The Impact of Violent Gaming 421
An anonymous reader writes "IGN has an article up looking at the impact of violent videogames. It discusses some of the rationale on the gaming industry side for having violent images in their games, and the reactions from politics and lawmakers to these games." From the article: "Despite the large body of evidence that supports a link between playing violent videogames and aggression, lawmakers still have a difficult time convincing the courts that they should be removed from children's hands. One of the reasons for this is that most of the work done is correlational studies which look for a link between two factors. That is, if we see an increase in violent videogame play, is there also an increase in violent behavior?"
Blaming video games (Score:1, Insightful)
Not this again? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, I dare say that some people, if exposed to violent games (or films, or books, etc) will go off and do stupid, stupid things. Chances are, though, that these people would have done stupid things even without the exposure. Plenty of people who have never played a game exhibit agressive behaviour.
What I don't understand is why each generation seems to be so afraid of what the younger generation is into. All we're seeing is the same arguments that were made about rock and roll in the fifties, or violent films in the late 70s and early 80s.
I'm not exactly old, but I'm not really young any more either (I'm 31), but I hope to God I'm not so fucking stupid and scared when I do become "old". (Although given I have a house, mortgage, car, daughter, etc, I think by most reasonable definitions I already am)
Re:Logical fallacy (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously, though, taking all that into account would have taken far too long to allow much chance of getting first post.
glorification of violence (Score:2, Insightful)
That said, there is a much bigger problem at work here and that is the glorification of violence: on television, in movies, in comics and by our political leadership.
As an example, I read comic books when I was a child, when, I suppose the previous generation would have already thought they were quite violent. Superman, batman and spiderman were always engaged in violent struggles against "evil-doers". After not reading them for about 20 years, I recently thumbed through a few at our local bookstore. I was appalled by what I saw. They are full of blood and guts and so many people getting killed in each issue, especially in batman, and these are our mainstream comics, and the video games are much worse (or perhaps I am just getting older...).
As one other example, one of my favorite TV characters used to be MacGyver. A hero who was noted for, among other things, his strict stance against guns and against killing people, even "evil-doers". I think the popularity of characters like him would be much lower now (of course, even back in the 80s we did have the opposite extreme in characters like Rambo).
Ultimately I believe this glorification of violence will make our world a much more brutal place to live .
Not if it induces violence, but rather which sort (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally, I don't think games induce violence as much as they inspire violence. Which is to say that, although the type of violent acts may very easily be copied from populair entertainment, I highly doubt if the amount of violence can be traced back to the amount of violent entertainment which is consumed.
When I decide to go on a murderous rampage to kill random people after having played a game of Carmageddon, it is obvious that my violence is inspired by the violence which is so abundant in that game. What is not obvious is that I wouldn't have found another way to express my violent needs for lack of creative inspiration. People have been torturing, maiming and killing each other for a little while longer than high-tech-taintment has existed.
I find increasing overpopulation to be a much more likely source of violence than increasingly violent entertainment. But, after all, a correlation does not necessarily indicate a causal relation. Such relations are difficult to prove without a rigidly set up experiment.
Re:simplistic mantra (Score:3, Insightful)
"Correlation is not causation," is useful when teaching introductory students the risks in too-readily drawing causal conclusions from a simple empirical correlation between two measured variables.
The people I work with, involved in very real research, do NOT take "Correlation does not imply causation" as simplistic. While it may be useful for suggesting avenues to research, it is just not much more useful than that.
Whole scientific fields are based on correlational data (e.g., astronomy).
I doubt an Astronomer would entirely agree with this statement.
Well conducted correlational studies provide opportunities for theory falsification.
YES! But in this case, he is NOT falsifying a theory. A true statement should not lead to a false result. However a false statement doesn't tell us anything.
They allow for statistical controls of plausible alternative explanations.
They allow us to reject plausible alternative explanations. Other than that, I do not follow his argument.
In young children the number of cavities present and the size of their vocabularly have a strong positive correlation. It would be unethical to do an experiment where we allowed half of a sample population go without proper dental hygiene in order to properly test this. So we are left with the correlational study data. Hence, cavities must improve a child's vocabularly, right??
As children age they get more cavities. They also learn more words. Thus both cavities and vocabularly are effects of age; of course they are correlated. But the "cause" in this case is incorrect.
If it is true that people with a propensity for violence like to play violent games *and* they like to commit violent acts, then playing violent video games and committing violent crimes WILL BE CORRELATED but neither will be a cause of the other. Until these people come up with a control for the variable "propensity for violence" their studies will be specious.
Re:Are TV/Movies not a greater impact than games? (Score:3, Insightful)
The article is actually pretty interesting, because, although he seams to have an agenda, he cites a lot of scientific evidence.
And about TV (from the article) :