Elsevier, publishers of Journal of Adolesence, sent a newsflash today announcing a journal edition devoted to the effects of videogame violence on children. The newsflash claims that a consensus has emerged among the scientists that violence in media, especially videogames, causes violence in users. Their words follow. The journal is available here.
In my opinion, researchers in this field establish correlations, not causality. Still, peer-reviewed research is hard to ignore.
From the Elsevier Press Office:
DO VIOLENT VIDEO-GAMES AFFECT ADOLESCENTS' ATTITUDE AND BEHAVIOUR?
Yes, is the conclusion of the most recent research.
A special issue of Elsevier's Journal of Adolescence, just published, addresses this familiar question and moves the debate forward, through important new research conducted in several countries.
The conclusion, say the editors, is that "the case for the negative impact of violent video-gaming may have been under rather than over-stated".
{snip}
DISCLAIMER:
The summaries of published papers in this email are intended to be read as accessible signposts towards the original abstracts and articles, which of course have been peer-reviewed. However, the summaries in this email have not been peer reviewed, nor have they been approved by the authors of the articles or their editors.
Press Contact:
Eleanor Baylis
Publishing Editor
Developmental Psychology
+44 (0)1865 843277
[email protected]
END QUOTE
Castronova: In reviewing existing work on this topic, my conclusion has been that most research in this area is simply ham-handed, paying too little attention to issues of causality and substantive significance. These are issues that econometricians have worked on for decades, and my feeling is that some of the researchers in the videogame violence field are just not up to speed. It seems that most conclusions in this literature are based on experiments where you put a bunch of teens in a room, let them play Quake, then answer a questionnaire asking whether they hate their mom. And the ones who just played Quake say "yeah, I hate her guts!" more often. But there are serious problems going from this kind of data to any real world implications.
First, surveys about opinion are notoriously fishy. So is in-lab behavior. Has anyone tied videogame violence to a real consequence, i.e., actually hitting anyone in anger?
More important, though, the reverse causal explanation for these outcomes is equally (if not more) plausible. Let's say I'm a teen, and my world is violent, brutal, neglectful; I love videogames because of that; if you put me in a room with kids from loving homes, I'll not only be more inclined to get into Quake, but I will immerse myself in its thought-world just to get some relief from the rage I feel, rage that the other kids just don't have to deal with. The causality doesn't run from videogame to violent teen to parent-as-victim. It runs from parent-as-criminal (yes: criminal, in greater or lesser doses - neglective, abusive, demanding, tyrannical, invalidating, narcissistic, and generally unwilling to work on themselves long enough to become capable of meaningful love relationships with spouses or children) to violent teen to videogame.
For example, from the summary of one of the articles:
> In the same study, they also found that past history of exposure to violent video games is positively associated with aggressive self-views. One implication of their work is that the effects of violent media exposure on self-image can occur entirely without awareness of change, a finding that helps explain why violent video gamers so stoutly deny that their hobby has any impact on them. They simply cannot notice these subtle changes in self.
Note the words "positively associated." Now consider the fact that the height of men is positively associated with the height of their sons. Does that mean that father height causes son height? Nope. Cut all of the dads' heads off, and the sons will be no shorter, will they?
Isn't there a clear and obvious reverse explanation in the above case? Isn't it equally plausible that people with aggressive self-views tend to seek out violence in videogames? I haven't read the article yet, so perhaps there's been a careful effort to establish causation. But I doubt it. Vidoegame violence researchers just don't get very far into the tricky issues of connecting theories of causality to data outcomes, at least, not as much as econometricians do. And if you don't go into these issues, you lose the inferential purchase of the data. Completely.
Now, why would everyone be so accepting of one causal interpretation of these data points and not the other? Fact is, contemporary society is extraordinarily unwilling to consider the secondary causal line. No, no, no, it can't be parents. No. Parents are fine. It's the kids who are broken, not the parents, not the marriages. It's the kids and their darned videogames. Well, the literature, as currently focused, will never produce anything to challenge this view. It will just keep finding a videogame/violence correlation. Over and over. And parents and governments will continue to avoid looking in the mirror, where the real problem lies.
Third, why don't we see studies comparing the effect of videogames on violence to the effect of other things, such as bad parenting? If we are going to become concerned about something, let's be concerned about the things that have the greatest effect on childhood violence. I could do a study where I gave kids ice cream and then noted the level of aggressiveness. I imagine that ice cream would have a sedating effect. And if that's the only factor I am looking for, I will dutifully report "Study shows ice cream reduces violence in children." But how MUCH? Is it enough to be concerned about? The answer to this, in most of this research, is to report that some effect is 'statistically significant.' They then conclude that the effect is also substantively significant, i.e., it matters. Anyone who does that, however, simply doesn't understand the concept of statistical significance. It has nothing to do with substance. Yet an extraordinarily large number of researchers in the social sciences, including economists, just don't understand the meaning of the statistical tools they deploy. If you're interested in this, check out Dierdre McCloskey's writings on how scholars improperly make inferences of substantive importance from statistical tests (I had to do it myself on many occasions to satisfy editors, because I don't have tenure.... but stay tuned). The basic message, if you're clued into this jargon, is that when someone says "the difference was statistically significant at the 5 percent level" and then moves on without comparing the actual size of the effects, they don't know what they are doing (and neither did the journal editor). For example: suppose in a sample of 1 million basketball shots for each player, I found that Allen Iverson's shooting percentage was 48.9 while Gary Payton's was 48.7. With a million data points, even the tiniest difference will show up as statistically significant. But substantively, they are equal. People in the science lit would announce: "Iverson shown to be better shooter than Payton." People in the NBA would laugh in their face.
Facit: are videogames an important cause of actual violence? The existing literature here is just a premeditated balm, designed, conducted, and construed to support a theory that minimizes blame on the real culprits in this story. This literature doesn't tell us anything about real violence, or about causality, or whether any of the effects are important. What it does do, is provide cover for a culture whose relationships skills, especially involving parents and children, have withered almost to nothing.
"Now, why would everyone be so accepting of one causal interpretation of these data points and not the other? Fact is, contemporary society is extraordinarily unwilling to consider the secondary causal line. No, no, no, it can't be parents. No. Parents are fine. It's the kids who are broken, not the parents, not the marriages. It's the kids and their darned videogames. Well, the literature, as currently focused will never produce anything to challenge this view. It will just keep finding a videogame/violence correlation. Over and over. And parents and governments will continue to avoid looking in the mirror, where the real problem lies."
I could not agree more with this.
And as a parent I *again* could not agree with you more.
Posted by: DivineShadow | Feb 17, 2004 at 20:45
Good time to remind everyone to read Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Super-Heroes, and Make-Believe Violence, by Gerard Jones.
Posted by: Ian Bogost | Feb 17, 2004 at 20:57
“Now, why would everyone be so accepting of one causal interpretation of these data points and not the other? Fact is, contemporary society is extraordinarily unwilling to consider the secondary causal line. No, no, no, it can't be parents. No. Parents are fine.”
Certainly this seems to apply to the media and many politicians. Though not necessarily those on the fringes. The 2001 US report Youth Violence: A Report of the Surgeon General has in its conclusions:
Risk and Protective Factors (Chapter 4) Major Findings and Conclusions
1) Risk and protective factors exist in every area of life--individual, family, school, peer group, and community. Individual characteristics interact in complex ways with people and conditions in the environment to produce violent behavior.
2) The strongest risk factors during childhood are involvement in serious but not necessarily violent criminal behavior, substance use, being male, physical aggression, low family socioeconomic status or poverty and antisocial parents--all individual or family attributes or conditions.
I want to focus on this parent thing for a moment and draw a parallel with the rhetoric over child abuse (at least that in the UK). To read the UK press you would imagine that the abduction, abuse and murder of children is not only on the increase but prevalent and that abuse and murder is carried out exclusively by people unknown to the children, probably on the fringes of society. Of course the statistics show that these incidences are very rare and have a consistent frequency of about the last 50 years, what’s more the majority of abuse is carried out by patents, relations or others close to the victim.
There are two parallels here with the coverage of video games. Firstly there is what has been selected to be the danger: strangers / video games. In both cases the danger is:
On the other side there is image of parents. This I think raises the most interesting issues. In the areas that I am looking at here parents seems (often implicitly) to be: Secondary victims & Virtuous.
If we focus on parents as the primacy issue in the cause of youth violence / abuse, then we cast the role in a much more ambiguous light. It is the case that the majority of parents are not abusive but admitting them as a primary cause in these minority of incidents makes the role hard to understand, parents become mostly good, possibly problematic.
But would, on the whole, this more nuanced view of parents help in any way?
Can’t one argue that the taking a popular paradigmatic view of the virtuous parent is actually a good as undermining the role of parents would just not be beneficial (just so long as underlying policy is not distorted – which is of course the rub).
Or to put it another way, is it possible to hold on to the ideal view of parents and at the same time not have to seek popular scape-goats?
ren
Posted by: Ren | Feb 18, 2004 at 04:42
Let's consider this from the other side: Assume the research and conclusion in this case is absolutely correct. We'll ignore the ambiguity of the definition of 'violent acts' in children, and ignore the whole nature/nurture/behavioral causality mess. Let's consider that 'violent media causes violence in children' is unarguable fact.
No consider that crime rates (in America at least) have been dropping during the same time frame that video game usage has been skyrocketing (late 90s and on). There does not even appear to be a correlation between the ever-increasing levels of 'violence' in the media and crime rates.
(violent crime by age 1980,1994,2001 - property crime by age 1980,1994,2001 )
So, should we even care if children are 'more violent' -- wrestling and fighting more often? If increases in 'violent acts' by children are not related to increases in criminal acts by those children, or the adults they become, perhaps that's an indication that this study isn't finding anything particularly useful.
If no-one is getting hurt more often and no-one is committing more crime, should these 'violent acts' be a concern?
Posted by: weasel | Feb 18, 2004 at 09:41
My apologies for that second link. Contrary to its label, it's pointing to California aggregate crime rates (1952-2002).
I intended this link in its place.
This corrected link is actually the property crime index by age for 1980, 1994, and 2001.
"No consider that crime rates..." should also have read "Now consider that crime rates...".
I really ought to have had more coffee, and 'previewed'.
Posted by: weasel | Feb 18, 2004 at 09:48
weasel > If no-one is getting hurt more often and no-one is committing more crime, should these 'violent acts' be a concern?
And of course there are cars. You don’t need a mega study or a phd in methodology to show that these cause massive amount of death and suffering. So why is there not a headline every single day in every single developed country saying x people killed by cars. The potential harm that video games cause is obviously not the sole (real?) issue that motivates the headlines or even, one might venture, the research work
Ren
PS Again I point people to Dimitri Williams’s fine work in the area of video games and their press coverage, he outlines a number of ‘frames’ which is a v useful analytical too.
Posted by: Ren | Feb 18, 2004 at 10:41
"But would, on the whole, this more nuanced view of parents help in any way?"
For a start it would be nice if funds/time that are going into video-game regulation/demonizing where put to use in providing parenting classes.
We've all been children, but that didn't grant anyone a child psychology degree and it doesn't imply we got the best parenting models out of our experience.
Posted by: DivineShadow | Feb 18, 2004 at 10:45
Through my wife's scholarly influence I've spent a significant amount of time reading and thinking and theories of family relationships. One thing that strikes me is how much time kids spend learning how to work (reading, counting, all that) and how little time they spend learning how to emote and interact with others (self-awareness, communication, honesty). Huge public investment in work-related human capital, almost none in emotional development-related human capital. Yet we all know that the key to happiness is not wealth but healthy relationships. Seems like a mis-allocation of resources.
Posted by: Edward Castronova | Feb 18, 2004 at 11:30
Dreadfully off-topic, and not (yet) MMOG, but still interesting if others haven't seen it: now your Sims can play SimCity.
http://www.simslice.com/Slicecity.htm
Posted by: Euphrosyne | Feb 18, 2004 at 12:51
More research that will be 'sensationalized' in the media in all likelihood. I agree with the above statements: people need to look not only at the correlaction between violance and videogames, but spend time looking in the mirror, and at human awereness/expression patterns or trends.
This list is just great for identifying potential dissertation topics (as I prepare for my meeting this week ;)
Posted by: Bart | Feb 18, 2004 at 13:38
I think you're being a bit unfair to the authors, Ted. They admit at one point:
Personally, I think if we accept the fact that we can learn from films and games -- if we accept the fact that games can teach and inform -- we must accept the fact that games can influence behavior, statistically speaking, in negative ways.
I'm not arguing we should go easy on parents. I'm not denying that computer games are often made into a scapegoat just like comic books were in the early twentieth century. And I'm not saying violent computer games should be banned (though, via the voluntary rating systems in place, "violent" games are "banned" in a way, aren't they?)
But I do think game designers, like all other artists and authors, have ethical obligations to their audience. I would not be surprised if there were some causative relation between playing agressive games (video or football) and subsequent agressive behavior. I'm not saying there is -- I'm just saying I wouldn't be surprised. (That's probably not the IGDA party line, I guess...)
Based on your own experiences, can't the perceptual mindset associated with acting in a game persist (to at least some degree) after the game is over?
Posted by: greglas | Feb 18, 2004 at 19:52
I've said this elsewhere in more detail, but I think that if we want to claim that games can perform rhetoric or education, as I do, then we have to admit that they might also transfer tendencies toward violence after the game is over. This isn't causative behavior, neccessarily, but it might be contributory.
Posted by: Ian | Feb 18, 2004 at 20:27
Ian,
Playing is a natural a drill for what's coming ahead. It prepares you. You could say I am prepared to jump on top of an ostrich and Joust, as long as it's a joystick-operated ostrich I'll be lethal. Even if I played Quake in an immersive VR simulator, as long as I can tell the difference between fiction and reality I will be able to gauge the consequences of my actions properly and act accordingly. The key here is gauging the impact of your actions and making a decision. A pre-requisite is obviously being able to differentiate the environments, followed by a decision tree that maps to socially-acceptable behaviors. Evidently, if your IQ is that of a rock or the behaviors you learned are misaligned with your society you'll either have trouble separating the environments or will simply respond with the only thing you know. ... I say we rate the *players* against the games, instead of censoring the games themselves to try to fit the general population.
The idea of censorship is a recipie made in hell. It will always fail. There will always be people that get exposed to things they can't handle or do not tolerate and there will always be content censored that is actually suitable for a segment. Social understanding that there is content out there that can actually damage them, paired with a description of the content in media turns the responsibility of actions back to society. Can we handle this responsibility?
Posted by: DivineShadow | Feb 18, 2004 at 21:38
Greg> I think you're being a bit unfair to the authors, Ted. They admit at one point: {snip admission of failure to nail down causality}
Well, my comments were not directly related to these papers, which I still have not read. I was speaking more generally of this literature. That having been said, it doesn't surprise me that (at least) one of the papers in this group is based on spurious correlational data. What surprises me is that they understand this, and admit it no less (!), yet go ahead and write a paper that says nothing. It also surprises me that journals publish this kind of paper, and that people take it seriously.
Greg> Based on your own experiences, can't the perceptual mindset associated with acting in a game persist (to at least some degree) after the game is over?
Yes, of course. Playing games clearly has an impact on the mind, just as reading books does. Go see a live performance of Macbeth or Richard III or Titus Andronicus; prepare to be black-hearted for hours if not days afterwards. I have no doubt that an interactive Richard III would raise aggression as much as Quake does. But the mere fact that a cultural expression induces immediate mental states is a thin reed on which to build broader ethical conclusions. Even if you judge the immediate mental states abhorrent - 'aggressive personality' 'violent attitudes' etc. - you've moved only a tiny step toward addressing the merits of the work in general, for the human person as a whole, and for all humans as a society.
So, while I agree that game designers do bear the burden of producing games that are good for the human person, I also believe in the default ethical claims of neoclassical economics, namely, that if people buy something and say they like it, our first judgment needs to be that it is OK. The burden of proof is on the scientists, to show that a practice that people claim is working well for them is, in fact, something that policy should resist.
This literature offers no such proof. Not even close. My personal experience with games makes me interpret their findings in a completely different causal light, namely, that the after-effects of gaming (including violent impulses of whatever kind) are in fact the result of deep validations and affirmations of the self-worth and resilience of the player. [See Ian's reference to Jones here. Spot on.] These are validations sought in games because they have not been made available outside them. I believe that a properly designed study would show that the coefficient on games in the violence regression, when identified (as in the current literature it is not) would be negative. In other words: once you account for the reverse causality from family and social problems to game interest, you would find that playing games actually reduces, rather than enhances, violent behavior.
It's a personal view, based on my own introspection of what games have meant to me. But my interpretation is thoroughly consistent with the data thus far presented in this literature. Yet it receives no air time at all. I'm passionate about the omission because, frankly, when I think of games being banned, I imagine what my adolescence would have been like without them. And that makes me pretty mad, mad at this influential but terribly incompetent literature, and mad at the self-serving politicians and pundits who will use it to cover up the real reasons why young people are so unhappy and violent.
Posted by: Edward Castronova | Feb 19, 2004 at 01:21
(I just noticed that there is one about Everquest. "Online computer gaming: a comparison of adolescent and adult gamers," M. D. Griffiths, Mark N. O. Davies and Darren Chappell. Not to be flip, but the bottom line seems to be that when you're playing an MMORPG, you could be doing other things.)
Ted> Go see a live performance of Macbeth or Richard III or Titus Andronicus; prepare to be black-hearted for hours if not days afterwards.
I agree completely, and would put games and plays in the same category. But I don't take it that you're saying a playwright has no ethical obligations to the audience.
Ted> I believe that a properly designed study would show that the coefficient on games in the violence regression, when identified (as in the current literature it is not) would be negative.
Are you saying you think violent games are cathartic?
Ted> So, while I agree that game designers do bear the burden of producing games that are good for the human person, I also believe in the default ethical claims of neoclassical economics, namely, that if people buy something and say they like it, our first judgment needs to be that it is OK.
There is a tension between those two statements. If the designer produces something "bad" for the human person, but some segment of the population buys it, does that somehow remove ethical responsibility from the designer? All I'm saying is that the pro-gamer party line can be equally guilty of reflexively crying censorship and disclaiming responsibility for the content of games. As Dennis says over at his blog:
"Is it possible to have discussions of taste and ethics concerning videogames, without either moralizing recklessly, or being recklessly accused of moralizing?" I guess I share that concern. Maybe I'm not cynical enough, but I don't want to paint the whole field of research as incompetent and pursued in bad faith. (It often seems reductively behavioristic to me, but I have a gripe with behaviorism generally.)
All that said, I get your point about the politics.
Posted by: greglas | Feb 19, 2004 at 06:59
Ian, thanks for the book reference. I have not read it yet but it looks interesting.
Representations of violence can certainly be worthwhile. E.g. Hamlet. And aggressive behaviors are not always wrong. Sometime even extremely violent behaviors are not ethically wrong. E.g. soldiers and police officers acting violently with justification.
But Titus Andronicus is simply a gore-fest. What I would like to see is that kind of nuanced reading (for that matter, more reading of any kind) of the messages of games and the stories that they tell. If we can understand how to "read" games, then we can understand how to criticize them and explain the artistic shortcomings of, e.g., Grand Theft Auto in a way that doesn't simply reduce to "violence bad."
(I realize that other people have said this, and you're doing this in posts at WaterCooler, and many other people have been doing this for years.)
Posted by: greglas | Feb 19, 2004 at 07:24
Ted -- We're probably talking past each other to some degree. Here's an excerpt from Chaim Gingold's IGDA column this month:
I don't think I need to explain the nature of my concern over the implications of the argument.
Posted by: greglas | Feb 19, 2004 at 11:03
I'd agree with almost everything said here, except the point that parenting has escaped blame. At least *dual parent families* are seemingly blameless. But pity the poor single mothers- especially of boys. They are single-handedly (pardon the pun) setting their kids up for failure, poor educational achievements, and generally lower life expectations.
On another note, the Anderson piece in the journal is a meta-analysis of research, and points to both causal and correlational studies, and claims that when put together they can reinforce each others' claims. Huh? But more importantly, I don't see anything about the extent of change over time- sure you get excited after playing a game, and imagine yourself zipping through traffic, blowing away the person that cut you off, but does that increase really last a long time? I haven't seen anything that convinces me that even if there is a temporary increase in aggressive thoughts, it translates to something beyond the end of the day, if not the end of the hour. Does anyone else have that info?
Posted by: Mia | Feb 19, 2004 at 16:47
Greg> I just noticed that there is one about Everquest. "Online computer gaming: a comparison of adolescent and adult gamers," M. D. Griffiths, Mark N. O. Davies and Darren Chappell.
I thought their work on EQ ran against the trend. Eariler papers said that MMORPG gaming was not at all like FPS gaming, with animplication that it was actually better from a social perspective.
Greg >But I don't take it that you're saying a playwright has no ethical obligations to the audience.
On the contrary. We agree completely. Playwrights are ethically bound. My point was that one would not evaluate Shakespeare's plays based on a lab study that measures a) an overall inclination to watch Richard III rather than Midsummer's, or b) changes in some aggression metric after watching RIII. That's what we're doing with games. We do the lab study, and then say that (a) itself is a bad behavior anyway, because RIII is obviously violent and bad. Or we do (b) and say that RIII induces violence. I just don't get the leap from the lab results to the broad conclusions. The data just don't support them.
Greg> Are you saying you think violent games are cathartic?
Yeah.
Greg> If the designer produces something "bad" for the human person, but some segment of the population buys it, does that somehow remove ethical responsibility from the designer?
No. I'm a moving target, sorry. I went from ethics (normative analysis in general) to practical policy analysis here. I'm saying that a claim 'videogames are bad' is worthy of debate and argument on its own merits at all times, but that the move from 'videogames are bad' to 'let's ban videogames' implies a different standard. If I claim some practice is a bad thing, yet everyone is doing it, the burden of proof is on me to show what's bad about it, and why it is harmful either to the people doing it or to some abstract moral principle. Videogames are popular; their users show no apparent dissatisfaction with what they are doing. If one is to argue that policy toward videogames ought to become more negative than it is, then one must first establish harm. This lit says it establishes harm, or, at least, that's how the public takes it. But harm is not established. The data are mute.
Greg> All I'm saying is that the pro-gamer party line can be equally guilty of reflexively crying censorship and disclaiming responsibility for the content of games.
It's a matter of competing harms: is it worse to let the content evolve freely, or is it worse to attempt regulation? I think the aesthetic merit of Hollywood films fell when they were forced to impose content controls. So did their ability to comment wisely and openly on the human condition. External controls on expression are very damaging, in my opinion, much more damaging than the exposure effects measured in these studies. Again, take Shakespeare: would a cleaned-up RIII be worth anyone's time? Take out the brutal murder of cousins, siblings, parents, spouses, and children, and the Bard loses much impact. Without his impact, what can Shakespeare do for us? Read through King Lear and dwell on the death of Cordelia. In the late 18th century, the ending was deemed too raw, impossibly harsh, unbearable. They took it out. Dwell on that - ask what we learn about ourselves if Cordelia lives. Actually, what are the chances that we will even think about ourselves at all if Cordelia lives? We need to be beaten about the head and neck with a blunt emotional object in order to think about personal change. Controls on expression mute those effects. Very damaging.
So, don't count me in a group that says designers have no responsibilities at all. They do. But seeking to control their lapses is more damaging than letting them slide.
Posted by: Edward Castronova | Feb 19, 2004 at 18:55
Mia> But pity the poor single mothers- especially of boys.
Agreed. Mother-blaming is rampant. It's especially deplorable when, if anything, its the absent fathers (both inside and outside the home) who deserve most blame. Actually, rather than throwing blame around, we need to get above this and recognize that family structrues are the result of cultural evolution, one that assigns certain offices, with rights and responsibilities to everyone. Our current structures tend to split people apart and assign different duties on the basis of gender and generation. No one is to blame for this, and everyone shares in whatever suffering is caused: the lonely fathers, the overworked mothers, the isolated children.
Mia> I haven't seen anything that convinces me that even if there is a temporary increase in aggressive thoughts, it translates to something beyond the end of the day, if not the end of the hour. Does anyone else have that info?
Nope.
Posted by: Edward Castronova | Feb 19, 2004 at 19:01
It seems like the question comes down to:
Are games -- presumably due to their interactive nature -- somehow able to exert more influence on their players than other forms of media?
Everyone agrees that all forms of media influence people's thoughts and behaviors and that the "games are evil" position papers read remarkably similarly to the "movies are evil" and "TV is evil" papers of 40 and 30 years ago.
So could games possibly exert more influence than orators, books, radio, movies, and TV? Frankly, I can't see how they could. Orators alone were enough to give us the religion, despot and war memes, although books and newspapers certainly helped. Radios, movies, and TV are the primary tools of the multi-zillion (remember, IANAE) dollar advertising business and that certainly modifies behavior regularly. It seems ludicrous at best and disingenuous at worst to claim that games are going to do more damage to humankind than existing media forms. Ted has already pointed out that the perils of censorship have already been judged to be the greater evil for those existing forms, so it doesn't make sense to say that games would need a different standard.
To Greg's excellent points, I agree that it is just as obtuse to claim that games aren't going to have some impact on their players' behaviors. As Aronson's excellent "The Social Animal" goes into in detail, TV and movie images of violence (in particular, sexual violence) have a temporary impact on aggression in the viewers, so discovering a similar effect in games would not be surprising. The ubiquitous "Tipping Point" offers many other examples of the effects of media on behavior. So clearly I, as a game developer, have ethical choices to make whenever I create a game, which seems fine to me.
After all, everyone posting here on TN will potentially be influencing other readers and thus have the same decisions to make.
Posted by: Cory Ondrejka | Feb 19, 2004 at 22:24
I think the conversation on this topic here is awfully one-sided. Over on Digiplay, the entire journal issue was dismissed out of hand, which is really not good for anyone. Ironically, I've been in conversations among social science reearchers where it was one-sided in the other direction.
Let me drop in a few facts here. Mia asks if there is good evidence in longitudinal studies showing a causal link between game play and violence. No, there isn't yet. The only studies I know of that qualify are my own on AC2, which lasted one month and has no effects, and one by Gentile, which I believe is under review. He'll show a link, but without a control group. My study does have one. But unlike many researchers, I'm being careful in my claims. My sample is older and it's just one game.
Now for perspective. Those claiming a link are not suggesting that games lead directly to large violence. What they are claiming is that games are significant predictors. That does not mean that they are substantively large or small in their effects, just that the effect exists. Most of the researchers would say that games don't make anyone kill people at all. It's just that they do in fact have SOME effect on aggression, however small. 100 kids play a game and 100 don't. The ones that do are 3% more likely to hit another kid. Is that large or small? Not the point. For social scientists, the point is usually that the 3% (or whatever) is real.
The Bushman you all see in these studies is Brad Bushman, and he's here at Michigan in my department. When I ask him about this he says, No games didn't cause Columbine, but they do have a significant effect, which he thinks is substantively worth worrying about.
Does the evidence bear Brad out? I don't think it does yet because of the critiques raised here. Those are fair ones, articulated well by Ed and others, and written into my own work.
However, check the logic. It does not mean that there in fact are no effects. It just means that they haven't been tested correctly. We don't really know if they do or don't have effects.
Based on the long history of TV violence studies, I would be very surprised if careful controlled long-term studies of game use did not show a small causal relationship. I was in fact surprised that I didn't get an effect in my study. I'm trying to be careful and make the distinction between the past research's quality and the theoretical likelihood of the phenomenon actually existing.
And lastly, I see no reason why there could not be aggression effects at the same time as Gerard Jones is correct about positive effects. The two could coexist. My guess is that for many games and many types of people, they do.
Posted by: Dmitri Williams | Feb 27, 2004 at 14:20
Everyone interested in this thread would do well to take a close look at Dmitri's dissertation (follow the links from his home page), which weighs in at a mere 300-so pages and contains both an historical and empirical investigation of claims about the social effects of video games. It is an excellent analysis on multiple levels.
Posted by: greglas | Feb 27, 2004 at 15:27
greg>Everyone interested in this thread would do well to take a close look at Dmitri's dissertation
Seconded!
ren
Posted by: ren | Feb 27, 2004 at 18:33
ur wrong.videogame violance really affect kids
Posted by: sam | Apr 19, 2004 at 10:32
as i've read over all the comments here i see a couple of things.
first, i think there can be both positive and negative correlations between video games and violence. i personally, fall on the video games as therapy side of the fence. i often us video games as a vent for frustration and anger. so in my case i would guess that video games go a long way towards reducing my level of violence. in other cases though, i don't see it as too far fetched that someone would be more violent because they played video games.
second, i understand that some of this research claims that video games only have an effect on behavior (albeit small), but the problem is that non-researchers don't pick up on that (or simply choose to ignore that) and then use this type of research as fuel for their causes to censur video games or to use them as a scapegoat.
given these two thoughts i think that it puts the research community in an unfair position. researcher are just researching the cause and effect of a given situation. i don't really think that they are trying to get videogames banned or make them the scapegoat in most instances. other people however, twist the research in such a way as to demonize video games.
Posted by: dave | Apr 19, 2004 at 12:28
Dave -- I agree. I guess what Ted is primarily angry about is the "other people" and the real or potential presence of "spurious correlational data" in research conclusions.
Posted by: greglas | Apr 19, 2004 at 12:46
Video Game do not! they help develop shillz like hand-eye-quardnation and lightning reflexes! and look at Dance-Dance-Revolution!
Posted by: Shinobu | Apr 28, 2004 at 11:05
"Now, why would everyone be so accepting of one causal interpretation of these data points and not the other? Fact is, contemporary society is extraordinarily unwilling to consider the secondary causal line. No, no, no, it can't be parents. No. Parents are fine. It's the kids who are broken, not the parents, not the marriages. It's the kids and their darned videogames. Well, the literature, as currently focused will never produce anything to challenge this view. It will just keep finding a videogame/violence correlation. Over and over. And parents and governments will continue to avoid looking in the mirror, where the real problem lies."
I can not agree more with this ^_^
Posted by: Twilight Aura | Apr 28, 2004 at 11:11
I'm tired of seeing Columbine blamed on video games -.-
Posted by: Twilight Aura | Apr 28, 2004 at 11:56
Let’s ban all media that's not shiny, happy, and "family safe fun"! Why should parents be forced to raise their own children? All we have to do is eliminate the first amendment and put bags over the ugliness of reality to have the media raise our children for us!
Why should I have to know what's going on in my child’s life, pay attention to my child’s mental well being, or help instruct them on the differences between fantasy and reality or right and wrong?
I mean it's so obvious that video games make kids violent just like being born in the ghetto automatically makes you a criminal and looking at porn automatically makes you a rapist. It's basic logic!
And I mean it's not like there was any violence in schools before video games was there? I'm sure back then all kids were well adjusted and never knifed each other in the hallways or went on interstate killing sprees or sat in clock towers with sniper rifles...
I mean look at the parts of the world where video games are rare... 3rd world countries aren't violent places are they?
Now that we've settled that let's get back to doing something about that awful Dihydrogen Oxide stuff... I hear that stuff carries disease, corrodes metal, can destroy natural rock formations, and can be fatal if breathed... and this stuff falls out of the sky on a semi-regular basis!!!
Posted by: Sourtone | Apr 28, 2004 at 15:45
What do you have against video games? Parents can still spend time with their children, what makes you think they aren't?
Posted by: Twilight Aura | Jun 03, 2004 at 14:42
Yes but video games do teach human communication as in MMORPGS. And most people complain that games are too unrealistic, they try to add more detail such as reasoning and morals.
I also see as a gamer a very strong correlation to those that use game sharks or other cheat devices to run around pointlessly killing or doing other violent acts in video games without consenquences... Which does get very boring after some time.
Also yes I definately agree those that are violent, sad, happy or whatever emotion try to express it at the time in their choice of video games, books, location, etc. Why not do a test study on how many people are sad in church or at family gatherings? oh yes would definately be high then. But no.. everyone seems as if that crosses some sort of imaginary boundary.
For most video games is an escape from reality like what they were meant for, therefor yes some do get extremely violent when that world is destroyed/taken away/demonted by censorship. Look at the thousands of little pixelated people you slaughter daily when you disallow the selling of games all because you are a censorship jerk.
Posted by: Garold | May 08, 2005 at 20:30
I think it all has to do with who is playing the game, how old that person is, how they deal with things, and what game they're playing. It's all a matter of the mind.
Posted by: jane | Oct 04, 2005 at 18:41
Make no mistake, I am not a fan of the anti-violent computer game lobby. I think the issue is stupid and distracts from the real negative impacts of computer games that warrant more attention than inconclusive correlations under laboratory conditions. Two of those other negative impacts effects me as a soldier and leader.
The bottom line is, as I trained soldiers for the Army, as a company commander at Ft. Leonard Wood, the questionable link between computer games and violence was the least of my problems. More of a problem was explaining to soldiers that they needed to disregard unrealistic things they had learned about violence:
that your bullets could not hurt your friends, only enemy bullets can;
that assault rifle bullets are "wimpy" and will bounce off your "armor" unless someone unloads a whole clip into you;
that sniper rounds leave visible traces that hang in the air so you can find the sniper;
that grenades stick to targets and only roll if they hit the ground;
that one person can flip a humvee over if it rolls;
that you can swim quicky and effectively in combat gear;
that one person can carry a rocket launcher and six reloads single handedly....
The list goes on. Having played 100's of hours in unrealistic virtual environments, many of these young men and women have ideas that would simply get them and others killed. Now THAT is a problem. A generation ago we merely had to unlearn what kids learned with "cowboys and indians." Now we have to "unlearn" 100's of hours that some kids spend in simulations. A much taller order.
I for one would favor more realistic violence, one that showed the actual impact of battlefield injuries and soberly depicted realistic combat mechanics. Both could serve to prompt reflection about when and where justifiable force should be used, and how mortal we all become when the air is filled with lead and lasers. If we mixed some virtual civilians in these worlds, such games could also teach us all about why civilian casualties happen even when soldiers are doing their best (which, admittedly, they don't always do because of combat stressors or failed leadership). If virtual civilians make us collectively more reflective about when we let slip the dogs of war, that's a good thing.
Having said that, there's another problem created by these games. These kids coming into the Army are obese and often have never even played a sport. They have well developed "nintendo thumbs", however. Training them physically to combat standards is very challenging: stress injuries from training that a generation ago hurt very few soldiers are now the rule.
I think that these games are much more likely to get a young American killed than cause a young American to kill. At least in the Army, most recruits seem reflective or even remorseful when in training simulations they shoot a civilian or an enemy attempting to surrender. I've had my share of them break down in tears. And these are the kids who signed up to be soldiers.
My request? More violence with more realism, please, or take these games off the market altogether so that recruits don't think that HALO has taught them all they need to know about the battlefield. The outcomes of excessive gaming make it hard to keep these kids alive, hard to teach them to control their volume and direction of fire, and physically unfit, to boot.
Samuel
Posted by: Samuel | Jun 13, 2006 at 16:59