New Study Questions Entire Violent Videogame Debate

[Andy Chalk]

New Study Questions Entire Violent Videogame Debate

A new study out of Sweden suggests that the entire basis for the debate over the impact of violent videogames may be flawed.

Arguments about the influence of violent videogames on violent behavior in the real world have raged back and forth for years, with scientists of various stripes telling us alternately that games with guns will turn us into homicidal maniacs or prove the safe outlet that will keep it from happening. But after spending hundreds of hours playing and watching others play online, a research team from the University of Gothenberg in Sweden says the very validity of the question may be in doubt.

In a study entitled "How Gamers Manage Aggression: Situating Skills in Collaborative Computer Games," researchers looked at team-based online games which "call for sophisticated and well-coordinated collaboration" in order to succeed and the people who play them. As it turns out, good players are "strategic and technically knowledgeable," while the jerks, including those who tend to behave overtly aggressively or emotionally, tend to suck. In other words, they make poor gamers.

"The suggested link between games and aggression is based on the notion of transfer, which means that knowledge gained in a certain situation can be used in an entirely different context. The whole idea of transfer has been central in education research for a very long time. The question of how a learning situation should be designed in order for learners to be able to use the learned material in real life is very difficult, and has no clear answers," said researcher Jonas Ivarsson. "In a nutshell, we're questioning the whole gaming and violence debate, since it's not based on a real problem but rather on some hypothetical reasoning."

It's hard not to notice that despite occasional outbursts of hysteria, the rise of videogaming as a mainstream pastime hasn't seen a corresponding rise in violent crime, particular among youth. There may be "no clear answers," but could it be that we've been asking the wrong questions all along?

Source: Science Daily [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120402112828.htm]


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[-Dragmire-]

Maybe this will change the question to "does violent games make gamers into strategic jerks rather than outspoken ones?".

All joking aside, it's an interesting point to consider. Though I still don't believe that all gamers deal with aggressive, violent content the same way so any study that tries to say how violent games affect everyone is flawed in itself.

 

[pandorum]

As always the sheep of the masses will always blame what they do not understand and it will always come down to bad parenting but nobody wants to blame the parents.

 

[Andronicus]

I don't understand. Either this is missing the entire point of the argument, or I've been wrong about it the whole time. I always thought the argument was about whether or not violent videogames desensitises people (especially children) to violence, such that they consider violence to be a reasonable solution to a problem, and won't be traumatised by their actions (eg. a kid is being bullied by another kid, so they find weapon and attempt to bash the bully's head in, without remorse).

This study basically just suggests a correlation between gaming skill and aggressiveness, and questions the concept of transfer of skills from gaming to real life, which is still an interesting subject of course, and relevant to the issue, but isn't the core of the issue, insofar as I can tell. Am I wrong?

 

[Baresark]

A single new study doesn't prove/disprove anything. It makes me insane how people think a single study means anything. Just like a single study never proved a link between violent videogames and violence in real life, this study doesn't disprove it either.

 

[Luca72]

So the study is saying that rather than video games having a marked effect on your personality in the real world, your real world tendencies are more likely to have an effect on how you play the game. That seems about right.

Alternatively we could just wait another few years until the media gets bored of video games as a scapegoat for violence and decides to blame hacky sacks or something.

 

[Therumancer]

Well, there is a problem with this study in terms of "playing the system, rather than the game" which is frequently an issue with a lot of team based games. I think that emotion and aggression tends to be an advantage on an individual level, where the more laid back "technical" approach works better in a team enviroment where it becomes more about the underlying mechanics than any real personal abillity. 4 guys working in coordination being able to overcome a single opponent, no matter how skilled in the general mechanics, because the game is designed that way.

Hence why you have "call outs" for duels in MMORPGs or various small scale deathmatches between players with some frequency, which don't always wind up favoring the guy who dominates in a team enviroment.

I guess it comes down to the differance between a warrior, and a soldier. Warriors are far, far better fighters and better at a lot more things, soldiers are far less skilled but can overcome warriors through teamwork (even in large numbers) and are comparitively easier to train. The quintessential example being how the Romans were able to wipe out fierce barbarian warriors who outnumbered them using what amounted to poorly trained conscripts in some cases (the legions and such being an exception, but it wasn't always the legions doing the fighting) simply by being able to drill people fairly rapidly in making Phalanxs, Shield Walls, and employing other group tactics which required very little in the way of individual skill or martial knowlege comparitively. 20 guys working on cocert the right way can form a barrier that a hundred guys who are all tougher but fighting as individuals aren't going to be able to break (at least not easily).

Not a perfect analogy, but the point is that I think it scews the entire arguement away from aggressive behavior, and more into a simple understandind of how coordinated behavior trumps individual heroics in most cases... something we've known for thousands of years.

It's also why I've been a big believer that in games that reward team tactics, there needs to be seperate queues for solo players and coordinated groups that queue together for things to remain fun for everyone involved... but that's a whole differant discussion.

 

[Kinguendo]

Well, we would need to determine what they consider strategic and technically knowledgable... because there are incredibly aggressive individuals who consider glitching to be "strategic" actions and when you question their methods you immediately get abuse.

So is their clarification on what they consider to be strategic?

 

[Kopikatsu]

Eh. People in my college class were complaining that Hunger Games wasn't as gory and violent as the trailers made it out to be, and some of them even asked their money back because of it. These are people that have never touched a video game in their lives.

So yeah. I think it's more of a socialial thing.

 

[Lucem712]

Alternatively we could just wait another few years until the media gets bored of video games as a scapegoat for violence and decides to blame hacky sacks or something.

THOSE DAMN HACKEY SACKS, They are ruinin' our youth! Someone think of the children!

 

[Al-Bundy-da-G]

As always the sheep of the masses will always blame what they do not understand and it will always come down to bad parenting but nobody wants to blame the parents.

We all know it's the parents but the politicians won't call them out on it because the don't want to lose the vote come election season.

 

[razer17]

A single new study doesn't prove/disprove anything. It makes me insane how people think a single study means anything. Just like a single study never proved a link between violent videogames and violence in real life, this study doesn't disprove it either.

This is exactly right. Especially in psychological research, which is usually a lot less definite than the "hard" sciences. This is why they keep making these studies, if a study was definite there would be no need to keep questioning if videogames affect violent behaviour.

My dissertation project found that oppenness to experience and neuroticism affected levels of immersion into videogames, but I'm not about to claim that that proves anything (ignoring that I doubt my dissertation is quite as vigorously tested as a proper journal article).

 

[The White Hunter]

As always the sheep of the masses will always blame what they do not understand and it will always come down to bad parenting but nobody wants to blame the parents.

I frequently blame the parents, as I said on the teachers story a week ago or so: it's the parents, if a game has a red circle that says "18" on it, and the back says scenes of horrofic violence, explicit sexual content, or whatever, then it is not for children.

Call of Duty Black Ops is not appropriate for children, otherwise the whole debate is and always has been rather stupid.

 

[Danny Ocean]

I personally think that the only link between violence and videogames is how irritable I get when interrupted, *right after* playing a tense one, and if I'm sucking.

Perhaps staying up all the time playing them could make me more angry due to sleep loss messing up my internals.

 

[webkilla]

A single new study doesn't prove/disprove anything. It makes me insane how people think a single study means anything. Just like a single study never proved a link between violent videogames and violence in real life, this study doesn't disprove it either.

A single study doesn't prove anything?

Actually, a single study can prove quite a lot - as long as its experiments were thorough and well documented.


Plus, speaking as someone with a master in science and a grad thesis on internet culture and norm-formation, then I whole support this study: My own work indicates that people who run around online are quite able to differentiate between what is appropriate to do IRL and what you can get away with online. I would honestly expect the same to apply for gaming: Both are virtual environments, albeit by different standards of course.

Still, its nice to get something to throw back at anyone who cry bloody murder about violent videogames.

 

[The Lugz]

SSShhhh!! quit giving away secrets!

being calm and letting people rage wins me so-many games, it's actually quite funny sometimes the situations people get themselves into

also i think these study's tend to mistake sudden releases of emotion as violence / anger when it is not always intended that way

people do tend to bottle up emotions and strain themselves when doing something difficult or complicated