tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8074451.post1506373323645440647..comments2024-02-05T05:56:50.392-05:00Comments on Insult Swordfighting: Maybe violent video games can be harmful. Maybe we should find out.Mitch Krpatahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15987162934932391765noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8074451.post-7151635332326766642013-02-14T15:54:52.288-05:002013-02-14T15:54:52.288-05:00I wish I knew! It would certainly take a lot of ti...I wish I knew! It would certainly take a lot of time and funding, and that's a hard sell when a likely outcome is that you find out nothing. Mitch Krpatahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15987162934932391765noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8074451.post-85683340284233366672013-02-14T15:17:26.401-05:002013-02-14T15:17:26.401-05:00I don't mean to detract from the discussion, a...I don't mean to detract from the discussion, and I think I mostly agree with your post, but I would like to ask how you envisage that the long-term connection between games and violence be studied? Short-term is easy because you can set up an experiment. Long-term implies a massive observational study.<br /><br />The group 'people who play video games' and 'people who commit acts of violence' are problematic to correlate/study. The former is huge and growing by the year. The latter is (thankfully) tiny and shrinking (violent crime rates are almost universally falling), but likely to significantly overlap with the former. <br /><br />I guess you could, with a large enough sample size, show that the proportion of violent offenders among gamers is higher/lower/ not different than a randomly chosen, age, sex and whatever else matched control non-gamer group. Michael Millerhttp://scepticsmiscellanea.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8074451.post-66337705201601083792013-02-04T13:47:15.950-05:002013-02-04T13:47:15.950-05:00Also:
"If Pac-Man had affected us as kids, we...Also:<br />"If Pac-Man had affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive electronic music." <br /><br />(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Brigstocke#Pac-Man_joke)Tylerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03278535699466229371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8074451.post-40372580967819103772013-02-04T09:41:05.853-05:002013-02-04T09:41:05.853-05:00There is definitely a point at which you'd hav...There is definitely a point at which you'd have to stop looking. I'm not sure we're there yet. (By contrast, the science seems clear that, say, having guns in your home makes you more likely to die of a gunshot wound.) Without having listened to all of the piece you linked, Nels, I have to wonder who's done studies of this kind of media consumption over a span of years, even decades. <br /><br />But even during the intro, they're talking about a guy who uses games for therapeutic purposes. And electronic simulations have been used for training in tons of fields for decades now. So... why is that we can use games to train and cure people, but it's impossible that they might also be conditioning them in ways we don't want?Mitch Krpatahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15987162934932391765noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8074451.post-10938413324881225512013-02-02T14:15:03.153-05:002013-02-02T14:15:03.153-05:00While more science is always good, the thing I fin...While more science is always good, the thing I find problematic is that there isn't actually much contention in academia about whether or not games actually cause violent behaviour. Aside from academics whose studies were funded by some group with "Family" in their name (and were basically just fishing anything that vaguely resembled an already assumed conclusion), there really isn't much dispute.<br /><br />Probably the foremost researcher on this is Professor Chris Ferguson at Texas A&M. He gave a pretty good rundown of the science as it stands <a href="http://www.yourpublicmedia.org/content/wnpr/vast-world-video-games" rel="nofollow">here</a> (and there's a bonus Steve Gaynor on there too!). There have been longitudinal studies and there just isn't any evidence. And you can't prove a negative, right? Like we can keep looking, but the best it'll ever be is, "Nope, there's still no evidence."<br /><br />So more money for more science? That's great, it's just I don't see the LaPierres and his ilk being convinced by any amount of data. I'd rather see those funds go toward something that is more poorly understood as potential factor in violent behaviour.<br /><br />First it was rock and roll, then comic books, then heavy metal, then D&D and now video games. I think at this point we realize the notion that all those previous things fostering violent behaviour is preposterous. Are games the exception? Maybe, but there just ain't any evidence for it and if there was, it would be the first scapegoat that was actually culpable.<br /><br />What I do find really problematic is the depiction of realistic in violence in games vis-a-vis actual conflict. Does playing a mountain of <i>Call of Duty</i> make one more hawkish with regard to intervention policy and other "sanctioned" forms of violence? When Price Harry says shooting Taliban from Apache is akin to Playstation time, that's kind of worrying. I'm not aware that there's much, if any, data on that and certainly that would be interesting to understand better.Nels Andersonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06484436433023780229noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8074451.post-26443368427469838422013-02-02T11:29:04.379-05:002013-02-02T11:29:04.379-05:00Interestingly, I don't see a lot of discussion...Interestingly, I don't see a lot of discussion about what defines a "violent video game." Call of Duty, everyone agrees on. What about Duck Hunt? What about Smash TV, or Berzerk? Is there some sort of crossover point where the game becomes "realistic enough" to be worthy of the "violent video game" discussion? I continue to make the argument, though nobody seems to like it, that kids raised on games don't make a distinction - a game is a game, reality is reality.Tylerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03278535699466229371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8074451.post-91028318285163790432013-02-01T13:47:52.122-05:002013-02-01T13:47:52.122-05:00This is a great post. Concerning the effects of ga...This is a great post. Concerning the effects of games, if we base ourselves on Ralph Koster's "Theory of Fun" games are about learning patterns. It is not a coincidence if in game design we talk about learning curves for games.<br />This implies that any game will teach us something according to the way the mechanics are crafted and the emergent dynamics and aesthetics.<br /><br />That brings me to the first problem : video games are a medium. Every game has different mechanics.<br />We cannot then defend or attack the medium as a whole. Journey on one side vehicles a whole spectrum of emotions that is completely different from Call of Duty.<br /><br />What we can say is that games influence us. That is the case with every art form : painting, music, books, etc.<br />So it all depends on how the game is crafted, what it wants to teach the player, how it teaches them.<br /><br />The second problem is the accessibility of violent games : no kid should be able to play Call of Duty, Battlefield, and countless other violent games until he has reached a maturity of mind where he will not learn from them a more aggressive logic.<br /><br />@Julian : That's actually what Michael Moore did in his film "Bowling for Columbine", even if he does have a political agenda in mind behind it.Noah Youngnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8074451.post-26965783043791365432013-02-01T13:22:27.828-05:002013-02-01T13:22:27.828-05:00I totally agree with you that closing your mind an...I totally agree with you that closing your mind and refusing to even look for evidence before making a decision is a bad call. More research and more knowledge are never a bad thing, even if what you end up finding out is painful or scary. It's still better than not knowing or hanging blindly to your assumptions.<br /><br />I think your description of gamer behavior could be applied to Americans generally. It seems that we culturally like to cast people into monochromatic savior/antagonist roles, want quick straightforward solutions even when the problem is complex, and tend to threaten a lot of violence. If our culture is like that, we'll tend to produce media that reinforce that, which will make our culture even more like that. That would be a super interesting study.Julianhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05684168826773165763noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8074451.post-61398956353469515382013-02-01T13:16:17.668-05:002013-02-01T13:16:17.668-05:00Great post, I've been thinking along the same ...Great post, I've been thinking along the same lines for a while now. If you ask me though, neither guns nor games are the problem. I think they are both symptoms. I think the problem is this society's sick fascination with violence. It's almost a cult.<br /><br />Here you have two groups accusing the other of promoting and causing violence, where on the one hand you have one group of people uncompromisingly defending devices the purpose of which is the ending of life, and on the other hand a group defending a medium that glorifies headshots, gore and torture. It sounds rather disingenuous when gamers point back at gun owners when they have no problem having guns in their games. You know, if you have a problem with guns... you have a problem with guns. Period.Apolo Imagodhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10953715396943211536noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8074451.post-26432423648803693872013-02-01T09:53:25.089-05:002013-02-01T09:53:25.089-05:00Thanks for the comment, Greg. Did you read the art...Thanks for the comment, Greg. Did you read the article positing a connection between <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/01/lead-crime-connection" rel="nofollow">lower levels of environmental lead and the drop in violent crime</a>? I thought it was convincing.<br /><br />Part of what animated my thinking about writing this is that I could see contradictory things being true: I could see games being beneficial for some people, and dangerous for others. That sounds completely plausible to me. Furthermore, knowing as I do that violent games haven't ruined my brain, I'm still troubled by the notion that they could be having an effect at all. <br /><br />Last point: even if you think that games aren't the real problem, but the gun lobby is, which seems to be the prevalent view in my social circles then reading Parkin's article is especially troubling. If you think games are harmless, but part of your purchase is funding actual arms manufacturers, how do you square that circle? <br /><br />(Almost all the links were broken! I guess Blogger doesn't like when you copy and paste from Word. They're fixed now.)Mitch Krpatahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15987162934932391765noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8074451.post-16639096367005612332013-02-01T09:38:49.662-05:002013-02-01T09:38:49.662-05:00I think one of the most straightforward arguments ...I think one of the most straightforward arguments that video games can't be having a big negative effect is that youth violence was dropping while they were on the rise. That said, that doesn't preclude the possibility of a slight negative effect or perhaps a large negative effect for a very small part of the population in interaction with particular types of games.<br /><br />I have seen studies (well, to be honest, study summaries) that find correlation between prevalence of pornography and lower instances of sexual assault. So it isn't unthinkable that even crass simulated violence may, on the net, vent more than it encourages. However, that would just be a hypothesis when it comes to violent video games.<br /><br />But I think being unafraid of knowledge is really the right way to go, thanks for writing this.<br /><br />Side note: The Jason Schreier link is broken as of the time I'm viewing this.Greg Sandershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01361492059565486009noreply@blogger.com