Video Games and Violence: A dissection

I have been doing some research to complete my Critical Thinking course's assigned final project on the topic of Video Games and Violence. I chose this because I think a lot of fallacious arguments are proposed to make video games seem more detrimental to society than they really are (or they could be beneficial, but I would like to see some evidence first). Since I use this blog for everything I'm interested in (except rally racing) I figured I might as well use it as a "live research document".

Today I'm going to dissect the argument for a site claiming video games are causing violence and argues for stricter control of video games (something I very much do not think would help). The site is http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1723.

Some background for the site: I suspect the original posting was done in June or earlier of 2005. The post date on the blog is 2008, but the comments come from (1st in June 2005). Also because of the age of the original post the source links do not work and should be updated (at least there were attempts at sources and are used throughout the article, although I haven't verified if they're real).

Let's get on with the dissection:

There is a huge hype surrounding the launch of every new game system - Game Cube, XBox, and Sony Playstation 2 being just few of the latest. Affecting children age 4 all the way to 45 year-old adults, these video games have called for concern in our society regarding issues such as addiction, depression, and even aggression related to the playing of video games. A recent study of children in their early teens found that almost a third played video games daily, and that 7% played for at least 30 hours a week. (1) What is more, some of these games being played like Mortal Combat, Marvel Vs. Capcom, and Doom are very interactive in the violence of slaughtering the opponent. The video game industries even put signs like "Real-life violence" and "Violence level - not recommended for children under age of 12" on their box covers, arcade fronts, and even on the game CDs themselves.

I don't have issues with this paragraph other than the criticism of the video game industry attempting to self police (without government intervention) by warning that there is violence not recommended for children under a certain age on the box and CD.

In the modern popular game Goldeneye 007 bad guys no longer disappear in a cloud of smoke when killed. Instead they perform an elaborate maneuver when killed. For example, those shot in the neck fall to their knees and then face while clutching at their throats. Other games such as Unreal Tournament and Half-Life are gorier. In these games when characters get shot a large spray of blood covers the walls and floor near the character, and on the occasions when explosives are used, the characters burst into small but recognizable body parts. In spite of the violence, the violent video games are also the more popular games on the market. (2) When video games first came out, indeed they were addictive...

I don't quite understand what the evidence of "Inspite of the violence, the violent video games are also the more popular games on the market. (2)" argues for. However, my big problem with this is the uncorroborated statement of "When video games first came out, indeed they were addictive...". There is no source to back this point up and in all the reading I've done about the history of video gaming it wasn't ever discussed as addictive more than anything else.

however, there seems to be a strong correlation now between the violent nature of games these days and the aggressive tendencies in game players.

Again there is no evidence provided for this. If I could find the cited sources for the other cites I would read those and try and link the evidence, but they provide no corroboration. I found a website that may help their argument and it is a trusted source: the APA. Here it is. There is a correlation between violent video games and I will agree with the article if they meant "increased aggressive behavior, thoughts, and affect" by "aggressive tendencies". So score one for them...maybe.

On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold launched an assault on Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, murdering 13 and wounding 23 before turning the guns on themselves. Although nothing is for certain as to why these boys did what they did, we do know that Harris and Klebold both enjoyed playing the bloody, shoot-'em-up video game Doom, a game licensed by the U.S. military to train soldiers to effectively kill.

Although sources were provided throughout the article they could not provide a source for the US Military licensing "Doom" to train soldiers. No where have I found any evidence that the US military licensed Doom. Also, from the personal experience of firing guns and playing video games (both of which were very commonly done during high school)(Someone expressed some concern as to why I was shooting guns a lot in highschool, the answer: I was on my high school's Rifle Team for all four years I was there. Also I played video games daily.) Doom would not translate to learning how to effectively kill. Also the example of using Columbine is a very commonly used example and is misleadingly vivid.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, which tracks Internet hate groups, found in its archives a copy of Harris' web site with a version of Doom. He had customized it so that there were two shooters, each with extra weapons and unlimited ammunition, and the other people in the game could not fight back. For a class project, Harris and Klebold made a videotape that was similar to their customized version of Doom. In the video, Harris and Klebold were dressed in trench coats, carried guns, and killed school athletes. They acted out their videotaped performance in real life less than a year later... (3)

The bolded section has turned out to be a hoax. They never created a columbine like level. Snopes has a good article going into it. Also unfortunately source 3 is not well described. I assume its an APA article, but since i cannot determine what it was or what it was called I'll ignore it as evidence. Also what is the sourcing of, that they "acted out their videotaped performance in real life" or that they killed people in Columbine?

Everyone deals with stress and frustrations differently. However when action is taken upon the frustration and stress, and the action is taken out in anger and aggression, the results may be very harmful to both the aggressor and the person being aggressed against, mentally, emotionally, and even physically. Aggression is action, i.e. attacking someone or a group with an intent to harm someone. It can be a verbal attack--insults, threats, sarcasm, or attributing nasty motives to them--or a physical punishment or restriction. Direct behavioral signs include being overly critical, fault finding, name-calling, accusing someone of having immoral or despicable traits or motives, nagging, whining, sarcasm, prejudice, and/or flashes of temper. (4) The crime and abuse rate in the United States has soared in the past decade. More and more children suffer from and are being treated for anger management than ever before. Now, one can't help but to wonder if these violent video games are even playing a slight part in the current statistics. I believe they do.

Again, I'm glad they're using sources but they're using all the wrong sources in the wrong places. Something less controversial such as how one can detect aggressive behavior is sourced but not a more controversial crime/abuse rate in the US soaring. All I care about when it comes to crime rate in relation to violence and video games are the violent crimes. I usually live in Virginia so that is the first state I checked for stats on. HERE. Violent crimes peaked in VA in 1993 (well before this post was written, as it was well before the Columbine Shooting) and then stayed about the same in total numbers. This all while population was increasing indicates that violent crime rates were not soaring. However, Pennsylvania, where Bryn Mawr college is located and probably the author of this article at the time of writing, has a much higher violent crime rate than Virginia. PA's violent crime totals peaked in 1996 and have stayed pretty steady around those times if not dropping. National totals confirm the same trend with a peak violent crime rate in 1991. During the decade this article was written violent crime was not soaring, infact it was down. So if you believe the evidence the Department of Justice has you should also believe this argument (whatever it is for) is a fallacious appeal to fear with incorrect facts.

Calvert and Tan (5) compared the effects of playing versus observing violent video games on young adults' arousal levels, hostile feelings, and aggressive thoughts. Results indicated that college students who had played a violent virtual reality game had a higher heart rate, reported more dizziness and nausea, and exhibited more aggressive thoughts in a posttest than those who had played a nonviolent game do.

I found source #5 through Google Docs and hopefully the link works (HERE). The author was correct in reporting the results of the study...initially. They did not study a non-violent video game specifically so they could not have concluded what the author suggests (increased arousal, dizziness and nausea, and aggressive thoughts as compared to a nonviolent video game). So a comparison linking violence to increased arousal and aggression is unfounded, when it could be more simply explained with a link to competitiveness. The study used provided a nice comparison of Darts to video games that help support this simpler explanation: "Although video game play is associated with increased hostility, the effect is smaller than that produced by television or darts (Favaro, 1983)".

A study by Irwin and Gross (6) sought to identify effects of playing an "aggressive" versus "nonaggressive" video game on second-grade boys identified as impulsive or reflective. Boys who had played the aggressive game, compared to those who had played the nonaggressive game, displayed more verbal and physical aggression to inanimate objects and playmates during a subsequent free play session. Moreover, these differences were not related to the boys' impulsive or reflective traits. Thirdly, Kirsh (7) also investigated the effects of playing a violent versus a nonviolent video game. After playing these games, third- and fourth-graders were asked questions about a hypothetical story. On three of six questions, the children who had played the violent game responded more negatively about the harmful actions of a story character than did the other children. These results suggest that playing violent video games may make children more likely to attribute hostile intentions to others.

This is the best section yet. I do not disagree with it. Just keep in mind, its about children and not related to adults at all.

In another study by Karen E. Dill, Ph.D. & Craig A. Anderson, Ph.D., violent video games were considered to be more harmful in increasing aggression than violent movies or television shows due to their interactive and engrossing nature. (8) The two studies showed that aggressive young men were especially vulnerable to violent games and that even brief exposure to violent games can temporarily increase aggressive behavior in all types of participants.
The first study was conducted with 227 college students with aggressive behavior records in the past and who completed a measure of trait aggressiveness. They were also reported to have habits of playing video games. It was found that students, who reported playing more violent video games in junior and high school, engaged in more aggressive behavior. In addition, the time spent playing video games in the past were associated with lower academic grades in college, which is a source of frustration for many students, a potential cause for anger and aggression as discussed in the previous paragraph.

Again, I don't really have any problems with this, except I am not well read on the current studies (these are from 2000) and I guarantee there are more studies. This is the first big piece of evidence the author offers.

In the second study, 210 college students were allowed to play Wolfenstein 3D, an extremely violent game, or Myst, a nonviolent game. After a short time, it was found that the students who played the violent game punished an opponent for a longer period of time compared to the students who played the non violent game. Dr. Anderson concluded by saying, "Violent video games provide a forum for learning and practicing aggressive solutions to conflict situations. It the short run, playing a violent video game appears to affect aggression by priming aggressive thoughts." Despite the fact that this study was for a short term effect, longer term effects are likely to be possible as the player learns and practices new aggression-related scripts that can become more and more accessible for the real-life conflict that may arise. (9)

The citing is incorrect, as these statements were lifted from source 8. Longer term effects were not yet studied at this point. This is a great expansion on the short term priming effect, although it could just be priming at work (if you give someone a list of words that make them think of old people, they'll move a little slower after reading the list) and no more than that. That's what the more current studies are for. Either way, maybe my inital idea of violent video games being not bad for you is wrong...we'll see, I still need more convincing.

The U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop once claimed that arcade and home video games are among the top three causes of family.

I thought family was a good thing! No but joking aside I believe that Dr. Koop claimed that arcade and home video games are among the top three causes of family violence. But let's check the intertubes for confirmation. I couldn't find it, maybe I'm looking wrong, but I did find that he thought video games "had no merit and offered little in the way of anything constructive to young people". I guess I'll believe that he thought it was in the top 3 causes of family violence (that has since changed because no where in the family violence readups I've been doing have I found Video Games). However 8 years later in December of 1991, the Surgeon General of the time: David Satcher, M.D., Ph.D., led a study on violence in youth and determined that while the impact of video games on violent behavior has yet to be determined, "findings suggest that media violence has a relatively small impact on violence". The point is, I believe this to be a fallacious appeal to authority as we can find many Surgeon Generals who say very different things. Also, results that were more recently studied by the same position of authority said almost the opposite of what this article argues for.

Although there have been studies that have found video game violence to have little negative effects on their players, there are also many studies that have found a positive correlation between negative behavior, such as aggression, and video and computer game violence. Thus, in order to totally assess the effects of game violence on its users, the limiting conditions under which there are effects must be taken into account, which include age, gender, and class/level of education. (10) However, violent games do affect children, as the studies show, especially early teens, and I feel that there needs to be a stricter regulation regarding the availability of these games to young children.

"liming conditions under which there are effects must be taken into account", I completely agree with your future studies suggestion. While I will agree that games do affect children (pretty much everything does mirite?), the APA states that it is largely up to the parents of the children to make sure they understand the inappropriateness of express the violent reactions they may learn from games and why it is inappropriate. This is good, we're only partly agreeing! This means that my preliminary research into Video Games and Violence will lead me to how the media plays up the violence effects, and also how politicians do.

Thanks for putting up with my "live research document" today. I'm sure more will come later, probably as I try to explore the fallacies the news media tries to use to make video games seem evil.