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Video Games May Be Perverse, but They're Also Pretend - NYTimes.com

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Video Games May Be Perverse, but They're Also Pretend - NYTimes.com

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Teenage boys may be more interested in the chain saws, but there's no evidence that this leads to violent behavior in real life. F.B.I. data shows that youth violence continues to decline; it is now at its lowest rate in years, while bullying appears to be stable or decreasing.

This certainly does not prove that video games are harmless. The violent games most often played by young teens, like most of the Grand Theft Auto series, are rated M, for players 17 and older, for a reason and do merit parental supervision.

But despite parents' worst fears, violence in video games may be less harmful than violence in movies or on the evening news. It does seem reasonable that virtually acting out a murder is worse than watching one. But there is no research supporting this, and one could just as easily argue that interactivity makes games less harmful: the player controls the action, and can stop playing if he feels overwhelmed or upset. And there is much better evidence to support psychological harm from exposure to violence on TV news.

In fact, such games (in moderation) may actually have some positive effects on developing minds.

As the court opinion notes, traditional fairy tales are chock-full of violence; a child experiences and learns to manage fears from the safety of Mom or Dad's lap. Similarly, a teen can try out different identities - how it feels to be a hero, a trickster, a feared or scorned killer, or someone of a different age or sex - in the safe fantasy world of a video game.

In the end, the most harmful assumption in the California law is that we know enough about the effects of video games to recommend policy solutions. (I was one of dozens of advisers for a supporting brief filed by those who challenged the law.) Almost no studies of video games and youth have been designed with policy in mind. If we want to mitigate risks of harm to our children (or the risk that our children will harm others), we need research on the specific effects of the most commonly played violent games, and of playing violent games in social groups.

We know virtually nothing, for instance, about how youths who are already prone to violent behavior, such as those exposed to violence at home and in their neighborhoods, use these games. Do they play them differently from the way other children do? Do they react differently? And if so, how might we limit the risks involved?

We need to reframe our view of video games. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. concurred with the majority's opinion, but with some reservations: "We should take into account the possibility that developing technology may have important societal implications that will become apparent only with time," Justice Alito wrote. This is excellent advice, but only if we are willing to consider that video games may have potential benefits as well as potential risks.

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Opinion | Video Games May Be Perverse, but They're Also Pretend

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Teenage boys may be more interested in the chain saws, but there's no evidence that this leads to violent behavior in real life. F.B.I. data shows that youth violence continues to decline; it is now at its lowest rate in years, while bullying appears to be stable or decreasing.

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It's Not The Video Games That Are Making You Angry, You're Just Bad At Them

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It's Not The Video Games That Are Making You Angry, You're Just Bad At Them

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Grand Theft Auto. Call of Duty. God of War. These ultra-violent video and computer games get a bad rap for their bloody battle scenes and disturbing player missions, as concerned parents and media experts fear that the gory screen imagery could translate into real-world violence.

But according to a new study by researchers at the University of Rochester in New York, even a seemingly benign game like Tetris can leave players with feelings of post-game aggression. The findings were published online in the March edition of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

"People think just watching violent games and imagery is the basis for post-game aggression," said University of Rochester psychology professor Richard Ryan, Ph.D., in a phone interview with the Huffington Post. "But as we studied it, there are other dynamics: the competitiveness in games, the frustration you can have about [failing to] master it. Those are the things that seem to be most associated with post-game aggression."

Ryan conducted a series of seven experiments with almost 600 college-age participants, who were tested for levels of aggression after playing certain video games. The experiments varied in structure and tested participants' aggression levels after playing either violent or nonviolent games, or the same game made either violent or nonviolent. But they were also tested after playing a non-violent puzzle game (Tetris) that had been manipulated so that players either used an intuitive, easy-to-understand controller or an overly difficult, confusing controller.

The image above shoes how controllers were configured to be either intuitive or difficult to learn for Tetris games.

Ryan found that if the game was too difficult to master, or if the poorly designed game left a player feeling frustrated, the study participants were more likely to exhibit higher levels of post-game aggression, no matter what the content of the actual game was. In one particular experiment, participants were asked to keep one hand in ice-cold water for 25 seconds (a painful experience), and they were told that the previous participant had assigned them that length of time. They were then asked to play Tetris with either a simple or a difficult controller. After the game was over, they were asked to assign the next participant a certain amount of time to submerge their hand in the ice-cold water.

Participants who played the frustrating game of Tetris assigned the next players an average of 10 seconds more of chilled water time than the participants who played the simple Tetris game. In other words, participants who had left Tetris feeling frustrated wanted the subsequent player to suffer more.

"One of the basic sources of anger is frustration in video games of all sorts, whether you're playing Angry Birds or World of Warcraft," Ryan concluded.

Iowa State University media and child development expert Douglas Gentile, Ph.D., who was not involved in the study, praised Ryan's experiments for showing that the need to feel mastery or competency is a vital one -- and frustrating those needs can be deeply upsetting for players.

Ryan's experiments only assessed the short-term effects of video games and the potential for minor acts of aggression after playing -- which means these games aren't necessarily an indicator of serious violent acts in the long-term. Gentile, who also studies the effects that video games have on real-world actions, published a study last month that examined the long-term effects that violent games can have on children.

He found that while there was no direct causal effect between violent video games and real-word violence years later, repeated violent gaming seemed to shape the way children thought about the world. For instance, Gentile found that children who played violent games sometimes started to think more aggressively about their surroundings over time -- like being hyper-vigilant for enemies or thinking it's OK to respond aggressively to provocation.

Still, Gentile cautioned against the conclusion that violent video games are a major risk factor for physical aggression.

"Violent video games are just one risk factor. They're not the biggest, and they're not the smallest," said Gentile. "They're right in the middle, with kind of the same effect size as coming from a broken home."

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It's Not The Video Games That Are Making You Angry, You're Just Bad At Them

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Grand Theft Auto. Call of Duty. God of War. These ultra-violent video and computer games get a bad rap for their bloody battle scenes and disturbing player missions, as concerned parents and media experts fear that the gory screen imagery could translate into real-world violence.

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Bias and Violence in Video Games - NYTimes.com

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Bias and Violence in Video Games - NYTimes.com

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It is unacceptable that Anita Sarkeesian, a cultural critic, and others who express the view that video games are disrespectful to women are being targeted for verbal and physical harassment, even rape and death (" Feminist Critics of Video Games Facing Threats," front page, Oct. 16).

There is no reason video games cannot become a safe and enjoyable environment for women, or for people of color, those with disabilities and those from any other underserved community. In fact, the "GamerGate" controversy should serve as a call to action. Game makers and fans alike should question and rethink what has seemingly become the norm in gender and racial representation in games.

The rise of empathy games that deal with issues universal to the human experience - such as "Papo & Yo," based on my own real life as a survivor of an alcoholic and abusive father; "That Dragon, Cancer," about a boy suffering from terminal cancer; and "Depression Quest," in which the main character deals with depression - demonstrates that the climate is ripe for companies to create games that are more diversified and inclusive of the gender, racial and ability spectrum.

This doesn't mean that the market for games we grew up with will diminish. It will simply mean a broader variety.

VANDER CABALLERO
Montreal, Oct. 17, 2014
The writer is founder and chief executive of Minority Media. To the Editor:
While I was glad to see the serious issue of the threats against Anita Sarkeesian being given front-page attention, I am troubled by the description of the "GamerGate" crowd. To suggest that "Gaters" are primarily concerned with "ethical problems among game journalists and political correctness in their coverage" gives this so-called "movement" far more credibility than it deserves.

The absolute, sole purpose from Day 1 of the people organizing under "GamerGate" has been to threaten, intimidate and very possibly harm a select group of women. This is an example of a mob using the flimsiest of cover stories to justify its horrific actions. It has never been about ethics or integrity.

JOSHUA ESCHEN
Lawrence Township, N.J., Oct. 17, 2014
To the Editor:
GamerGate has turned into "Lord of the Flies." A gang of boys has gone brutal. They are confirming parents' worst fears about gaming: that it grooms boys for violence, especially violence against women.

Some gaming industry leaders are silent when they could be explaining how they are going to tame, or turn around, cultures of racism and misogyny. One consumer response is to boycott games and publishers whose games promote deviance, hate and violence. Since the boys have parents, and half of gamers are women, they can "just say no."

The gaming industry needs to step up and admit there is a problem, assimilate the research and design games for civilized play.

RUTA SEVO
Burke, Va., Oct. 17, 2014
The writer is a retired senior program officer for Research on Gender in Science and Engineering at the National Science Foundation.

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Opinion | Bias and Violence in Video Games

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It is unacceptable that Anita Sarkeesian, a cultural critic, and others who express the view that video games are disrespectful to women are being targeted for verbal and physical harassment, even rape and death (" Feminist Critics of Video Games Facing Threats," front page, Oct. 16).

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Violent Video Games Don't Exist | Christopher J. Ferguson

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Violent Video Games Don't Exist | Christopher J. Ferguson

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Violent video games don't exist -- in fact, nor do nonviolent video games. That latter point may actually be easier to demonstrate. Given the way the term "violent video games" is defined in the scholarly community, almost all video games are violent video games, including Pac-Man, as a scholar had to admit in one recent court case. My point is that the concept of "violent video games," which society has been debating as long as video games have been around (yes, politicians and scholars once seriously worried over the impact of games like Pac-Man, Centipede and Zaxxon), is so vague that it has little real meaning.

We'd all agree that a game such as Grand Theft Auto 5 is a violent video game, but where exactly do we draw the line between violent and nonviolent games? What about a game like Starcraft, which is mainly a strategy game? Or my son's current favorite video game, Lego Marvel Super Heroes, which involves gruesome (kidding) Lego deaths? If we play competitively in free play, trying to zap each other, is this more violent than following the story narrative? Or was that line between violent and nonviolent crossed long ago with Pac-Man, Centipede, Zaxxon and other "violent" games of the 1980s?

This issue of exactly what is a violent video game (along with the poor quality of much of the research) bedeviled the U.S. Supreme Court in its 2011Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association decision. As became apparent in that case (and in cases before it), much of the scholarly community has come to consider media violence an all-encompassing whole, such that a picture of a gun is as likely to increase aggression as is a violent video game. Much time has been spent debating the merits of the aggression measures used in this research (and see the Supreme Court's majority reaction to them, which was less-than-impressed, to say the least), but the vagueness of the term "violent video game" (or "media violence," for that matter) is also problematic for how the construct is measured in research. Many studies continue to settle for dubious approaches, such as allowing kids to rate how violent the games they play are, then asking them how aggressive they are, an approach that can cause spurious correlations. Other surveys assume that entire genres of games can be reliably scored as violent or nonviolent without even knowing the individual game titles.

Perhaps we might consider M-rated games as the really violent video games (ignoring that whole theoretical bit about how any game violence, or even looking at a picture of a gun, is bad). But here too, a game such as Bioshock Infinite is very different from one such as Grand Theft Auto 5, which is very different from one such as The Walking Dead. The game narratives and the context in which violence occurs are very different. So does the concept of "violent video game" have any meaning at all? If Pac-Man is a violent video game just as Grand Theft Auto 5 is a violent video game, the whole concept is absurd. When we use the term "violent video game," we make an assumption that all games that contain any violent content, no matter how minor, and no matter the context, share some kind of conceptual space that is relevant.

Indeed, I suggest that use of the term "violent video game" survives, both in the general public and in the scholarly community, not because it has actual conceptual utility but because it is emotionally loaded. We might be willing to celebrate and defend the artistic and social merit of individual M-rated games such as Bioshock, Halo 2, Mass Effect 2 and Fallout 3 (all of which were recognized as art by the Smithsonian Institute), but defending "violent video games" as a concept is, emotionally, a little like defending "porn" as a concept. In the research community, the widespread use of such emotionally laden terminology can easily set up researcher expectancy effects that can influence social science results. Such terms arguably also put pressure on professional advocacy groups such as the American Psychological Association (APA) that may be reluctant to appear to defend such emotionally described media by doing anything other than condemning it, whatever the data may say.

But, ultimately, I argue that the concept of "violent video games" has about as much conceptual utility as "blond people" does in informing us about the characteristics of individual women and men. Our insistence on treating the concept of "violent video games" as something meaningful has succeeded mainly in keeping debates on video games emotional rather than rational. Furthermore, I argue that such terms have maintained researchers' focus on an emotionally loaded Holy Grail in trying to link such media to an array of public health outcomes. Too often, this has functioned as a block to a sophisticated program of research examining the specific and idiosyncratic ways in which specific game design elements interact with specific users' wants and needs in ways that are probably both more interesting and valuable. We can only hope that a new, nuanced, more balanced approach such as that recently suggested by Isabella Granic and her colleagues in the APA's flagship journal will hold sway in future research.

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Violent video games don't exist -- in fact, nor do nonviolent video games. That latter point may actually be easier to demonstrate. Given the way the term "violent video games" is defined in the scholarly community, almost all video games are violent video games, including Pac-Man, as a scholar had to admit in one recent court case.