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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."
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.
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.
Apparently you never used one of the old Atari joysticks.
Blank until
"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?
I thought I was *the one*...
Thank you sir, you keep just on going..
I can finally quit. The weight on my shoulders has been too much.. Now I can finally wear some pants, walk in the park.. read a bit.. play with the children of my siblings... be in public (I felt so misunderstood, nobody would understand how I was saving them!) and finally let my chafing wounds heal..
I CAN LIVE AGAIN! Thank you kind sir.
Oh, they are. They just are not linked to Video Games.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
I've never been able to figure out why anyone would want a king either
Go ask the Catholics and their Pope.
Although I've never been able to figure out why anyone would want a king either, maybe there is some relation.
MORTICIAN: Who's that then?
CUSTOMER: I don't know.
MORTICIAN: Must be a king.
CUSTOMER: Why?
MORTICIAN: He hasn't got shit all over him.
That's incentive enough for me.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
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.
> why anyone would feel loyal to, or even want to attend, a church
It's because they're human beings. Human beings believe whatever the hell their parents do (by default). Muslims have Muslim kids, Hindus have Hindu kids, Catholics have catholic kids.
On and off for a couple decades, right after Henry made the new church there were various burnings and hangings, the type of thing that got you to go to the church you're told to go to (nobody wants to burn). I also think Queen Liz was about as popular as a monarch can get and she dug the new church her dad made. I think it follows that it'd get some followers (because, really, what difference does it make what church you go to anyway?) and the kids of these followers would *naturally* be CoE followers like their parents before them. It's the default.
Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy
Yeah the CoE broke off from from the RC Church under Henry VIII, but it was really under Elizabeth I that it became a separate church. She made a lot of changes and made it a protestant church, with priests allowed to marry, the removal of confessions and indulgences, etc. So the reasons for the CoE is the same reason for the reformation in the rest of europe, with a bit of nationalism thrown into the mix (it is called the Church of _England_ after all).
The reason for having a King? In feudal times, the most powerful warlord became the King. His subjects didn't have a choice in the matter. In modern times its because, for some reason, people like the whole pomp and circumstance and all the ceremony that goes a long with it. In the US, the President has to do all the ceremonial stuff along with actually running the executive branch. In England the Queen does all the ceremonial stuff while the prime minister can focus on actually running thing. Sort of a an extra branch of government... you got the judicial branch, legislative branch, executive branch and ceremonial branch.
For example some people in the US are now bitching over how Obama didn't make an appearance at some boy scout meeting. This is the sort of thing you have a king or queen for.
With all that rubbing, it's no wonder the Earth is warming. I'm surprised your willy doesn't burst into flames.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If Pacman had affected us as kids we'd be running around in dark rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive music.
Well unless the monarch is largely powerless, as the Queen is today, I can think of a few reasons why you might not want to choose your head of state on the basis of which member of a single inbred family is lucky enough to be born first. Having said that, I quite like that the power resides with parliament and the monarch we do have is pretty much a figurehead, I can't imagine the UK with a president.
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.
Before video games it was certainly "video nasties". I can extrapolate from that that before then it was likely TV, rock and roll, radio, cinema, music hall, newspapers, books, the theatre, humming, gathering around the fire to tell stories... essentially any form of entertainment that distracts people from the daily drudgery (cynically I'd say anything that makes life on earth more enjoyable makes the promise of a better afterlife less of a reward for, and therefore incentive to accept the status quo of said drudgery).
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.
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.
I've often wondered why anyone would feel loyal to, or even want to attend, a church
Probably to avoid eternal damnation.
For example some people in the US are now bitching over how Obama didn't make an appearance at some boy scout meeting. This is the sort of thing you have a king or queen for.
No, this is the sort of thing people just need to get the fuck over.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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 makes it any different than the Church being run by the Pope in Rome, who sent many Christians to their death in fruitless crusades to Jerusalem?
It's easy to claim that the Church of England isn't a real religion when you look at the entirety of King Henry the 8ths character, but then you can't just turn a blind eye to everything the Catholic Church has done and claim it's all that holier.
All the different sects that form just show the power of human rationalizing. We pick and choose what lessons are most important to us and make sure we abide by them. For some people, they draw the line at abiding commandments, other people, believe that devout faith is required.
The Church of England didn't just come around because Henry wanted a divorce, it also offered some progress from the dogmatic views of the Catholic Church. It's not hard for people to attend a church that makes itself easier to attend.
Why would they know? Pope, king, completely different concepts! /sarcasm
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, though I'm not yet sure about the universe. - A Einstein
My family are all Catholic, I have been an agnostic (verging on atheist), and am now a Christian again. My wife's parents are Buddhist, she is Anglican. Her father's family are mostly Christians, as are two of her sisters. MY mother's ancestors were probably Eastern Orthodox Christians.
I know some Buddhists whose parents were Christians.
It may be common for people to follow their ancestors religion (or lack thereof), but it is hardly invariable. Most people also follow their parents politics, and lots of their other ideas, but that does not explain why the Church of England has survived for so long, and the answer is that it is more than just Henry the Eight's idea - lots of more sincere people used the break with Rome to push other changes.
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.
I can't imagine the UK with a president.
Unfortunately I can. Just say "President Blair", "President Brown" and "President Cameron".
It makes you see the point of the monarchy.
Hello Captain Redundant!
I masturbated myself today
There's definitively a statistical correlation between length of copyright and climate. As copyright duration got longer, the climate got hotter.
It's a slow effect, so you don't see clear steps in the pattern. However, if you look at the famous hockey stick curve, you'll notice that the bend of the hockey stick is not too long after the original Berne Convention. That it doesn't match exactly can be attributed to the inherent inertia of the climate. Since then, both duration of copyright successively got longer and the climate got hotter. This is a very clear correlation.
So now we have the proof: Copyright damages our climate!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
The difference between the catholic church and the church of England is the catholic church traces its line of authority directly back to Peter and Christ. The church of England just randomly started. It wasn't even by someone claiming to be inspired by god, like a lot of protestant churches.
Qxe4
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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King Henry believed (or claimed that he did) that his beliefs were morally and ethically correct - closer to God than that of the Church.
And as a side note, being able to trace lineage doesn't make the Catholic Church any more "credible" than the Church of England. I mean I could probably trace my family tree back far enough to find someone who committed a crime but that doesn't make me a criminal.
Why does any religion get any loyalty? *shrug* FWIW, the Church of England appears to be relatively benign - about the best I can say about any religious institution (it's good if it's not totally farked up, weird standards those but what can ya do?).
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.
Of course. There is only one king, but the Vatican has two popes per square kilometer!
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...
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
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.
Clearly there's going to be exceptions -- that is another feature of human nature. I was speaking in generalities and in that sense I'm not wrong. I think if you check, you'll find you're in the statistically insignificant group.
Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy