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Anti-Video Game....ism
Thaiboxer
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So srsly, wtf. An unbiased person can read this article all the way through and see that it says just about nothing, yet... even though it's nothing conclusive, the title alone will reinforce any pre-conceived ideas one might have about violent video games.
Basically, these scientists are fucking idiots.
I will go on record in saying that, I am not a Brain Scientist, however, as a layman, I can tell you that these responses don't have shit to do with Violence (i.e. game content). The responses that these MRIs show, imo are simply indicative of GAMEPLAY.
Take a "tunnel vision" game like Need for Speed and put blood and guts all over it, make people get run over in the streets and cars explode, I would think that that part of the brain used for "control, focus and concentration" will still be utilized.
Take a game like Call of Duty and turn all the soldiers into Teddy Bears, have them run around a maze throwing <3s and rainbows....I'm sure every time a fellow teddy bear surprises you while turning a corner and heatshots you with Love, your heart rate will still go up a notch. Thus the emotional response...
So, that's how someone who has actually played a video game before could rationalize the results of such experiments, unfortunately for us we don't have control of a giant propaganda machine and are forced to let those who do, dictate the way the court of public opinion feels.
***Yes I know, Childs' Play, it's great, but I can't even get my local paper to do a piece on it. Meanwhile, every douche-nozzle journalist out there is ready and willing to do a piece like this.
So srsly, wtf. An unbiased person can read this article all the way through and see that it says just about nothing, yet... even though it's nothing conclusive, the title alone will reinforce any pre-conceived ideas one might have about violent video games.
Those who played the violent video game showed more activation in the amygdala, which is involved in emotional arousal, and less activation in the prefrontal portions of the brain associated with control, focus and concentration than the teens who played the nonviolent game.
Basically, these scientists are fucking idiots.
I will go on record in saying that, I am not a Brain Scientist, however, as a layman, I can tell you that these responses don't have shit to do with Violence (i.e. game content). The responses that these MRIs show, imo are simply indicative of GAMEPLAY.
Take a "tunnel vision" game like Need for Speed and put blood and guts all over it, make people get run over in the streets and cars explode, I would think that that part of the brain used for "control, focus and concentration" will still be utilized.
Take a game like Call of Duty and turn all the soldiers into Teddy Bears, have them run around a maze throwing <3s and rainbows....I'm sure every time a fellow teddy bear surprises you while turning a corner and heatshots you with Love, your heart rate will still go up a notch. Thus the emotional response...
So, that's how someone who has actually played a video game before could rationalize the results of such experiments, unfortunately for us we don't have control of a giant propaganda machine and are forced to let those who do, dictate the way the court of public opinion feels.
***Yes I know, Childs' Play, it's great, but I can't even get my local paper to do a piece on it. Meanwhile, every douche-nozzle journalist out there is ready and willing to do a piece like this.
Playing WoW "only when you are bored" is like smoking "only when you are drinking".
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There are ways to help your argument and ways to hinder it. Claiming that even though you aren't a specialist you are better qualified than a specialist to interpret data is one of the ways to HINDER your argument.
True, but he has a point...the games themselves are fundamentally different in terms of the kinds of mental tasks required to play them.
Sounds like somebody’s being over protective of their hobby…
That's not to say the scientists are right. You just need to actualy attack what they say and give reasons as to why they're wrong.
That said, irt thread: so people are still fuckwits and research is still routinely bent to the political motivations of the people funding it, huh? Sounds like "normal" to me.
Yeah, that study does seem flawed. Given that the children weren't performing the same task...
No kidding?
I don't care if it's fantasy, if I'm under fire from a half-dozen Nazi SS troopers I am going to get excited about it and my adrenaline is going to boot up. That's a natural response. Maybe we should study how roller-coasters and other thrill-rides effect adolescents now too.
These games aren't murder simulators but they do simulate combat and that is bound to have an effect on the player's focus.
What worries me is that they've blanketed all 'violent' games. Maybe the reasoning and self control didn't play a part in MoH:Frontline, but they certainly would in a more robust game such as Rainbow Six, Metal Gear Solid or any game involving strategy AS WELL AS combat.
The owners of such media are just upset that in the last few years video games have out grossed all of their other media markets and there is nothing they can do to get their money hungry hands on it, hence the hate.
Yeah, they're either purposefully cherry picking or looking at the bark of a tree rather than the forest itself.
You didn't read his post, or didn't comprehend it, or are deliberately obscuring the point.
Stop, thanks.
What I want to know is why they had these kids playing shitty games.
On the other hand, I'm fully convinced that violent themes really do impact people (kids and adults), though it's not specific to video games. I just can't imagine that Casket would be the same way absent media reinforcement, and you run across many kids across these boards with odd fixations on some pretty gruesome shit.
I don't even really know why this is a strongly debated point. People get wrapped around their pastimes - look at all the anime dorks you see around. Or the Wiccan girls who start out with a ouija board and eventually start wearing cloaks around and convince themselves they can cast magic spells. Why do we put "imaginary graphic violence" as an exception to everything else?
Because we can't be having them play games with intellectual merit. That might alter the results in favor of them viddyagames. The horror.
Did they ever take MRI's of people watching movies like, say, the start of Saving Private Ryan and then compare it to watching the car chase in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
Or a nonviolent racing game to a violent racing game (if there are any? I don't know).
You can't compare an FPS to a racing game and then act like it's a huge revelation that different parts of the brain are being used.
Seriously.
There was a group that did this, I can't remember the exact details but they had several versions of carmageddon setup. Firstly, with points scored for killing things, secondly with points lost for killing things, and lastly a game without things to kill.
I think the problem is, you can't actually know/prove that until you've done the experiments, and that's the entire point of these experiments. What is important is that we get to the state where we can take games and find out exactly what effects they do have on people, in the same manner that's been done for tv etc.
I really think people that go off the wall at these types of experiments really aren't doing anyone any favours.
Carmageddon vs Carmageddon with all the people replaced by snack cakes.
I don't know though; attempting to isolate violence as the sole variable sounds a little nerdy. Almost like science.
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2005.01632.x
knock yourselves out with the rest, or send me a PM if you need the pdf
The problem I have with a lot of these studies isn't the studies themselves, but the conclusions drawn.
Ok, so violent games tend to increase aggression...but, do they increase it enough to make more violent crime? Do the people who play GTA go out and start fights more than the people who don't?
I don't give a flying fuck how much aggression, or anything else is increase by games, I want a measurement of what effect these games have on actual, tangible actions, rather than the conjecture that seems to come out of most of these studies.
Bad conclusions don't bother me nearly as much as bad methods. If the methods are sound, the bad conclusion can be corrected. Where as any conclusion drawn comparing apples to oranges just wastes everyone's time. This is like comparing kids playing with a blue Ghandi doll, and kids playing with a green pop-gun; then taking the resulting behavioral differences based on the difference between a ghandi doll and a pop-gun, and ascribing them to the differences between blue and green. There's no control, theres no attempt to isolate any variable. No one can go back over your notes and conclude shit all beyond you being of less use in the lab than the monkey you gave the toy gun to.
I believe there is, but the real question is one of causality. Do already-violent people prefer violent video games? Or do violent video games urge people to violence.
It's most likely cyclical IMO, since behavioral/ action models tend to be.
You don't need a lab and a controlled environment to figure out that when the videogame industry grows as much as it has in the last twenty years, and the level of youth violence *decreases*, that there's not a strong causation effect happening here.
At worst, I think well-done studies will find that children already at-risk for other reasons might become more at risk if they spend all day playing violent games, but that most other people are very minimally affected, certainly not enough to cause them to harm other people.
Well, the reason for my post is not to necessarily to disredit someone who thinks such as yourself, that violent media can have an impact on people. Like I said I'm not a scientist, I have no data to prove that it does or does not. All I have to go by is my personal experience, I can tell you that I have played all sorts of video games my entire life. I can also tell you the I am a Pacifist, and that the only weapon I own (besides my two fists :P) is a Daisy Air Rifle that I've had since I was 11.
I guess I was a little harsh toward the scientist in question. There is no actual statement from them, the only thing they actually say is that they are going to do more research.
That being said am I wrong in thinking that, unless these Neurologists are going home at night and spending 2-3 hours on xbox Live, that there could potentially be some errant conclusions derived from such data?
You know as well as I do that such a claim is bogus. Post hoc ergo propter hoc, amirite?
I'm not reserving special wrath for vidja games or anything, but I think that gamers have found themselves in an untenable circle jerk refusing to acknowledge that, yes, people internalize things they see onthe TV, watch in movies, or play in video games to some extent. Murder simulators (and we definitely have some) might have an effect on young kids or people who already have violent tendencies.
I'm sure you've met in your life that creepy guy who watches a lot of action movies and owns a lot of guns. I can't imagine that he's not getting reinforcement from his favorite pastime.
I'm not advocating censorship or anything, but I'm 100% behind meaningful and transparent ratings in order to let parents decide what's appropriate for their kids.
The sooner people realize this, the sooner we can move on with our lives.
Seriously though, ban kids from playing mature games and you've lost your entire argument that games make for violent kids. Why would they do that?
Also, I'm no doctor but they might as well be taking 25 year olds if they're going to be taking 17 year olds because the difference between a 13 year old and 17 is fucking huge. They should not be in the same god damn group on a psychological or any kind of neurological study. That's a big mistake, which makes me think they're morons and not trust this shitty study.
Don't get me wrong, I'm in no way suggesting we just say "have at it" and hand kids GTA once they're old enough to hold a controller, I'm just rejecting the absurd demonization gaming has received, and the borderline insane conclusions some people have come to, after reading what might be legitimate and useful research in the hands of someone not trying to secure re-election.
I love the videogame rating system, I think it works very well, and I think not selling M games, R movies, etc to kids without their parents is a great idea.
I'm just saying, when there's seven million copies of something like GTA sold, and there's *MAYBE* 3 or 4 incidents that may have been somewhat partially inspired by it, it's pretty obvious that there are far greater factors at play, and that games aren't turning us, or our children, into murderers and gangsters.
I don't doubt violent games tend to make kids more aggressive, and that's why I'm perfectly fine keeping them away from them, by and large, but beyond a little extra aggression, I don't think they really play much of a role in making people do the kinds of fucked up shit teens and others occasionally do.
Where to even begin.
Violent video game beget violent behavior. Is the link 100% clearly understood? No. Are there numerous valid theories and hypotheses for it? Yes. The most popular one (at least when I was in grad school last year) is that any stimulatory action makes gets the adrenaline flowing and makes people more aggressive. The argument of "rainbows shooting" doesn't work in this case because one is asthetically pleasant and soothes you while explosions and whatnot are jarring and stimulatory.
Another prefectly good theory is that play teaches life. It holds for every other damn animal in the world, why not humans too. I don't know nearly as much about this one though, so I'll leave it here.
And as for why they choose over the top stimulatory games? Because they're looking for a response. If they chose Harvest Moon, or Barbie's Horse Rider 2000, it's really REALLY difficult to argue that those are stimulatory enough to warrant any kind of reaction even under the best of situations. You hardly want to test something by starting with something you suspect will have a tiny tiny result.
Anyway, there isn't even room to disagree since something like 99% of these studies come out the same. What the media tends to not say very well is that the result is pretty small. It is pretty much 100% empiracally proven that a correlation exists, but the correlation itself is pretty small.
Oh, and citing yourself... or your friends as an example disproving the theory... don't make me slap you with a rolled up research paper. Honestly.
How do you know you wouldn't have acted like an even littler girl if you had no recieved prior desensitization thanks to video games? Also, what kind of injury are you talking about? A "someone's knee bending the wrong way" type injury or a "aggressive brain avulsion" type of injury?
Then there is one exception there I guess, people who act like little girls to all sorts of trauma, can never be desensitized to violence. People who are otherwise normal, can be desensitized and domesticated over time with exposure. Try not to scrape your knee son
Try "papercut."
I've popped heads aplenty in games, but real-life injuries still get to me every bit as much as usual.
Edit: So either we're densensitized or we're sissies. Really nice logic there, Rambo.