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Don't Study the Video Game, Study the Gamer
rrossman2 writes with this quote from a USA Today article about research recently presented to the American Psychological Association: "Video games — especially violent ones — are constantly under scrutiny from parents concerned about negative effects. Now, research suggests that those worries should focus more on the player's personality rather than the content of the games. 'If you're worried about a video game turning your son or daughter into a killer, don't worry about that,' says psychologist Patrick Markey of Villanova (Pa.) University. 'But is your kid moody, impulsive, or are they unfriendly? It's probably not the best idea to have that child play violent video games.' ... Markey found slight increases in hostility for those with certain personality traits: extremely high on neuroticism and extremely low on agreeableness and conscientiousness. ... 'We found — irrespective of violent content — the two highly competitive games produced more aggressive behavior than the two less competitive games,' [Markey said.]"
Children's violence is actually the fault of the child and his parents. News at 11.
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There are no games which are not violent.
There's plenty of non-violent games. Unfortunately, kind tend to think shooting is more cool than leading some ball around, building a city or solving various logical puzzles. Also, non-violent games are usually involve more thinking, which is frowned upon in modern society, even more so among children.
Off the top of my head: Portal, SimCity, various Tycoon games, Neverball, Bejeweled, Tetris
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Portal? That game where the psychopathic robot end boss tries to kill you by pumping a nerve toxin into the facility, having stated that the first bit blown off it was a module installed to stop it from pumping a lethal nerve gas into the facility?
Where you defeat the boss by using portal mechanics to direct its own explosive munitions back at itself?
Where you are frequently set upon by static turret pods with automatic weapons?
That game where you have to drop the only item your character is supposed to have an emotional attachment to into an incinerator?
Where you are almost burned alive by aforementioned psychopathic AI?
But wait, yeah... You don't get a gun, so it's totally not violent.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
In a way, SimCity is violent. Or at least brain-washing, which is the precise default we hope violent games don't have.
I'm not talking about the disasters (earthquakes, etc.) the player can unleash. For a SimCity game, one thing matters over everything : your bank account. You want to build this stuff? You need money. You want to change the landscape? You need money.
Having a positive balance may requier for the player to diminish stuff like hospital subventions, etc.: the kind of stuff that can cause more deaths in reality is here rewarded.
SimCity is extremely pro-capitalist (may seems unimportant in US, but many people in other countries don't have the same view about economy).
There is a huge gap in what you'ld expect of a good mayor, and what SimCity teaches.
Tetris isn't very violent. But anyway, you're doing the right thing. I don't think it's useful for kids to grow up in an environment with zero exposure to violence. Kids that are over-protected can be just as maladjusted as the ones that get no adult supervision at all.
Pacifist Protester: Name one situation where violence is the answer!?
Ali G: A violent situation.
I once went to the house of a teacher at the school where I worked, to do an IT job for them. Their child (7/8 years old) was home and playing on the console while I sat at the PC.
It wasn't until *I* mentioned it that she realised that the South Park videogame they were playing lets you launch dildos at the other players. At first, she thought I was joking, then she thought it was just us mis-interpreting it, then she read the instruction manual.
Then she started to actually WATCH South Park with her child and realised that it wasn't just a cartoon for kids. Bear in mind that she would spend every working day herding children and making sure they didn't say anything untoward, or see anything they shouldn't, and she hadn't noticed even though she'd bought the games the kids asked for after seeing the cartoon on TV and they'd been playing them for months.
A lot of parents are fecking idiots. Sure there are some that are deliberately liberal and accommodating, but there are a lot that just don't care / know what their kids are doing. And, no, a violent video game, or even a sexually explicit one, isn't going to harm your child. But the lack of parenting that can result in them doing those things you never realised were available to them can and will harm your child.
That's where the link is - not the games making your child violent or unsociable - its the laxity of parenting that can often result in both things appearing at once. If you're really just buying games for your kids with no question of their content despite their age ratings, that's a parenting problem.
But hell, when I was younger I would watch 18-rated films with my parents - they were never "scary" because it was only a film (i.e. not real life) but it's only my upbringing that taught me that, and when I was that young my parents would *know* what I was watching because they'd have seen it first or had a rough idea of the content of it before they watched it with me.
Game ratings are as useless as film ratings. They only work if the parent is so lazy that they rely on them exclusively. If they are just a lazy parent, they won't even bother to check the age. If your parent knows what they are doing, the age-rating is neither here nor there - they will decide whether or not you get to watch it and not have to read a box on the back of the DVD case, and 99.9% of the time will let you watch it when you are younger than it says.
I don't think there's anything wrong with a well-brought-up child of 11 playing an 18-rated game, or watching an 18-rated movie. So long as they are mature enough to handle it and you KNOW that's what they are doing.
The worst of modern diseases is having no idea what your kids are doing, and not caring even when you do. I bet a lot of those parents that whine about their children becoming violent after playing GrandTheftAuto never bother to mention that their kids were allowed out until all-hours anyway, that they never knew where they were, that they didn't know where the games (or the money to buy them) came from, etc. that the kid has all the latest games consoles but plays in no team sports, etc.
Today, other people are the perfect targets to play for YOUR bad parenting. If you tell your kid to be home at 8, they are home at 8. There is no "but what if" they don't turn up. They *WILL* be home at 8. It's very simple. But nobody bothers to enforce the little things until the big things have already bred in habits.
But is your kid moody, impulsive, or are they unfriendly?
Seriously? Isn't this the definition of every single teenager that exists, has existed and will exist? Myself included back in the day of course.
Who need's speling and grammar?
In a way, SimCity is violent. Or at least brain-washing, which is the precise default we hope violent games don't have.
I'm not talking about the disasters (earthquakes, etc.) the player can unleash. For a SimCity game, one thing matters over everything : your bank account. You want to build this stuff? You need money. You want to change the landscape? You need money.
Having a positive balance may requier for the player to diminish stuff like hospital subventions, etc.: the kind of stuff that can cause more deaths in reality is here rewarded.
SimCity is extremely pro-capitalist (may seems unimportant in US, but many people in other countries don't have the same view about economy).
There is a huge gap in what you'ld expect of a good mayor, and what SimCity teaches.
SimCity has recently been accused of being to environmentally based as well.
I actually think it is just trying to be realistic. We live in a world where money matters more than everything, so Sim City would be utter rubbish if it did not mirror this to a certain extent.
Also, you sat people in many other countries don't have the same view of economy, did you have any in particular in mind? I am from the UK by very left leaning parents who considered themselves socialists. I was encouraged to play SimCity as a kid as a way to learn about economics and the results of your actions.
I would say that SimCity can be used to encourage left leaning thoughts in children. In the example above you give about hospitals as far as I remember if you skimped on things like healthcare and education people started leaving your city in droves to go and live somewhere nicer. If you just followed purely capitalist rationale for your decisions you would build lots of oil or coal fired power plants, but the resulting pollution also made people leave your city. People leaving meant you got reduced tax revenue, so that made it harder to balance the books in future. While the game might revolve around economics, economics is not a subject studied solely by people who are pro-capitalist.
Many lefties also study economics, they just approach it from a different point of view. Interestingly here in the UK both of our main parties (conservative and labour) are riddled with people who all studied the same thing at the same university: Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford. In my case this was also what my mother studied, then later taught at university.
Economics is not just the domain of capitalists, we could all do with learning about it. Ultimately, even without the existence of money economics would still be about how you allot resources.
I dont read
It's because it's a tested, re-tested, re-verified and oh yes double-blind checked observation that video games increase violent behavior, in the short term, in the long term, in little kids, in big kids, in young adults, in middle aged people, older people and pensioners.
Except not a single one of these studies have proven that. In fact, they are closer to proving that competition irrespective of violent content, is the main motivator for aggressive, not violent behavior. Holy crap, people who play competitive games (sports, video games, board games, whatever) are sometimes aggressive about their competitiveness. Hmm...perhaps competitive people play competitive games. Considering that the only thing that has been shown is a correlation (to aggressiveness, not violent behavior) claiming that they cause violent behavior is a flat out lie.
So can we now please please grow up and assume that, yes, 40 years of testing the same thing (20 years for video games), with every honest psychologist coming again and again to the same conclusion did not result from a desire to steal your tv/video games ?
If you read what the studies actually say, the honest psychologists never claimed that violent media caused violent behavior, only that there is a correlation. The honest ones also showed that video games are not alone, all violent media has roughly the same effect. Games (video, card, board, sports, etc.) are only different in the existence of competitiveness. When it comes to the violent imagery, they are no different that tv, movies, books, comics, etc. Maybe the reason why we've been testing the same thing for 40 years is because everyone THINKS that they must cause it (because they don't want to take responsibility for raising their own children) and they keep re-testing it because they haven't gotten the answer they want yet. Nah, that couldn't be it.....
Note that the actual study indicated that people are very much affected, specifically made violent, by these video games. What the study mostly claimed is that some types of imagined violence had more of an effect than others (big surprise : convincing violence, preferably with some sort of consequence on a real, human, victim, even if it's just a number on his/her screen, evokes more violence than what amounts to showing a picture of some blood).
Except the study said no such thing. The study actually explicitly stated that the violent content in the games doesn't do anything unless you have specific personality traits that could be affected. Newsflash! If your kid has trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality, don't let them play a violent game. If your kid is already aggressive, violent and moody, don't let them play a violent game. It has nothing to do with the video game causing anything, it just reinforces a pre-existing issue with the person. Violent games will not cause a perfectly normal person to become a violent person. It just doesn't happen and it's not possible. The study actually stated: "We found — irrespective of violent content — the two highly competitive games produced more aggressive behavior than the two less competitive games." So the factor is competitiveness, not violence. And the result is aggressiveness, not violence. Holy crap, people who play competitive games will become aggressive because they are competitive! I never guessed that! Maybe they want to win or something?
This is THE way to politicize science.
Politics refuses to accept the answer that media (whether it's movies, video games, punk rock, comic books, etc.) is just not as influencing of behavior as they like to believe. People need to be able to blame something other than themselves for the perceived "immorality" of young people today. Every time some new media comes around, it is vilified and eventually proven to not be the cause of all of life's woes like people claim. Your post i