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Call of Duty: WWII

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Why Is War & Violence A Major Part of Video Games?

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Bloodborne

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Detroit: Become Human

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Despite what much of the mainstream media would have you believe, a new study has shown that playing violent video games does not turn you into some kind of deranged psychopath.

With more and more scientific studies examining the effects of video games on people, it's becoming clear that gaming is not only cognitively beneficial but has no long-term detrimental effects in regards to a gamer's empathy.

In a recent study published in Frontiers in Psychology, Dr. Gregor Szycik and his staff of the Hannover Medical School examined the brains of long term gamers and non-gamers with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

They saw that when both groups were exposed to emotionally provocative imagery that they reacted the same way, showing that playing games doesn't numb a gamer's empathy. In short, playing violent video games doesn't desensitize you long term in regards to similarly violent real world acts.

What's more, the gamers were ordered to not play any video games at least three hours before the test, though some exceeded this duration. This in turn focused the study on the long term effects of violent video games, which is something that has been an ongoing point of contention.

In any case, this is an interesting new study and one that confirms what most gamers already knew. In that, playing Call of Duty for extended periods doesn't turn you into some kind of bloodthirsty murderer.

What with the proven cognitive benefits of playing video games, this new study yet again shows that video games are innocent of anything culturally untoward.

However, I wouldn't expect the mainstream media to acknowledge any of this. In their eyes, video games are competition and therefore evil. So they'll be grasping at any excuses they can find to demonize gaming, whether they are true or not.
Follow me on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. I also manage Mecha Damashii and do toy reviews over at hobbylink.tv. Read my Forbes blog here.
I cover gaming in Japan as well the pop-culture here. You can follow me on Twitter, Facebook or check out my YouTube videos. I also founded and continue to manage the mecha gaming site, Mecha Damashii. I have over a decade's worth of games industry experience, having worked...

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New Study Shows That Playing Violent Video Games Does Not Turn You Into A Psychopath

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Despite what much of the mainstream media would have you believe, a new study has shown that playing violent video games does not turn you into some kind of deranged psychopath. With more and more scientific studies examining the effects of video games on people, it's becoming clear that gaming is not only cognitively beneficial but has no long-term detrimental effects in regards to a gamer's empathy.

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With the increase of video games, a lot of people wonder whether or not they influence today's youth. Especially with the rise of violent games such as Call of Duty(2003-2018), Bloodborne(2015), and Detroit: Become Human(2018), many question if violence in video games translates to a rise of violence in the next generation. Does it?
In my opinion, I don't think it does. Many studies have shown that violence in video games does not affect today's youth. The way that they respond to violent scenarios in media drastically differs from the way they respond to a violent scenario in real life. To quote Forbes: "In that, playing Call of Duty for extended periods doesn’t turn you into some kind of bloodthirsty murderer." Instead, research has shown that teens who play video games (in general, video games- not just the violent ones) develop some areas of their brain more.
I think the reason many people think that video games make teens more violent is because the media publishes articles about violent gamers more often. Negative articles attract more attention.
In general, video games or any other art form have to have conflict. Conflict is a human nature. Video games offer a player a chance to practice conflict in a safe space with no repercussions.  Video games don't turn people into bloodthirsty wolves.

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By Randy Dotinga

HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, March 8, 2017 (HealthDay News) -- Young men who play violent video games the most -- at least two hours a day -- don't appear to become desensitized to violence or to lose the ability to feel empathy, a small German study suggests.

"This doesn't mean everyone has to buy 'Grand Theft Auto 5' for their toddler, but it's part of an increasing flood of studies of various sorts that indicate that previous fears of violent video games were unfounded," said Christopher Ferguson, a leading critic of research linking video games to aggression.

Scientists have spent years debating whether violent video games make people more aggressive and less affected by violence. But it has been difficult to isolate the specific effect of playing the games since so many other things affect how people see the world.

Still, "over the last 10 years we've really seen a wave of behavioral studies indicating that violent video games are not associated with behavioral problems in players," said Ferguson, who wasn't involved in the study. He's a professor of psychology at Stetson University in DeLand, Fla.

In the new study, German researchers recruited 15 young men (average age 23) who've played games such as "Counterstrike," "Call of Duty" and "Battlefield" for at least two hours a day for four years or more.

On average, the gamers played four hours a day. They began playing video games at an average age of 13 years old.

The researchers compared them to another group of similarly aged young men who didn't play video games daily, and said they hadn't played violent video games.

The study volunteers underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans as they looked at drawings depicting neutral scenes or violent scenes. This technology allows researchers to see which parts of the brain become active during a task.

The violent scenes the study volunteers looked at included drawings of a woman setting herself on fire and a man being waterboarded. The volunteers were told to imagine how they'd feel in the situation depicted in the drawings.

Continued

Based on their responses to questionnaires, the video game players appeared be more anti-social, the researchers found. But they didn't appear to have any less empathy or more aggression than the other young men.

The researchers also reported that players showed no signs of being desensitized to violence, at least judging by how their brains reacted to the drawings.

"The brains of violent video game users and normal control subjects seem to process the material in the same way," said study lead author Gregor Szycik. He's a lecturer in the Department of Psychiatry at Hannover Medical School in Germany.

Szycik acknowledged that the study doesn't say anything about how the participants would react to real-life violence. So it's not clear if heavy video game players would do anything differently if, say, someone was shot in front of them.

Dr. Claire McCarthy is an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School who works with children. She said the findings should be viewed with caution because the study is small and doesn't look at real-life situations.

McCarthy argued that it may be impossible to ever fully understand the effects of video games, and has suggested that parents still make sure their kids get time away from screens.

Parents may find it hard to believe that repeatedly playing violent video games might not make users more aggressive. But Ferguson said it may be because -- as new brain research is suggesting -- "our brains seem to treat fictional media and real-life events quite differently. We really need to retool our theories of media consumption to take account for the increasing evidence that our brains employ 'fiction detectors' that cause us to respond very differently to fictional media than real-life events."

Ferguson suggested that "we can relax a bit on the issue of violent video games" in the light of historically low youth violence and recent research into the brains and behavior of players.

The new study appears March 8 in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.

WebMD News from HealthDay

Sources

SOURCES: Gregor Szycik, Dr. rer. nat., lecturer, Department of Psychiatry, Hannover Medical School, Germany; Christopher Ferguson, Ph.D., professor, psychology, Stetson University, DeLand, Fla.; Claire McCarthy, M.D., assistant professor, Harvard Medical School; March 8, 2017, Frontiers in Psychology

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Violent Video Games May Not 'Desensitize' Players

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By Randy Dotinga HealthDay Reporter WEDNESDAY, March 8, 2017 (HealthDay News) -- Young men who play violent video games the most -- at least two hours a day -- don't appear to become desensitized to violence or to lose the ability to feel empathy, a small German study suggests.

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(Image: Getty)

It's a topic that has been widely debated amongst the scientific community - do violent video games make players more aggressive in real life?

Now, scientists from the University of York claim that they have found no evidence to support this link.

In a series of experiments with more than 3,000 participants, the researchers showed that video games don't 'prime' players to behave in certain ways.

In one study, participants played a game where they had to either be a car avoiding collisions, or a mouse avoiding being caught by a cat.

After the game, the players were shown images, such as a bus or a dog, and asked to label them as either a vehicle or an animal.

Dr David Pendle, who worked on the study, said: "If players are 'primed' through immersing themselves in the concepts of the game, they should be able to categorise the objects associated with this game more quickly in the real world once the game had concluded.

"Across the two games we didn't find this to be the case. Participants who played a car-themed game were no quicker at categorising vehicle images, and indeed in some cases their reaction time was significantly slower."

In another study, participants were asked to play two combat games - one that had realistic characters, and one that did not.

Following the game, players were asked to complete a word-association puzzle.

While the researchers expected participants who had played the realistic game to choose more violent word associations, this wasn't the case.

Dr Pendle said: "We found that the priming of violent concepts, as measured by how many violent concepts appeared in the word fragment completion task, was not detectable.

"The findings suggest that there is no link between these kinds of realism in games and the kind of effects that video games are commonly thought to have on their players."

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Violent video games DO NOT make players more aggressive in real life

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It's a topic that has been widely debated amongst the scientific community - do violent video games make players more aggressive in real life? Now, scientists from the University of York claim that they have found no evidence to support this link.

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Key points

There is no solid, irrefutable evidence that violent video games lead to aggressive behavior.

Many violent video games are scary and inappropriate for some kids.

Understanding each child's needs and creating a plan that sets out rules for usage is a sensible way to approach video games.

If you know a tween, teenager, or avid gamer, you have probably heard about the latest video game phenomenon: Fortnite. In the game's Battle Royale mode, up to 100 players parachute into a small island, scavenge for armor and weapons, and then kill or hide from other players in an attempt to be the lone survivor. The game's cartoonish violence and quirky features-including costumes and custom dance moves-have attracted more than 125 million players across all the globe since its release last September.

While not overly gory, the premise for Fortnite is inherently violent; the primary goal is to kill other players. The popularity of these types of games, and this one in particular, raises clear questions about the effects of violent gaming. Specifically, do violent video games lead to real-life violence?

The research on this question is mixed. For decades, researchers have conducted studies to find out whether violent video games lead to problems such as aggression, lack of empathy, and poor performance in school. Many studies have found that people who play violent video games are more likely to engage in aggressive behavior. In fact, there was enough research leading to this conclusion that the American Psychological Association (APA) published a policy statement in 2015 concluding that playing violent video games leads to more aggressive moods and behaviors and detracts from the players' feeling of empathy and sensitivity to aggression.

But a large contingent of researchers focused on pediatric and adolescent health disagree. In fact, a group of 230 scholars from universities across the globe published an open letter in 2013 calling the APA's stance on violent video games "misleading and alarmist." And many of those same scholars spoke out after the 2015 policy statement.

Last summer, a division within the APA focused on the media published their own statement advising government officials and the news media to avoid attributing acts of violence to video games or other violent media. Here's why:

Large analyses of violent crime and video violent game use find no evidence that increased sales of violent video games lead to a spike in violent crimes. Researchers make the case that if violent games directly led to violent behavior, the data would show increases in violent crime on a large scale as more people played violent games. In fact, there is some evidence that as more youth play video games, rates of youth violence have decreased.

A recent analysis finds that research on video games is prone to false positives and false negatives, which leads to faulty conclusions.

Another review finds that much of the research on violence and video games is affected by publication bias; essentially, studies that concluded that video games lead to aggression and violence are more likely to be published than studies that find violent video games don't have an effect on violence. As a result, large reviews of the data conclude violent video games lead to aggression without considering research to the contrary.

There is emerging research that finds no link between violent games and negative outcomes, such as reduced empathy, aggression, and depression.

That's a lot of conflicting perspectives, so what's the take-home message here? First, there is no solid, irrefutable evidence that violent video games lead to aggressive behavior. That does not mean that every game is for every child. Certainly, many violent video games are scary and inappropriate for some kids. Understanding each child's needs and creating a plan that sets out rules for media use and monitors kids' activities on screens is a sensible way to approach video games.
Please visit Cornell University's Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research's website for more information on our work solving human problems. LinkedIn Image Credit: Littlekidmoment/Shutterstock

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Do Violent Video Games Make Kids More Violent?

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Research explains they may not be as destructive as we think.