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Tracking the Harm Games Do
Every so often, video games are accused of causing all sorts of negative behavior in children, teens, and adults. These accusations are typically predicated on statistics that sound much more damning than they actually are. In that vein, gaming website Rock, Paper, Shotgun did their own tongue-in-cheek statistical analysis, complete with pretty charts and graphs. Quoting:
"As part of my research I thought to compare the sales of each GTA game with what the divorce rate must have been when each came out. As you can see each new GTA game has been directly correlated with an increase in divorces. ... An often ignored statistic (and you have to ask why it’s being ignored by the games media, don’t you?) is the sheer volume of PC games being released. We’ve all noticed the British population is abandoning the church, turning instead toward shopping, DVDs and knife crime. But few have thought to check for a connection between PC sales and the numbers of people attending their local Church Of England church on a Sunday. When you look at the data there’s little doubt left that as the publishers continue to release more and more PC games each year, our nation’s faith is being increasingly eroded. And at what cost? If only a graph could tell us that."
Thank you captain obvious!
The only harm they've ever done me is distract from something "important" I should be doing.
Also, tongue-in-cheek means it's satirical or sarcastic.
Further, satire is making a mockery of something with prose by use of irony or sarcasm.
Irony is a way of conveying a meaning opposite to the the literal meaning of the statement.
To convey is to communicate or impart knowledge to another person.
Knowledge is facts gained through study or investigation.
I'm just trying to clarify things here, just like the parent.
I masturbated myself today a bit more than yesterday and way less than i will tomorrow, just as the earth is said to be heaten itself due to global warming. Hopefully that doenst mean that Im the one after global warming and if i would stop masturbating we would all freeze to death but.. i just... won't stop... just in case..
You mean knife crimes aren't a popular pastime in the UK? Damn, there goes my next vacation plan.
Really. You needed to bother typing that?
The summary states it is humor and it would be obvious even if it didn't.
Yet, you seriously thought it was necessary to mention that.
You really think other people are stupid, don't you.
And some idiot moderator considers that insightful just to really put the bar low for the expected intelligence level of a slashdot reader.
I've often wondered why anyone would feel loyal to, or even want to attend, a church that was started by a not-particularly-holy king over a divorce spat. Although I've never been able to figure out why anyone would want a king either, maybe there is some relation.
Qxe4
An analyst reported that the effect was attributed to husbands drinking too much Hot Coffee.
This game will waste your life. Don't clicky!
There is actual research on the subject, if you are interested.
Here's the abstract:
Numerous studies have shown that exposure to media violence increases aggression, though the mechanisms of this effect have remained elusive. One theory posits that repeated exposure to media violence desensitizes viewers to real world violence, increasing aggression by blunting aversive reactions to violence and removing normal inhibitions against aggression. Theoretically, violence desensitization should be reflected in the amplitude of the P300 component of the event-related brain potential (ERP), which has been associated with activation of the aversive motivational system. In the current study, violent images elicited reduced P300 amplitudes among violent, as compared to nonviolent video game players. Additionally, this reduced brain response predicted increased aggressive behavior in a later task. Moreover, these effects held after controlling for individual differences in trait aggressiveness. These data are the first to link media violence exposure and aggressive behavior to brain processes hypothetically associated with desensitization.
Doesn't seem so far fetched.
You're just put out that he corrected your initial impression of TFA.
"You need Adobe Flash Player 8 (or above) to view the charts. It is a free and lightweight installation from Adobe.com. Please click on Ok to install the same."
(Emphasis mine.)
Even though, I liked the part where the number of games released correlates with less people attending church(maybe becoming irreligious). I hope that if it's actually the cause(I know I know, correlation doesn't imply causation) that games publishers release more games, nothing will make me more happy than seeing organized religion in demise...
n/t
If Jack Thompson gets to be on Games instead of Idle, then so does this. It's hilarious and relevant to gamer nerd interests.
Irrational numbers, art about subjects other than god, romantic novels, TV, rock and roll, disco, heavy metal, video nasties, hip hop, raves, computer games......
Isn't this getting a bit old by now?
"Welcome to our world. We are the wasted youth. And we are the future too." Yes, I know these are stupid lyrics.
There is also a correlation with global warming, illegal immigration and the number of natural disasters in Pakistan. We should ban all games immediately.
"Oh well this could maybe hypothetically desensitize people and cause problems, etc, etc." K, but that doesn't fit the actual data that violent crimes in the US have been trending down since around the time that videogames came out. The question shouldn't be "Can we try to find a contrived way that shows that video games might be related to perceptions of violence." The questions should be "Does playing video games make people more prone to act in a violent manner." If the answer is no, then who the fuck cares? There is no reason to be worrying about something if it isn't actually harmful.
As I said, first thing you have to account for in any of these cases is why violent crime has trended down. Just because it has doesn't mean that videogames might not increase violence, but you sure as hell have to account for that fact. You have to show that it would be even lower if video games were not around. You need to show that people who play violent video games are more likely to commit violent crime than those that don't.
Basically, if the only research out there is reaching extremely far to try and show minor differences in brain ERPs, then you've got nothing to go on. While that might be of academic interest, it is nothing to make any policy or law on. Only if games are actually causing more violent behavior, specifically illegal violent behavior (sports are violent but perfectly legal) is there a reason to have concern with regulating them because of it.
Does anyone else find it ironic that the loudest people who trumpet violence in the media as a source of inspiring violence in others tend to be religious groups and they are always calling for games and films that allegedly teach people aggression to be banned.
I would graciously accept the ban of all violent films, games, music and books if they would first pave the way by banning their own hatred and violence inducing holy book.
Everytime a game like GTA comes out there are less pirates in the world. Graph please!!!
Also, I'm almost sure that every time a violent game comes out, God kills a kitty, but I would also need a graph to be sure.
How much wood would a woodchopper chop if a woodchopper would chop wood?
Oh, they are. They just are not linked to Video Games.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
There is a correlation between the weather and video games.
Perhaps the Nation Grid can provide data to support the claim that bad weather increases the number of consoles switched on, thus perpetuating global warming and more bad weather.
A vicious circle really. Ban the console. Now.
One thing that bugs me with all this study non-sense and the counter arguments is that they always have an extremely narrow field of view. It is either "they cause harm" or "they don't influence us at all", both are likely complete non-sense (even when done for humorous purpose as here).
What about general studies that simply discuss how child behaviour has changed over the years in more general terms instead of splitting it into good vs evil? Did video games cause less reading of books? Less watching of TV? Do people visit their friends more often due to the Wii or less often due to XboxLive? Or just how many hours spend kids with video games today compared to 10 or 20 years ago? How much of their allowance goes towards video games? How much power does a kid today use? Do they have a more realistic picture of war or a more twisted one? Did Google Earth improve geography skills and what not.
There are plenty of interesting questions that could be asked, where you could actually get at least some interesting result and people wouldn't all jump into defensive stance for their video games.
An increase in game sales led to a decline in piracy, which indirectly contributed to global warming.
And in the real world gang related crime went lower with the spreading usage of gaming. Youth violence is not increasing, it has been decreasing. So those study *pretending* to find that violent video game have such an impact on us, better explain that factoid before trying to generalize to the whole population. Just sayin'.
If Pacman had affected us as kids we'd be running around in dark rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive music.
What did we ever do, before we could blame video games for violence, did we have to just blame human nature, and a minority of crazy people?
See, now you are entering the realm of science. We are talking about statistics here.
You show me a scientist/statistician that doesn't have some pre-conceived notion about the result of his experiment and I'll show you a robot.
Let's be reasonable. I'll settle for open minded.
And that's before the media gets their hands on whatever the actual story may be and polarises it for the gratification of their target audience. The first casualty of mass-market journalism is objective reporting.
When I was growing up we had several cats, one of the cats (called Pirate) wouldn't tolerate the others, and used to hiss and attempt to attack them if they got too near.
After reading the reports I can clearly see how clearly video games were affecting Pirate, if only we would have known sooner (she's now dead)! All along I thought it was just something harlmess like ADD, instead it must have been caused by those hours asleep on the foot of my bed, while I was playing video games and programming her unconsious feline thoughts towards savagery.
After all they keep people out of church. The church has started countless wars and promotes a belief system that is completely irrational. They also stopped scientific progress and slowed down the develeopment of the human race like no other institution in history.
If games help to further reduce the power those crazy people have over mankind I'd say that's a very good thing.
Doesn't seem so far fetched.
Lots of things that "don't seem so far-fetched" aren't actually true. In this case, while the author cites the 'numerous studies' that support his claim, he didn't cite the 'numerous studies' that don't.
In fact, I could argue the reverse with just as much analytic rigor as the quoted article. By providing a healthy outlet for aggression outside the confines of actual social interaction, people with tendencies toward aggression are able to find a non-destructive release for their urges.
Note also that while the study seemed to control for many external variables, they completely whiff on the obvious: namely, I think it's far, far more likely that violent people with violent tendencies are more likely to play violent video games than some mechanism by which violent video games corrupt otherwise angelic children. One needs to control for causality. Perhaps a longitudinal study of children who have not yet been introduced to these games?
http://pss.sagepub.com/content/12/5/353 (2010) [pdf]
(Searching for a freely available version of this studies might pay off)
If you look, there are more than a few countries who have a head of government separate from the chief of state. The head of government actually runs the government, as the name implies, and is the chief of the executive branch. The chief of state is the figurehead, the chief diplomat as it were. The particulars vary nation to nation (in some cases the chief of state has more power) but the general idea is quite common. While the US is not unique in having a single person serve as both the head of government and chief of state, it isn't precisely the way everyone does it.
> One thing that bugs me with all this study non-sense and the counter arguments is that they always have an extremely narrow field of view. It is either "they cause harm" or "they don't influence us at all", both are likely complete non-sense (even when done for humorous purpose as here).
The thing that bugs me is people criticizing studies without even bothering to read them.
How is the following abstract of the study polarized in the manner that you've said? :
"Numerous studies have shown that exposure to media violence increases aggression, though the mechanisms of this effect have remained elusive. One theory posits that repeated exposure to media violence desensitizes viewers to real world violence, increasing aggression by blunting aversive reactions to violence and removing normal inhibitions against aggression. Theoretically, violence desensitization should be reflected in the amplitude of the P300 component of the event-related brain potential (ERP), which has been associated with activation of the aversive motivational system. In the current study, violent images elicited reduced P300 amplitudes among violent, as compared to nonviolent video game players. Additionally, this reduced brain response predicted increased aggressive behavior in a later task. Moreover, these effects held after controlling for individual differences in trait aggressiveness. These data are the first to link media violence exposure and aggressive behavior to brain processes hypothetically associated with desensitization."
"Grand Theft Auto Causes Marriages To Break Down", "PC Games Lead To Decline In Church Attendance" How exactly did this guy go from correlation to causality?
Hmmm. An hour of excitement and reinforcement of how awesome you are, or being told you're bad and worthless during the equivalent of an hour-long, mind-numbingly boring cut scene?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Where is the study that without a doubt shows that there is more violence among gamers then among non-gamers? Unless you have shown that there is an effect it is rather pointless to look for the cause of that yet to be shown effect.
Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing 'look over there'.
Escaping from the oppressive influence of religious tradition is not a bad thing.
People no longer feel threatened enough by the dirty old men in robes to suffer through boring church services and unhappy marriages. Good on them.
Once this became a political issue, it became a guarantee that people would take ideological stances. I think you have a great point, but the point of whether we should be looking at the effects of exposure to violence is also worthwhile, so long as it is done scientifically, by a group with no agenda, other than the truth. (And I am naive enough to believe they exist.)
It's funny because it's modded insightful. it's like a tounge in a cheek within a tounge in a cheek
What about general studies that simply discuss how child behaviour has changed over the years in more general terms instead of splitting it into good vs evil? Did video games cause less reading of books?...
Yeah, from my own experience with video games, I think it's not very likely that they make us more violent or less violent. They might lead to less books and less time watching TV, but I suspect that in all these cases, the most powerful effects are the most subtle. Books, for example, train you to think of reality as something that is encoded in language. TV trained us all to be passive observers in life.
Games train us to look at reality as something which is not immediate. I don't mean temporally immediate, but that the world of games is mediated by the screen and controller. You don't interact with anything directly. Also, they train us to look at the world as something filled with distinct rules and directives. There are cheats and glitches, but there's a definite way that you're supposed to go about things, and there are explicit goals.
I suspect that those kinds of things, along with more and more culture moving online, will have a tremendous effect on how future generations see the world. Will it be good or bad? I don't really know.
Excellent, Grumbel! Well said. Often, I have discussions with older educators who lament their students' lack of reading, writing, and study as it has been traditionally thought of: writing a proper letter to a penpal, having meaningful debates face-to-face with friends, quiet studying at a desk with a lamp on, etc. Through technology (and many other elements, quick frankly), the next generation do these kinds of things, but differently. When we explain how students interact with their world that is different, I always get the same response, "I feel so bad for students today...". In a way, 'Yes', but my response has become "There is no good or bad to it - it's just the way it is." Handhelds, gaming, Internet - they have changed how we learn and interact with our world. And, the "good" and "evil" factions are slowing how education needs to embrace technology - there is little difference of replacing a teacher spinning a globe vs a teacher using Google Earth on a Smartboard and spinning it. If we understand how gaming (which most of the students are doing) impacts learning or socializing, then we can either study individual aspects of those impacts or link them to studies that have already been done (affects of allowance being spent on video games, etc).
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No, global warming is caused by the decreasing number of pirates.
If that were true, the mass copyright infringement that the old Napster and its progeny represent would have sent Earth into another ice age.
Local internet-crime-and-game hysteria here in Sao Paulo crteated local laws requiring we keep ID, name, phone, address, DOB, access times, school hours, blabla forever, from every user at cybercafes. I said "I refuse to" - and let everyone go undocumented. Couple of smarty-pants lawyers sent anonymous email offending each other from here. Sued each other. Fines we may face, around USD 7,000. Damages we may pay, about another USD 7,000. Profit we get there, around USD 1000/mo. Result - hell if I know, just that we're sad one day, angry the next. And reading up. On Tor, Aircrack, new legislation, how to send anon email appropriately. And perhaps for a new job, if I just close...
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This is actually pretty smart social science. If you wanted to, you could gather actual statistics about PC saturation in households and the divorce rate or church attendance, and you could do the same for gaming.
Am I the only person who thinks it could actually be interesting to see what that would look like?
"let's burn the new books" is something that the establishment uses when lacking any other means to combat with a problem that doesn't exist.
it's pretty self evident that people nowadays have much larger understanding of the actual results of war and violence than a century ago - and much more "healthy" views on the subject. not many teenage boys dream of the glory of being on the eastern front fighting the evil bolshevik empire.
and of course all culture worth anything affects people in some way, if it didn't it would get forgotten pretty fast. which brings a point about making too fast decisions on how things really affect your thinking - you can't know untill after a few years. there are some books I read as a kid that affect me today a lot, my choices(career, social circles etc), my dreams for the future. but who's to say if they're negative or positive. if you use church attendance as a marker then definetely negative - if you use "christian values" or some such label, portraying how I've lived, I would say the results have been positive
and also a few games - however, none of the games that are usually mentioned in these articles, as they're usually just action games like doom or gta, not games with moral choices or a longer time span or deeper characters with a history, something that you'd ponder later. what you're pondering with gta is "should I try the sniper mission with a better controller since it seems impossible with the one i'm using now".
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Games don't attract badly behaved people. It's just that badly behaved people MAY be AMONG the people MORE LIKELY to play those kinda games. Where as, most of us play games for a bit of harmless entertainment.