Parents and politicians everywhere find that video games are the cause of all the violence in the world. We find ourselves creating and using ESRB to keep violent video games out of the hands of kids. Society continues to place all of the blame and violent behavior of individual persons on video games alone. Gamers become more and more censored to the point that even adults can’t purchase certain titles within stores. A recent study from the UK shows that these claims may not all be true.
According to findings presented at the British Psychological Society’s Annual Conference in Dublin, it is believed that people who play violent video games online become more relaxed after playing them. 292 male and female online gamers, aged between twelve and eighty-three years of age were asked to complete a questionnaire on anger, aggression and personality both before and after a two hour session of World of Warcraft. While WoW is known for it’s addictive rather than violent nature the results of the test found that overall the test subjects were more likely to feel calm or tired after playing.
“There were actually higher levels of relaxation before and after playing the game as opposed to experiencing anger but this did very much depend on personality type.” said psychologists, Jane Barnett at Middlesex University. “This will help us to develop am emotion and gaming questionnaire to help distinguish the type of gamer who is likely to transfer their online aggression into everyday life,” she added.
Okay, so we still don’t know for sure that video games trigger violent behavior in people or if they in fact do the complete opposite. After a long hard day at work, I like to kick off my shoes and enjoy a few hours of pleasure and relaxation with my 360 (get your mind out of the gutter).
via Gamasutra
April 11th, 2008 at 11:34 am
This is my largest, most massive pet peeve I have. (Even beyond poor spelling and grammar- which means it’s HUGE!)
There is absolutely no instance where entertainment is the CAUSE of someone’s violent behavior. While in some cases it may serve as a trigger, without the same entertainment triggering the violent activity, another activity would have replaced it as the same trigger. In other words, if we ban games, TV, movies and books… then gardening, hiking or customizing cars will simply take over as the things that cause some people to “snap”.
It’s never been about the content within the games causing violence. It’s always been about a person with a pre-existing mental condition who is in need of care being overlooked- in 99 percent of the cases, due to poor parenting.
April 11th, 2008 at 11:53 am
I think Cher Horowitz said it best: “Until mankind is peaceful enough not to have violence on the news, there’s no point in taking it out of shows that need it for entertainment value!”
April 12th, 2008 at 3:54 am
gamers 1 ignorant people 0
April 12th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
I concur, Druidblue. And, hey, what about driving/traffic/road rage/etc.? Maybe there’s a link in those cases—people who act violent after playing video games—that correlates prior frustrations (for example, a jerk on the road cutting you off) and playing video games. I mean, maybe some people are feeding their frustrations with video games, and then the two just become subconsciously linked or something.
Or maybe I’m just thinking about this too hard.
But I agree with your article, VampireKitten. Gaming is a way to relax, especially when it’s a game you really enjoy. Maybe those who take it too far get to a point in the game that’s really frustrating or hard to beat, and they just vent that anger (at the game) on others. Still, that really doesn’t account for crime connected to video games (I mean, that anger wears off), so it would have to just be that the individuals playing it have, well, issues, lol—like Druidblue said.
On another note, kudos to the UK for undertaking an experiment that tests the other side of the overly common conclusion: That video games cause violence.