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Kids 'Unaffected By Game Violence' Says Study
Via Game|Life, an article in the Syndey Morning Herald discusses a new study indicating most children are unaffected by videogame violence. Though the study did indicate that children already predisposed to violence or neurotic behavior were over-stimulated by these games, most children showed no difference in behavior as a result of game play. "The study monitored the behavior of children from 10 schools in eastern and southern metropolitan Melbourne before and after playing the violent video game Quake II for 20 minutes, Swinburne's Professor Grant Devilly said. Prof Devilly said only children predisposed to aggression and more reactive to their environments changed their behavior after playing and of those only some showed more aggression."
...collective "No Shit" on this one? How many times have we seen this same claim? Enough already.
Q2 is not realistic when compared to new versions of Grand Theft Auto or anything from the current generation, or last gen for that matter...I wonder if brutal street slayings show any difference versus unrealistic circa 1997 FPS's
In a world of acronyms, the words are the real victims.
I committed most of my murders before I got into gaming.
Trolling is a art,
It's just like half of slashdot has been saying this whole time, games like GTA, violent movies like 300 and other media with similar content only increase aggression in those predisposed to it. While that is in and off itself a cause for concern, and parental monitoring, the games themselves are not the root of the problem.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
This isn't the first research done on this subject. I wonder what the score is so far? The only thing I know is that no study so far has resulting in the "video game violence does affect children/people".
No effect: a couple
Inconclusive: also a few
Has effect: 0
I wonder what they would find if they did a study to see what type of person was the most violent inside a video game? I bet it wouldn't be the people who are violent in the real world.
Thoughts?
Fuck a doodle-do. Quality work there.
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
OK, so only a small minority of children are negatively affected by a 20-minute session of playing Q2. Does that negative effect wear off if they play for 2 hours? Any endocrine effects need to be examined over a longer timeline.
Isn't it possible we accurately label games so that parents of kids who fall into the risk category can make appropriate decisions more easily when buying a game? Would that hurt anyone?
Oops... flames commence in 3... 2... 1...
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Although, this is interesting, and there is some merit to the study, it only studies one part of the issue, natural tendancies as apposed to cultural ones. As someone else said, "Quake 2 is a far cry from today's GTA games", and I echo this. For its time Quake 2 was pretty violent, but culturally, it has become pretty much fully accepted and with no particular concern. What's probably more of a problem, however, is children who are constantly being asked to push the envilope of cultural acceptability of violence. I have no problem with going against cultural norms, as a whole, but children who are expected to accept violent entertainment at the edge of the cultural norm, may act very differently than ones that are expected to accept violent entertainment which has become culturally acceptable.
The bottom line is that eventually our culture comes to terms with some form of devient behavior. It's not that we morally condone it, but we become able to rationally assess it, without it becoming a sick fascination. The concern isn't so much that the violent imagery, itself, is a problem, so much as that our cravings for greater and greater violent imagery can pose a problem. We should look at this topic rationally and without reservation, there are no "duh's" or "no shit's" here. It's a valid concern. While I admit that most people, in their habbits, are healthy in their entertainment, I've also witnessed teenagers who play games specifically for the blood... which is sad, and a bit disconcerting. Violence can be used to portray strong messages, but in of itself (just like any type of stimuli) has no merrit.
I think this study is very good because it explore the natural disposition factor to violence in entertainment, and I'm sure that this is exactly WHY they chose Quake 2 to use, instead of the latest extremely violent games. That'll probably come next.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
A new study points to evidence that kids who play Monopoly more than 20 minutes a day during the "critical years" causes them to become raging Capitalists.
The study looks at more than 200 of the top entrepreneurs of the last 20 years and found that 90% of them played Monolpoly as children. The remaining 10% all turned out to be pinko communists.
In a related study, it was found that Stalin, Ghengis Khan, Napoleon and Hitler all played chess as small children. Bans on chess clubs are being considered in 38 states to prevent the rise of further military dictators.
More at 11.
The thing that people who worry about young men and violent video games forget is that much of a nation's martial power can be destroyed from within by pussifying its young male population. America is headed for a dangerous path with the way that we are teaching boys to "talk about their feelings," punishing them like they're psychopaths for scrapping at school and things like that. These won't be young men ready for war, and guess what'll happen when the chickens come home to roost? Violent video games are, IMO, one of the few things that hasn't rendered the young male population certifiably effeminate in this country.
And yes, being effeminate is a bad thing for a man to be. It does make you less of a man, and don't give me that bullshit about being "more sensitive and loving toward your girlfriend." I have never seen an effeminate, case study of modern psychological destruction of young men like that who is quick to defend his woman from serious harassment.
I learned this 15 years ago when I turned my then-four-year-old son loose on an early copy of Wolfenstein 3D.
After a long session of him gleefully shooting everything that moved (In god mode, of course), I decided to test the idea that violent games produced violent children. "Wouldn't it be nice if you could shoot people like that in real life?" I asked.
He looked at me, utterly shocked. "No! Why would I want to do that?"
"You enjoyed shooting people in Wolfenstein, didn't you?" I offered, "Why not for real?"
I swear, my 4 year old son looked at me with pity in his eyes. "It's only a game , Dad!
After that I decided not to worry about kids playing violent video games any more. They are a lot more aware than most folks realize... and a lot smarter than most anti-games crusaders!