with a bachelors degree in Psychology. Hmmm..."
[flamebait]This is great and something slashdotters can appreciate and relate to. The article has a online journalist with a bachelors degree going up against a Harvard PhD. It reminds me a lot of all of the home users and part time Dreamweaver users (I mean... web "programmers") commenting on the suitability of Linux and Apple products for enterprise wide use.[/flamebait]
They must have done secret studies inside the PacMan household and how he treats Ms. PacMan.
God spoke to me.
... or so my study indicates.
- These characters were randomly selected.
Since when does having a Ph.D. excuse someone from making moronic statements? Also, testifying before a Congress that is little more than a religious/corporate tool isn't much of an accomplishment.
As Staton says, Thompson's methods found that Pac Man was 62% violent, Dig Dug was 67% violent, and Centipede was 97% violent (!). These results (which, not so coincidentally, were expunged from the final report) indicate that the whole method is flawed. This only begs the question - why were these numbers removed? Perhaps because it would have signaled to anyone reading the study that it was hopelessly flwed?
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
So? If a PhD came out and said that all fish were descendant from cows and some fry cook said it was the other way around, who would you believe? You should base your conclusions on the soundness of the arguments, not who made them.
For that matter, who the arguments where made to shouldn't give them added credibility. Do you really believe that someone having testified to something before Congress makes it automatically true--or even more credible? 'cause there have been a lot of woppers told on the floors of Congress.
--MarkusQ
I haven't checked recently, but has it become passe to ignore that you need to do isolate as many dependent variables as possible in a scientific experiment for the results to be valid?
The kind doctor's response? Well theres a lot of studies so our study (whether it's crap or not) is going to be only one data point. FFS, if a data point is made-up it doesn't deserve to even be in the statistical sample!!!
"Reality continues to ruin my life" - Calvin and Hobbes
Ms. Pac-Man.
Seriously, during my seven years in uniform, I probably spent way too much money on Ms. Pac-Man. Pac-Man is for civvies, real Army types prefer Ms. Pac-Man.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Some repressed Japanese game desinger I think, it was the 1970s, after all PacMan himself looks a bit like a femine part and the ghosts look like eja... Oh crud, there goes my karma.
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No. It is the abstraction that removes the "violence" from the loss.
Violence is only violent if there is some aspect of realism.
By her "logic", chess is an incredibly violent game.
Say I created a game in which you spent 15 minutes having sex with a prostitute, then 15 minutes beating her to death and cutting her up into pieces. Would this game be 50% violent, 50% having sex with hookers?
As someone with the letters P,h,D in my professional background - I speak with some authority on the subject: Yes, quite a few of the "Ph.D. club-card holders" are completely full of shit.
Caveat Emptor. Grow up Americans. Think for yourselves, people.
and since when does testifying in front of congress give someone credibility? The people in Congress are not the brightest critters out there. To me, congressional testimony is as good as saying you were a witness in a trial. Whoop de doo.
Necrophobia - n., the irrational fear of dead things?
Fear leads to hate, folks. Let's stop the hate. Hug your friendly neighborhood ghost, they might be a relative.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Nobel prize winners can even be crackpots. Linus Pauling has been pushing the benefits of Vitamin C. Of course nutrition isn't the field he won the prize for.
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William Shockley won the prize in Physics for inventing the transistor. He used the prize as a foundation for the soapbox from which he spouted racist bile.
A proper argument is based on facts. PhD vs. grade eight education. Doesn't matter. If some illiterate has the facts in his corner and the PhD only has theory well; reality always trumps theory.
Actually, taking experts too seriously can sometimes have horrible consequences. There was a British 'expert' who got a bunch of people convicted of murder because their kids died of sudden crib death. "... the testimony of Sir Roy Meadow, a prominent pediatrician who was the first to suggest in 1977 that some mothers induce illness in their children to draw attention to themselves." http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=he
Three Stooges, Batman and Road Runner TV shows was considered a bad influence as kids would run around screaming and yelling. The solution to that was to introduce sugary cereals that made kids too fat to run around screaming and yelling. Don't worry, be happy that some egghead is finding a solution to video game violence.
I dispute your findings.
Mostly because I couldn't read page three of TFA
Page Three redirects --> http://nintendo.about.com/?once=true&
Obviously, your methodology is critically flawed and I suspect the author of TFA is going to tell the world about your shoddy science too.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The whole study is fundamentally flawed in that it doesn't seem to distinguish or identify between different types of "violence". It seems to use such a broad definition of violence as to include what I would call conflict or competition, but not necessarily violence. It fails to take into account the grade or realism of violence, and lumps it altogether as a single universal constant, rather than a subjective scaleable value.
By their standards it would seem like one minute of thumb restling out of 2 minutes of gameplay would be rated as 50% violent whereas 1 minute of shooting a guy in the face with blood splatter effects and visceral gurgling sound effects out of 10 minutes of total gameplay would only be rated as 10% violent. It's a flawed system of measurement which completely fails to take into account all the factors involved in what a normal, average, discerning, human being would normally use to define "violence".
Even when it measures relative deaths per minute, it doesn't seem to care exactly what is dieing. Apparently a goomba or a turtle from mario, or a plant monster, or even a ghost, is measured exactly the same as a poor defensless civilian grandmother from GTA. It also doesn't seem to care about the method used in killing; whether it be bopping on the head, causing it to instantly dissappear, or to light a person on fire and watch him burn to death screaming. Burning someone to death usually takes a little while, so you might actually get a lower violence rating if you kill people exclusively with flamethrowers.
The relative levels of education involved in this debate in this case is just another misleading factor. Just because the person who conducted the study has a Harvard Phd doesn't mean she has a clue. Her study may very reliably and accurately measure the level of something in videogames, it certainly isn't what most people would call violence. And whatever it measures, it certainly doesn't seem to be anything useful.
How would a game like Hitman be rated? In optimal gameplay, you're "violent" for maybe 5 seconds out of a 15-30 minute mission. Does that make it under 1% violent, more child friendly than Pokemon? If preparations to do violence counted, then Dig Dug should be near 100% violent, rather than the 67% they gave it. The whole purpose of the game is to blow the enemies up, as Hitman's purpose is to kill your target. So what's the deal? Am I missing some other criteria in their judging system? From where I'm sitting, they're just looking foolish.
Her doctorate is an "Sc.D., Harvard School of Public Health"
Don't inflate it, this isn't a hard science PhD. Its not even a Psych PhD!
Her field is "risk analysis"
Either her data hold up to peer review, or they don't. Of course, this is a sociology study, which isn't noted for being the most scientifically rigorous field in academia.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Just because she's testifying before Congress doesn't mean that she's giving good testimony.
Two examples:
- A PhD in Music talking about orbital mechanics
-
The 12 year old kid who tearfully testified about Iraq soldires draring babies from incubators who turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador (and probably not in Kuwait at the time of the attack).
___Personally, I'd be inclined to describe PacMan as akin to a computerized game of 'tag'. Now, if you come up with a definition of 'violent' which classifies tag as violent, then you're gonna probably tag pacman with that same definition.
If, on the other hand, you use Bush's definition of iraqi torture as the border for violence, then Pacman doesn't register on the scale.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Ph.D. or no, it's a 20-some-odd-year-old game depicting a phosphorescent fictional/made-up "protagonist," "eating" a bunch of inanimate phosphorescent dots. No blood, no screams, no mayhem.
How could this POSSIBLY justify a "62% violent" rating?!? That's like saying you're committing murder by eating your Rice Krispies(TM) each morning.
This "Doctor" (and I use that term extremely loosely) needs to get a life. (Or maybe some paying patients...)
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
Oh, I see. So she understands how video games' chemistry affects the environment.
At first I thought she was totally unqualified to comment on violent video games.
Now, Ms. Pac Man is another story - that Bitch with her damn little bow.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I think that there are some fairly serious problems with this entire field of videogame violence studies, which has been characterized by some of the sloppiest, most overinterpreted "science" that I have ever seen. Dr. Thompson is far from the worst offender. The main problem with her work is that it utilizes an arbitrary, unvalidated definition of "violence." If she wishes to relate here work to the studies that purport to detect harmful effects of videogame violence, then she certainly needs to establish in some rigorous way that what she calls "violence" is in some sense comparable to what these studies are examining. (those studies are mostly pretty bad, too, but that is another issue).
Stanton's point that Thompson's classification system yields high violence scores for games that most people, and most parents, would not consider to be particularly violent is a perfectly valid criticism, and her defense, which was essentially "we aren't using it for those games" simply dodges the issue. Given that her criteria are clearly misleading for some games, how does she decide which games it can validly be applied to. I think that it is highly irresponsible for her to report her %violence measures to Congress without properly explaining the criteria she used for classification (saying that it's in her papers is hardly adequate here, considering that her audience is most certainly not going to be reading those papers). Frankly, it seems highly questionable to me whether Dr. Thompson's studies have any value at all. I thought that her defense of classifying Pac-Man as violent was particularly revealing:
What I find notable here is that she seems to have made no effort to actually determine whether many--or indeed, any--young children actually interpret Winky, Blinky, et al. in Pac-Man as "ghosts trying to kill you" or are actually frightened by the game. This kind of uncritical thinking seems representative of her approach.
I should note, however, that her actual recommendations to Congress seem fairly reasonable. She suggests, for example, that ESRB members should actually play the games, hardly a radical suggestion. And somewhat ironically, she suggests that they should do what she failed to do herself in her testimony--"make its rating process and the terms that it uses in its ratings more
transparent."
I think it comes down to how the Dr T defines violence. It had little to do with how graphicly it was depicted but how it related to the experience of playing the game, like the winning and loosing conditions and the interaction between the game objects. As for how valid that view is, is open to opinion. Ditto with how much violence seen or acted out is good for a person.
So for pacman, eating dots being the primary goal isnt violent, eating a power pill and then eating ghosts a supporting goal is violent, and getting caught by a ghost to loose a life is also violent. The fact that the violence was not portrayed in a realistic or gruesome manner was not considered.
Thus by her definition, Space Invaders, chess, Quake would all easily out rank pacman for violence because the primary goal is eliminate/kill an enemy, and the loss condition being death of the players avatar. Where as solitaire, most racing games, or DDR would be almost devoid of violence.
The best bit about her reply was saying that the parents of kids are ultimately responsible for what they let their kids play.
Regardless of what Dr T said to some senate committee, it will be perverted/given spin by the politicians for their own means.
See my art -> http://herbevore.deviantart.com
that's wasn't Ms Pac Man, that WAS Pac Man.
Remember this was back int he 80's, times got hard for Pac Man and he needed to get money, Sequals of the exact samething weren't popular so he had to put on makeup and a bow in order to get people to touch him again.
So we're taking a subjective idea (violence) and trying to quantify it using objective data (a percentage). Pac-man eats little bits of white dots, (could be food, could be babies), and defends himself from ghosts (probably don't exist). What I remember learning from Pac-man was that in order to survive you needed to eat. Then there were these ghosts trying to kill me (could be white people). Then by either fate or determination you can turn the fight back on the "ghosts" and take them out, because they are trying to exterminate you. So the true lesson I should be learning, according to PhDs, is that when "ghosts" come after you, you roll over and let them gut you, because survival is violence.
Pac-man doesn't teach crap. Its a game to waste twenty minutes of your life. It means nothing else. I'm not slaughtering people in the name of Pac-man. I'm not even thinking about it. Though I do want to run people down in the future in the name of F-zero. Also destroy large stacks of blocks in the name of Tetris.
Selex
It doesn't matter who says it, its what you say.
A Very Brief History of Pac-Man
It really doesn't matter at all how many degrees and certificates she has. They prove that she has studied, and is able to write reports.
Trying to say how violent a game is by how many minutes of 'violence' there is a game without ANY weighting to the context or impact of said violence is ridiculous. To say that Centipede is 100% violent because the entire game is spent being chased by something that intends 'harm' is just stupid. It's a reflex/puzzle game... and it's a game of tag effectively. To rate it higher than GTA because there are stretches in GTA where there is no violence is just plain moronic.
You can't apply an objective measure to something so plainly subjective as violence in the media.
I don't care how many pieces of paper she has.
I have no interest in the PhD flamewar, but the violence rating system Thompson used is clearly useless even for the purpose you propose: by Thompson's standards, Centipede (92% violent) is probably more violent than the movie Robocop (I believe Robocop is about 100 minutes long, that means it would need 8 minutes of "non-violent" material just to be on a par with Centipede!) Does this mean parents should consider Robocop more suitable entertainment for their three year old child? Consider: Centipede (in which a gnome destroys some bugs), or Robocop (the opening scene of which features a man being shot to squishy bits).
Parenting is a hard enough job as it is without studies like Thompson's being taken out of context and used to give parents yet more confusion. Television and tabloid psychologists should always be ignored in favor common sense. "How do I determine if this game is too violent for my young one?" Look at the packaging, read the copy, scrutinize the screenshots. Think about the implications of the words "Rape, pillage, claw, and shoot your way through 69 bloodthirsty levels of gore, guts and mayhem!" If you're still not sure, try renting the game and maybe even playing it yourself.
Education
Sc.D., Harvard School of Public Health
M.S., Massachusetts Institute of Technology
She works for the finest institutions and universities - that doesn't mean a statement like PacMan is 64% violent isn't moronic. The methodology is clearly flawed - as is rhetoric that increased violence in video games had led or will lead to increased antisocial/violent behavior (see declining juvenile crime rates).
They rate Space Invaders as more violent than GTA:SA (which whether you think it should be regulated or not is clearly very violent). The metric and methodology is useless.
is going to be only one data point
One data point isn't going to make a difference - it's infinitely small. IF this person does two more studies, though, they'll have a data TRIANGLE, and then we'll really be in trouble.
paintball