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Violence in Games, Once Again, Not That Compelling
One of the great arguments of the digital age has been over the effects of video games on aggression — especially if you have ever heard the name Jack Thompson. A recent study suggest the counterpoint once again, that violent video games really don't have that much impact. "The authors performed six studies in total, but they were in broad agreement, so we'll only discuss the more compelling ones here. For the experimental portion, these involved playing an essentially identical game with different degrees of violent content. One group of participants was randomly assigned to play the game House of the Dead 3 on the different extremes of its gore settings, while a second was split between those who played the normal version of Half-Life 2, and a those who played a modified version that turned the adventure into an elaborate game of tag. In both cases, the primary influences on enjoyment were the sense of competence and satisfaction, along with the immersive nature of the game. Generally, females rated immersion as more important, while males went for competence (and consistently rated their own expertise very highly). Violence didn't register when it came to enjoyment, even for those with pre-existing violent tendencies."
"Generally, females rated immersion as more important, while males went for competence (and consistently rated their own expertise very highly)."
There's a joke about sex in there somewhere, I'm quite sure of it.
How do you explain the fact that the Columbine kids along with multiple other child criminals played video games?!?!
ITS FOR THE CHILDREN!
I'm sorry, the correct answer was NAGGERS.
I hear what you're saying but I think they are looking at gender roles in games. Physical gender, and mental makeup are two separate things that should be addressed separately.
For the purpose of understanding gaming, understanding the physical gender is less important than understanding the mental states a particular player will gravitate towards.
Separate the terms masculine and feminine from men and women.
In World of Warcraft, both masculine and feminine players trend in the direction of an eventual end-game raiding PvE experience, while only typically masculine players trend towards PvP. A mixture of players trend towards goofing around in the game and not aiming towards the competitive raiding or PvP environment.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Well, Im a fairly keen player of Team Fortress 2 (an HL2 mod) and not one for violence in games. All of the quake based games are the properly violent ones, and even then, they aren't really what you'd call violence in comparison to many films today. So lets take the properly violent games, for example, Mortal Combat. If you aren't familiar with the game (even with its extremely catchy theme tune from the original) then it bassically consists of smashing as many virtual bones as possible in your opponent through means of some extremely reddiculous kung-fu style moves and then "finnishing them" by some extremely gruesome means involving the map. For example one map involves kicking them off the side of a rock a couple of hundred feet and them landing speared on rock. And despite its rating, its clearly aimed at rowdy 8-12 year old boys, AND their parents are happy to buy it for them. Now please explain to me what makes games such as HL2 (which is actually one of the more inteligent and thoughtful games currently out) are a disaster for children to have?
No no, folks. Video games baaaad. Hating video games gooood. They'll keep broadcasting how video games clearly caused x-murder or y-crime, and never bother with something as trivial as evidence.
This is like saying "Well, you own a kitchen knife, so you therefore have a tendency towards stabbing people".
Come on, folks, admit it. You only believe this study because it concludes what you want to conclude. If it concluded the opposite thing, you'd all be selectively trotting out that good old line, "correlation doesn't imply causation," and holding it up to standards that you won't hold this one up to. (Because, after all, what kind of evidence does imply causation? Don't all experiments, because of their own nature, demonstrate nothing more than correlation?)
Are you adequate?
Controversy and the games industry go hand-in hand like Ico and Yorda, if you'll forgive the incredibly nerdy analogy. And like Yorda, the controversy tends to stay focused for an average of about eight nanoseconds before getting bored and drifting off to do something else. But when it does get focused it can get very exasperating, such as when youthful paragons of self-control are called nasty names and decide that murder would be the wittiest comeback, and then is found to have stood next to a videogame sometime in the past. Then the media generally start drooling the usual uninformed questions as to whether wholesome, boyish pretend violence has any correlation with the real world. Short answer: No. Long answer: No, and go fuck yourselves, you ignorant, scaremongering cockbags. [Text in review: No, and I consider your argument misinformed.]
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From the summary, this study does nothing to address the general issues of violence in games. From my understanding, the issue has never been that video games make children enjoy violence. The issue is that violence in games desensitize children to violent acts as an acceptable form of conflict resolution. Most people don't play violent games simply because they are violent. This study seems pretty worthless to me.
Well, let's see, what other kinds of video games are there...
The Sims. Which made me believe that everyone has a diamond floating over their head that indicates how happy they are with life. Watch for red diamonds on bridge overpasses.
SimCity. Which firmly convinced me that every city will be attacked by Godzilla at least once should they decide to fight pollution by using nuclear power. Also, hurricane Katrina was due to someone misclicking the interface. Also, New Orleans could have been saved if they had built more FDs and PDs near the water front.
Doom. It taught me that green and red glowing tiles are bad to walk on. For this reason, there are some dance floors I will never go on. Also, if you kill someone, their corpse will disappear within a few minutes. This is why murder is so popular.
Leisure Suit Larry. Well, where do I start... Changing your gender is a simple matter of having sex with a dozen women and then stepping into a machine that makes a funny noise. Also, changing sex invariably makes you better looking. ...
But of course violence in video games is different... It's a unique case. All that other stuff you learn in video games (wouldn't it be nice if everyone you killed dropped gold and treasure?) doesn't stick. Nope. Only violence. Because it's special. Well, if you find someone arguing this position, shoot them in the head. And remember, it takes at least three shots to kill them. And they rarely drop anything useful.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Why is this tagged Republicans?
If you think it's only the Republicans censoring things, do us all a favor and quit voting.
continued success of splatter films and torture porn
How many millions of people saw Saw? How many thousands of them proceeded to chain people up in dirty bathrooms with nothing but a rusty hacksaw blade? Hundreds? Tens? Can you even show a 0.01% correlation?
The funny thing about "correlation is not causation" is that "causation requires correlation". If you claim that X causes Y and you have millions of X and not one single Y, you're going to have some explaining to do.
it seems that video games do make you more aggressive but not enough to warrant the way people talk about it. They are about as aggravating as heavy metal
Why are we talking about "killing sprees"? When did "number of killing sprees" become the standard for judging video games' contribution (or lack thereof) to violence?
Are you adequate?
The people who dislike violence (not just in games, but in general media) say that being surrounded by it in TV programmes, films, games, and a lot of other aspects of modern life, makes people more prone to acting violently themselves and to being more inured by violent acts in everyday life. Merely adding or removing a few violent scenes from a single game won't make one jot of difference to this. Plus, given the coarseness of measurements available to social experiments, any change in behaviour won't be measurable - leading to the conclusion that adding violence makes no difference to people's behaviour.
However, removing the violent content from all our media might, just, start to come up with the sort of result that common sense tells us is obvious (i.e. that we are affected by what we see, hear and experience - how else would advertising work?). Now, if this study actually believed in it's own results, it should be possible to remove all the violence without affecting the players' enjoyment - which raises the question, why then have it in the first place?
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
How do you explain the fact that the Columbine kids along with multiple other child criminals played video games?!?!
How do you explain the fact that the Columbine kids along with multiple other child criminals drank milk?!?!
While we're at it:
How do you explain the fact that the Columbine kids along with multiple other child criminals breathed air?!?!
THAT'S IT! If you cut off all children's access to air you'll completely end school shootings!
FINALLY a workable solution!
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I have yet to see one decent long-term experiment to this day that truly checks if video games should have to suffer the scrutiny of parents. I'm talking about one lasting decades checking on the same patients from a very early age, setting up multiple controls, and then having multiple upbringings with different video games played routinely to rule out any other factor that may contribute to the future behavior of the child. It should be one where the patient does not know he/she is being observed, and one that does not allow for any biased results. Up to date, no one has come ANYWHERE NEAR. Please prove me wrong if I am. Until then, please stop talking out of your ass and STFU. The government is not responsible for taking care of your kids.
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I prefer splatter porn...
These studies do not say that the violence does not effect a player's aggression level. They had a completely different focus! The results show that the enjoyment of the players was not impacted by the violence level in the game!!! So, a good game is enjoyable no matter how much violence it contains. Why, then, do certain game publishers keep pushing the limits of violent content?
Keep passing the open windows...
are human beings:
1. vessels of purity which are corrupted?
2. vessels of filth which are tamed?
i think a lot of people think children are corrupted by something in their development, and that something can be videogames. i haven't the faintest idea where these people come from, why they believe this, or why so many do think this way. i think it stems from an inability to accept something about their own human nature (which is not just bad, its good, bad, and ugly)
however, there are two good arguments against this "vessels of purity being corrupted" view of human nature and childhood development:
1. look at the behavior of humans during say, the time of the roman empire. violent and bloody and brutal. not many videogames, nevermind movies, or even books, or much of any media outside of a few rooms of scribes and wandering minstrels. flute music makes people axe murderers maybe?
2. look at the behavior of a group of toddlers for five minutes, many years away from playing their first game of gta. its not love and happiness, its hitting and punching and crying and screaming. its pretty much humanity without the frontal lobe. which, developmentally, is exactly what a toddler is. we're all pretty much a few neurons away from feces flinging monkeys with a superego grafted onto our foreheads
it all goes to show, if anyone has any problems with violence, its organic, its not something that is taught. nature versus nurture is a huge fountain of debate in human psychology, but when it comes to violence, to me at least, its pretty obvious that nature holds the balance of responsibility
of course, this doesn't stop unsavory people from trying "the devil made me do it" defense. its a just a same so many well-meaning but clueless people buy this defense
if you play 5 years of ultraviolent videogames every day, and you are psychologically normal, you have exactly 0% more chance of commiting a violent act in real life. meanwhile, if you are psychologically damaged in a certain way, and you never see a violent videogame in your life, you will still probably commit a transgressive act in your life. the presence, or lack thereof, of violent media, for either person, makes no difference at all
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This is ridiculous. If anything, I'd say video games promote conscientiousness. It took me ages to kill all the hookers and children in Vice City, but I persevered. As soon as I've finished raping everyone in Leisure Suit Larry, I'm gonna kick these ignorant fucks' asses. Then torture them a bit for the XP.
I contend that video games do not cause violence.
Hearing Jack Thompson talk about video games on the other hand... THAT pisses most everyone off.
I wonder if any claim that video game violence causing someone to commit a violent act has examined whether the person committing the real violence was, in fact, very good as a game player?
Perhaps real game related violence is correlated with people being very frustrated because they suck as gamers!!
Apparently, teenagers were never violent or moody before the development of video games.
Does anyone really know how many teenagers committed violence from 1900-1980ish (the period prior to violent video games)? No, because it was such a social taboo that it was not reported, was covered up, or word never traveled beyond city limits. Modern global media records every minor violent event in every town of America with more than three people.
How many teenagers took part in the World Wars and committed violence?
If you were a violent teenager in the pre-video game era, you had an outlet for your violence. War and to some extent protests.
I suppose the violent video game of Tetris caused the Menendez Brothers to kill their parents in 1989?
Bottom line, we cannot establish a trend because we don't have the data to create a trend (prior to the 80s)!
How far back can we trust the data to reliably contain all teenage violence?
FBI Report of crime statistics in 1995 *1:
Murder/Nonnegligent Manslaughter: 21,597
1995 Offenders under 18: 2169
FBI Report of crime statistics in 2007 *2:
Murder/Nonnegligent Manslaughter: 17,040
2007 Offenders under 18: 1063
So apparently, the video games in 1995 were more violent than the video games in 2007.
*1 http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/Cius_97/95CRIME/95crime2.pdf
*2 http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2007/offenses/expanded_information/data/shrtable_03.html
Can we have a study where one group plays violent video games and the other drives in rush hour traffic?
Then we can compare which group has an elevated level of aggression and which one wants to kill all humans.
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I beg you to read the paragraph after the one you quote, and to think about it, before you endeavor to educate me.
Are you adequate?
...or at least crankiness. I know that I have gotten snippy with people during or immediately after playing a particularly challenging game, especially if I didn't do well. I have witnessed other members of my family doing the same thing. One of my daughters was getting frustrated with playing Wii sports and every time she made a bad move, she would yell at her sisters, who were just sitting there, not doing anything.
This is not even just a video game thing. I have seen fights break out at basketball games, even Church games! I have seen fans throw bottles, bricks and worse at football games.
It is not just a video game issue. It is games in general which seem to raise emotions high and can end in violence.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
The funny thing about "correlation is not causation" is that "causation requires correlation". If you claim that X causes Y and you have millions of X and not one single Y, you're going to have some explaining to do.
Crime in the United States has gone down as video game popularity has gone up.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Gun ownership has gone up too. Wow, we're onto something here!
The government can't save you.
The kids are OK.
"You should never doubt what nobody is sure about." -- Willy Wonka
The problem with violent films and video games is that they do not contain real violence but a 'pornographic' imitation. In real violence the player would be bruised, mutilated or even killed and would see the ghastly effect that weapons have on the human body and people he / she cares about. I used to be in the British Army and I can promise you that real violence is deeply horrifying and frightening. It always involves the soldier / player getting injured in some way and is a great inoculation against violent urges and dreams. Even in a pub brawl you'll get hurt even if you 'win' often with broken knuckles or fingers and a lot of facial bruising. I vividly remember an SAS instructor in personal combat explaining that hand-to-hand fighting without a weapon seldom made sense particularly when you had more than one opponent or they were armed. His three steps in that case were:
1) Talk
2) Run
3) Faint
Video Games and Films sell fantasy violence just as advertising sells fantasy romance and glamour. We know that Advertising works highly effectively to sell products and alter behaviour. It works on all of us, however little we care to acknowledge it. Adolescent males often have brains that are tortured by testosterone and fantasies of masculine power, significance and violence. Violent Games indulge those fantasies which is why they are so successful and in many cases it is very likely they have the same 'advertising' effect and lower the social taboos against violence or aggressive behaviour. I have young children and even though I run a software company (not games), I keep them well away from violent games and films and spend as much time as possible trying to make sure they get exposure to outdoor sport, real contact with friends and doses of high-culture.
Violence in the media does not translate directly into violence in the real world. It has other, more subtle effects.
In other words, you won't kill someone if you play GTA, but you certainly don't end up a better person (I would love reading someone honestly, and reasonably, write that violent video games are good for you [make you happier, more satisfied, more complete, more empathetic, you know, good things -- no, entertained doesn't count], instead of just name dropping Jack Thompson and saying how games are not bad for you [yes, there's a difference]).
"You should never doubt what nobody is sure about." -- Willy Wonka
Gravitation is the best happy game I've ever played, entertainment games included. It's a small art game by Jason Rohrer, a leading figure in video game art. Download it and try it for yourself first (it's only 500KBytes). http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/gravitation/
I came to this game skeptical about it, after having played Passage, from the same developer, a few months ago, ending it dumbfounded about how the game meant anything at all and completely unconvinced about it being any good. So I was ready to dismiss it and only started playing it for time killing purposes.
When you start playing Gravitation, you'll notice a timer relentlessly counting down. This obviously means the time you have left to live in the game. The screen is limited and you only see yourself and a fireplace. I moved around and saw a ball flying, and instinctively pressed SPACE to jump at it; I missed the ball. There was this little girl and I saw she had thrown me the ball. There wasn't anything else to see, so I reasoned I had to play with her to move the game forward. She threw me the ball again, and I jumped and grabbed it; it went back to her and a little heart appeared. My own heart warmed a little. I played with her some more and, suddenly, the music got wilder, the screen got bigger and I was on fire: I saw an exit where, before, only darkness existed, and when I jumped for it. I forgot the little girl and I flew through space; leapt from platform to platform collecting stars that seemed to get me more energy, and I leapt and leapt; until it all came crashing down. The screen got smaller and I got weaker. I had to go back down to the little girl, I reasoned, and play with her some more; she's useful to me. But when I came back, there were these blocks of ice blocking the way and I couldn't play with her. I pushed them, which wasn't easy, and they melted in the fireplace. For the effort, I lost a little life, but for the effort, I got to play with the girl. She was beginning to be more than just useful: I was beginning to get fond of her. But still, I wanted to see more, so when the music got crazy, I left her for the heights again. A routine started to emerge: I would go exploring, then I would get back, break some blocks of ice and play with the girl.
I thought it would last forever.
But, some time later, when I came back from my frenzy, she was gone; only her little ball remained. It struck something deep in me, a loss and lost kind of feeling. She was gone. While I was going on a manic spree, climbing platforms in search of achievements, I dismissed her. She was what kept me going through all this and I abandoned her. I thought I could just work a little harder to melt the ice and she would take me back, and love me. But no.
She was gone.
I still had 20 more seconds to live and plenty of energy to jump, but it seemed pointless to go on. I just stood there, looking at where she once was, regretting ever leaving her. After a while, I went to the fireplace in tears. The timer reached zero. My life faded. Gravitation.
All this in under 5 minutes. Notice that I kept saying "I", as if it happened to me. I think that's key to the reason I was completely immersed in the experience so quickly, and I think that's something no other art medium can do. You're not just seeing it, or reading it, or hearing it: you're living it.
And that is why Gravitation is the best game I've ever played.
Well, I wrote this on reddit.com (a likes-to-think-it's-classier-than-Fark-or-Digg-or-Slashdot-but-doesn't-even-come-near-Metafilter site), and have since came back to the game to play through it again.
The second time, I stayed playing with the girl. You feel energetic the whole time, but nothing else happens. Really cute and boring; I was expecting more from the girl.
The third time, I decided ignoring the girl. She didn't go away and cried all the time, and asides from alternating between manic and depressed, nothing happened. She
"You should never doubt what nobody is sure about." -- Willy Wonka
And yet, American's happiness declined.
Your post does not prove anything. My post does not prove anything about video games taking away happiness. So why play the statistics game? It's meaningless to the discussion.
"You should never doubt what nobody is sure about." -- Willy Wonka
Guns cause video games?!?!
Ah, crap... I screwed up again!
Just because things are related doesn't mean one thing caused the other. I type this in case you don't understand what the sentence "correlation is not causation" means, which is a neat resume of what you long-windedly, and unnecessarily, ranted to the choir.
"You should never doubt what nobody is sure about." -- Willy Wonka
What exactly is your point? That games have no influence on you or that games influence you more than we think? Because, in your smugness, you forgot to make any clear point which can be discussed.
"You should never doubt what nobody is sure about." -- Willy Wonka
The book Freakonomics claims that's due to the rise of abortion.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
The number of pirate ships has also decreased! I know global warming might be bad, but for the love of God, think of the children! Stop the Pastafarian's from building pirate ships before its too late....
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
Things that show violence will make people with problems more violent than others. We need no study for this.
Experimental psychology is not easy (IAAECP). Interpreting the outcomes is even more difficult, so it seems. In the abstract, the authors write "The studies also showed that players high in trait aggression were more likely to prefer or value games with violent contents, even though violent contents did not reliably enhance their game enjoyment or immersion." So, violent people like violent games, and nobody needs violence in order to enjoy gaming.
On the other hand, this study cannot assess the effects of playing many hours per day over a long period. So, the conclusion might just as well be: ban violent games, since no-one needs it and their effects cannot be determined, but we do know violent people like them.
Let's see what this does to my karma...
Or this quote: "It is ridiculous claiming that video games influence children. For instance, if Pac-man affected kids born in the eighties, we should by now have a bunch of teenagers who run around in darkened rooms and eat pills while listening to monotonous electronic music."
Except that the study showed that there was no correlation between enjoyment and violence levels, but rather with immersion and intelligent gameplay mechanics.
Interesting as it is, your theory doesn't seem to hold up too well with the current study.
This study found that violent stimuli made some people more aggressive, but only the people who were already predisposed to being mean. Those with friendlier personalities were actually less hostile after seeing violent themes. Furthermore, a follow-up experiment found that the latter group actually had more thoughts about doing good for others after seeing violent themes. The authors suggest that these people develop mental patterns that prevent them from becoming violent after seeing violent themes.
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118597331/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
Violent video games are not used directly in the study; instead, it was a word task, with one group getting lots of violent words. Still, it provides evidence that one already has to have violent tendencies for violent themes to have an effect. It is also an experimental study rather than correlational, so causation is easier to infer.
If findings like these are correct, video games are probably fine as long as one as developed a mature mode of thinking with respect to these games.
The funny thing about "correlation is not causation" is that "causation requires correlation". If you claim that X causes Y and you have millions of X and not one single Y, you're going to have some explaining to do.
No. If there is a negative correlation that is not causation, it can mask a positive correlation that is. I'm not saying that that applies in this circumstance, just that your argument is flawed.
violence has no effect? they turned hl2 into tag? isn't that abstract representational violence of some kind? catching and eliminating your opponent? much in the war chess represents strategic war? i dunno, i don't think they really tested non violent game mechanics at all. if turning fps shooter games into tag doesn't turn them into something hideously boring i'm not sure whats going on with this study. you'd think fps mods would be full of "tag" mods if it were true.
lets break out the nazis, this is the internets after all. the nazis were fascinated by art. they went through europe on the biggest art looting expedition ever seen. hitler himself was an art lover and failed painter. so whats the correlation to draw?;) how many school shooters would it take to match 6 million dead jews? never mind the rest. when it comes to past times and violence, if you want to really look at it, this one thing skews it away from video games about as far as one can get;) hehehe
Haha, omg, that's just so wrong in so many ways in multiple interpretations and mental images. :)
You sir, have an evil comedic sense
This is the sig that says NI (again)
His hypothesis may not agree with this one study but I bet there are others it does agree with. Sylvanus makes a good point overall. Perhaps the study should have used games where people are the target - not zombies or combine. Player vs. player where your sole goal is to kill your human opponent - then look to see the results. I'm 100% positive that in a few years time when games are so realistic that you cannot tell the difference between a games graphics and that which may have been filmed that this whole situation will change. Games with graphic violence will get banned wholesale - people will just be too freaked out by them since they will appear 100% real.
all of your problems are real. but it helps to point out superior alternatives as well as problems. superior alternatives means alternatives that are economically superior as well, and therein lies the rub.
people don't like to abuse 10 year olds and irradiate their lungs. they do it, because even though they don't want to do it, they don't see a better way
show them the better way, don't just bitch and moan about the current state of affairs. anyone can do that, and its a quite useless function, as everyone knows these are problems already. everyone knows coal and sweat shops suck. they just don't want to read by candlelight and pay $50 for t-shirts. can you give them electric lights and $10 t-shirts without coal and sweatshops?
if you can, go collect your nobel prize for changing reality. if you can't, join the rest of us here who understand the depressing underbelly of reality already. you don't bring any new news to the table
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it