The Problem With Video Game Studies

@slimky: and I think Kotaku took out my statements because I used brackets. I would take the feel of -insert game here- and put it onto the Cryengine3 and give it the story of -insert game here-.

Shin-san

@AUAnonymous: Both. Plus, the researchers should really start treating each game as its own entity. It's about time.

@Savoryy: One is for your nose. Or your forehead. (Trust me, I have done that before. :P)

@Lezard:

Sometimes things that may seem ridiculously obvious to you, are far from that to others. It may be obvious to you because you're part of the 1% of the population who actively tries to understand video games.

It isn't obvious to everyone else, as they want to remain willfully ignorant.

Anyway, what was the point of this comment?

HA! I have that image as a magnet on my fridge :)

DCSimian

Oh, come on. Numbers are fine, everyone should be taking them with a grain of salt, anyway. I like to think that we, the video gaming masses, actually have some sense of balance, and that striking down numerical ratings is a trite gesture made by people who are just a little too concerned with the purity of reviewing systems.

The mentioned imprecision references a complex opinion being squeezed down into one or two digits that appear empirical; as an opinion the larger review was never very precise to begin with. Putting a number at the end of a review is no different than adding another sentence, it gives context to the reviewers overall impressions of a game. If some twelve year old out there goes out and buys games he hates because he doesn't read reviews then let him, but for god's sake we don't need to change things just to force the little fucker to look past the numbers.

WHAT?? You mean I've been playing Kung Fu Panda this whole time? The "video game people" told me it was Grand Theft Auto. THE SHAME.

Inzoum

The games that made me the angriest, most violent and destructive to my environment (tv and peripherals) after playing were never first person shooters or other "murder simulators", but stuff like pacman, tetris, donkey kong and other games that in general are considered violence free. Nothing builds up frustration like those...

Poul Wrist

@natpoor: Finally, an informed comment. Agreed, research is all about baby steps, beginning by "assuming the cow is a sphere", and working to become more specific in all directions, one direction at a time. Sometimes it's necessary to liken two games that may not seem related simply because we must first make clear our definitions, state our assumptions, and then stay consistent for the sake of the research, and not for those who can't see past their own opinions on how games or genres should be partitioned. Using scarcely a thorough example to credit his ideas on why he thinks these studies are wrong, all he is helping to do is escalate an already ludicrous misunderstanding between academic research, and the way it is often misguidedly presented to the public. Just as you said natpoor, these articles are written by PHD students and professors, and they are usually intended to be used primarily to further future research, regardless of ridiculous claims of some people.

theobling

True art connects us. That's what every artist tries to achive. Whether the piece itself is completly understood doesn't matter, if there is something special about it, people will admire it and feel something whenever they experience it.
Art feeds the senses and/or the mind, and video games, films, paintings, books, even some meal dishes have all achived that somewhere, somehow.

Marduk

GameSpot's The HotSpot podcast touched on this topic some time ago with an interview with one of the most prominent video game researchers that comes up in many of the studies that debunk what most of the negative studies say.. I can't think of any exact date, but I'd guess around last fall/winter was when it might have been done.

gordiehowe5

This was my argument in psychology, that some researchers can not find two games that might be similar together for a study.

Studies show: Studies unreliable.

Thut

@natpoor:

OMG - are you one of those lying bastards? One of those psychologists that believe that psychology is anything but a pack of bullshit from people with too much time on their hands?

My, yes you ARE!

"I don't do gaming studies, or violence studies, but I have read all about the difficulties of defining violence. Researchers know this is an issue. Not just for games -- movies and television shows are a favorite too. And researchers know that conditions in a lab are not the same as conditions in the home or dorm room or apartment. And researchers know that people can change their behavior when they think they are being watched."

And yet, knowing that not a single one of their findings is valid outside of that small group of people in that short period of time, they think they can tell the rest of us what is "good" and what is "bad"? See! Lying bastards, the lot of 'em!

And just to show off his scientific credentials:

"A good example is when he says "We all know there's a difference between the violence in Saving Private Ryan, The Dark Knight and Kung Fu Panda." Well no, I don't know that there's a difference, I thought all three of them were fictional and were movies."

Umm no, not all of them are fictional, not all of them depict the same kinds of "violence" and not all of them are directed at the same audience. If that's the kind of rigor you use in YOUR studies, you SHOULD do gaming studies, you'd fit right in.

"There is no difference in the violence, it's all faked. How it is presented is different, but for SPR they didn't say "we shoot real people" the assumption was that it wasn't real, it was just like a cartoon, it was not real."

One is intentionally trying to be as shocking as possible to convey the horror of D-Day, one is being violent to excite the audience, and one is being violent in a humorous way - if you can't see the difference then you are indeed a psychologist!

"I think LaVigne is guilty of what he accuses others of: taking a non-story and hyping it and being vague to make an article. "

Except HE didn't pretend his article was science, nor did he try to use it as evidence in court (perjury) nor did he use it to stop YOU from believing YOUR bullshit.

So yeah, exactly the same.

KarmakazeNZ

@KarmakazeNZ:

No, these "scientists" are biased, and ignorant of games' core nature (and that no two games are alike, regardless of genre, just like no two books are alike), therefore their studies on them are inherently flawed.

It's absolutely ludicrous that these scientists come to such conclusions using such a flawed reasoning. Because they assume that two or more games are completely similar, their findings are likewise skewed, which is dumb shit.

Fact is, games are able to affect us emotionally, a point to which I can attest to. During games in which I had fun with, and was interested in the story, my emotions were dictated by the action in said game. Such as it would when I'm reading a book or enjoying a flick.

Games are different from its movie and book cousins in the simple sense that you have control over the character(s), which generally allows you to connect more with them. Of course it varies, but since you evoke the action (especially in non-linear games like RPGs), you take in the results differently.

I also bet they didn't die from that affliction if they played any of the games of the Harry Potter series (they may have, however, raged from wasting their money on a sub-par game).

Trey

@sunpop:

WoW addict? Ok so your opinion doesn't count. :P

KarmakazeNZ

@Bloodboiler:

And I am sure they tailored their studies to find exactly what they wanted to find.

They are liars, not fools.

KarmakazeNZ

@Covert_Knight:

Thank you.

These "scientists" are LIARS, not FOOLS.

KarmakazeNZ

@TorenRocksRobots:

You are making the same faulty assumption as the author - you are assuming these researchers don't know that their methodology is "flawed". The far more likely scenarios is that they know because they designed them that way, simply because they know that to get the results they are looking for they HAVE to be flawed.

KarmakazeNZ

@natpoor:

LOL - You are acting like Psychology is a science.

The reality is these "studies" tell us NOTHING more than how THAT GROUP of people reacted - unless you think we're all identical emotionally and mentally. This is why psychology is a bulls**t "science".

A game may make YOU violent, but not me, and a book may make ME violent and not you. Remember Catcher in the Rye? It didn't make me want to go out and kill anyone, but John Lennon would say that book makes people violent...

The fact is any study of a group of people that claims it can predict how EVERY person will react in a situation is fundamentally flawed right from the start - and is far more likely to be pushing a social or political view than be real science.

KarmakazeNZ

@1rogue007:

Oh come on. I bet you cried during E.T. too...

The fact is, the whole argument these "scientists" are making is that games affect us on such a profound emotional level that they can make a non-violent person violent.

Now I might have wanted to punch George Lucas in the mouth after seeing Episode One, but I didn't see anyone saying Star Wars makes people violent.

So which is it? Are games able to affect us emotionally like movies and books, or aren't they? If they are, is it any different from a movie or book?

By the way, I bet no-one has died from deep vein thrombosis because they couldn't stop reading Harry Potter...

I'm just saying.

KarmakazeNZ

@SudhamayiKabong: And that's the point. Art is subjective to the viewer. Back in the day I used to draw quite a bit. Had some pieces published in small press magazines, in the old Comics Buyer's Guide (back when it was a weekly newspaper), and in a couple of Ninja High Schools (for the record, 1 in issue 17 of the B/W series, and 4 in the first Perfect Memory). Even participated in one of the Yomiuri Shimbun drawing contests.

But at the end of the day, all that don't mean a hill of beans to a person who doesn't see anything in it. Because art is subjective to the viewer, a person may not get what I was saying in one of my pieces, and thus it is meaningless to them. And thus, not "art" to them.

And I can guarantee that I put a lot more work in one of my pieces than the guy who did the piss art did. Ultimately, I can see what he was saying, at least from my viewpoint. But to him it is art. To me, even as a Christian, it's just a crucifix in a jar of piss.

@roscoe: I receive a lot of funding from the American Smartological Institute. I suggest you look there.

Bouchart

@SudhamayiKabong:

Actually I think YOU missed the point. To translate the original message:

"Sometimes the incredibly obvious has to be pointed out to people - this is one of those times."

I don't see how that is remotely the same as saying "why are you posting this?"

KarmakazeNZ

@acidcrownie: Master of parenthetical expressions.: Of course, it could be a simple mistake on your part. If that is the case, I withdraw my douchebaggery of a final sentence and humbly apologize.

acidcrownie: Master of parenthetical expressions.

@SudhamayiKabong: Shall we examine his comment? Yes, let's!!!

"Sometimes, articles that point out that the sky is blue are necessary. This is one of those times."

Ok.... "Sometimes, articles that point out that the sky is blue are necessary...." He was saying, quite obviously, that sometimes it's necessary for someone to point out an obvious truth.

"This is one of those times." Here's the second part in which he states (in a less round-a-bout way) that while what is said in this post is quite obvious, this is one of "those" times in which it was necessary to say the obvious.

So, after much bloviating, I leave you with this. Learn how to freaking comprehend.

acidcrownie: Master of parenthetical expressions.

I know a lot of us gamers see this as humorous, but this is actually very serious - some of these "flawed" studies have been used as evidence in court.

Firstly, I'd like to point out that the author of this article is being FAR too kind. He suggests that this is due to incompetence, but the reality is this is NOT incompetence but intentional scientific fraud.

When fraudulent studies are then used as evidence in court, it becomes criminal perjury.

These "scientists" shouldn't be laughed at, they should be charged! Not just for their fraudulent attempts to damage gaming, but their actual damage to science in general. This sort of stuff is happening all over - politics ruining science - and I for one am getting heartily sick of it.

If ANYTHING makes me have violent thoughts, it is a**holes like these "scientists" who LIE about stuff so that they can get funding, fame, or their own political views forced down our throats.

I'd punch each one in the nuts/ovaries if I had the chance.

KarmakazeNZ

@Immolo Draco Gladius: He was actually rather vague. That's what control groups are for.

@mGS_FOXDIE: Have you heard of control groups and other important things about study and experiment methodology? Doesn't sound like it.

@[www.google.com] Actually part of grad school is figuring out what to read and how to skim.

Oh wow, Kotaku say how studies that say that people who play violent video games are violent or something like that are bad and wrong and boooo the people who wrote those articles since clearly they don't understand video games at all. Kotaku posters are then like yeah I hated college and I play games and I'm not violent. I have never, ever, seen this before on Kotaku. It is not becoming like Slashdot.

According the The Escapist, LaVinge has a bachelors degree in psychology, but to really understand the articles he is talking about he would need a PhD since the articles in academic journals are written by PhD students and professors with PhDs (I'm not talking about law journals and such).

I thought his article sucked. It was too vague, and mentions very few specific studies, although he appears to actually like some of them (like the one in JoC which is in my field). To be robust analytically, which he accuses... everyone? who does game studies of not being, he would need to do a study of gaming articles, and cite which ones he looked at, instead of just mouthing off with generalities that gamers are going to eat up and then mention just a few actual articles. And "the mainstream media is bad!" oh that's so new and helpful (is he not mainstream media?). Yes reporters getting things wrong and a lot of the commercial media leading with bleeding is not at all new (go read Nelkin's "Selling Science" it's from 1995 about the misrepresentation of science in the news if you like. 1995! This is not new!!!).

I don't do gaming studies, or violence studies, but I have read all about the difficulties of defining violence. Researchers know this is an issue. Not just for games -- movies and television shows are a favorite too. And researchers know that conditions in a lab are not the same as conditions in the home or dorm room or apartment. And researchers know that people can change their behavior when they think they are being watched.

I was also not satisfied with LaVigne's take on non-similar games. Any game that is not an exact digital copy has some difference, which differences would LaVigne find appropriate? If you play Mass Effect with a male character, play the plotline, and do so with the tough responses versus playing Mass Effect as a female character, just explore space, and use the nice responses, is that the same? (To answer that, it depends what the question is. The differences may matter, they may not. It is "the same game" and it is not "the same game" depending on what you mean, exactly, and anyone who has played ME knows exactly what I am talking about. It is the same game, although I'd say it is a different experience. You can still shoot a lot of aliens, though, either way.)

A good example is when he says "We all know there's a difference between the violence in Saving Private Ryan, The Dark Knight and Kung Fu Panda." Well no, I don't know that there's a difference, I thought all three of them were fictional and were movies. So Adam Goldberg dies, oh wait his character died, in Saving Private Ryan, since Adam Goldberg is alive and well and recently in "The Unusuals", because it wasn't real. Just like Dark Knight isn't real. Yes yes, of course, I know and you know, one is "based on reality with people" (SPR), one is "fictional but mostly based on reality" (DK), and one is a cartoon. But none of it is real. Depending on how you look at it, there is no difference at all or there could be huge differences. There is no difference in the violence, it's all faked. How it is presented is different, but for SPR they didn't say "we shoot real people" the assumption was that it wasn't real, it was just like a cartoon, it was not real.

I think LaVigne is guilty of what he accuses others of: taking a non-story and hyping it and being vague to make an article.

"... or all movies are basically identical."

Uhm... aren't they all pretty much the same nowadays?

This fall I plan on entering a history of science and technology graduate program. My focus will be on a cultural and technological history of video games. I hope to inject some credibility and actual gaming experience into academia.

@armchairnixon: You don't say...

@ctorrans: I'd give your post an 8.5 out of 10. A well-explained and reasonable opinion, but not fantastic.

Bouchart

I would completely agree on the uselessness of numerical scores for any media, including video games. It's not to bad as long as their is a written review accompanying the score, but now with sites like Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes, there isn't any explaining the score, just a number. Worst of all the number is often inaccurate. These sites take reviews and give them their OWN score according to certain adjectives used in the article. It's insanity, but then again that's why I read Kotaku.

ctorrans

Well to be fair a lot of shooters these days are interchangeable with interchangeable characters and to make it worse the only likable character such as carmine for example dies and the game goes to shit real fast with a loud annoying replacement and nothing left that's good about it. Also too much gray scale and muzzle flash to have an visual differences :\

In short this is why I'm a wow addict nothing else to play (untill aion)

@Trey: Isn't that what we do? iirc people are playing games more than going to the movies now.

sereal

@1rogue007: I experience precisely the opposite. While films may pulls some tears out of me, the film which manages to make an emotional impact upon me beyond the closing credits is very rare. (The list in the past three or four years is three films long: Little Miss Sunshine, Pan's Labyrinth, and Bridge to Terabithia.)

On the other hand, I find that many games have such emotional resonance, primarily because, for me, they fill a sort of wish-fulfillment role; that is to say, things I experience in games are things I haven't experienced in life, from those impossibly strong friendships (I have friends, but nobody I'd call a best friend) to saving the world despite my particular reluctance to do so. (That is to say, characters in video games are usually well-meaning but reluctant to act, which is very much how I am in real life. The difference is that it works out for the video game characters, whereas it rarely works out for those of us with similar mindsets IRL.)

Of course, that isn't to say that I believe games, on average are "more art-like" than films. In fact, I think they still have some distance to go in order to catch up to films. But how they may emotional affect you is really a subjective matter.

@-MasterDex-: Aerith's death was a cheap trick like many big-budget films use. There was nothing particularly artistic about the moment.

@1rogue007: "have never experienced anything close to rivaling the emotion produced by reading a good book or watching a good movie."

This may be true for a lot of people, been then again there aren't a mass quantity of books or movies that do this for myself. I don't attribute this to the fact that it is a game trying to deliver this kind of emotion, rather that the creators haven't found how to reach the players on that kind of level yet. Regardless of what Peter Molyneux says.

@tobybologna: Well at least it is better than 'first.'

armchairnixon

@n00b_pwner: Looks like it has three sticks.

Off-topic : The name of the magazine is Maisonneuve, no space. Not to be pedantic or anything, just saying.

@ADM86:

Is this not all the matter of perspective?

Anywho, I agree, common sense is not a strong point with most subjective material.

@SudhamayiKabong:

I agree with you. Who determines art, or what it's trying to express? The creator; who had a vision in mind when they created the piece? The observer; who takes in the art and analyzes it, and whom the art is generally directed to. Or some person who believes their opinion on what art is is superior to those who they feel are not as experienced as they are?

Trey

@relic1980: You know, a crucifix in a jar of piss is "art" insofar as it's saying something. That seems to be the conceit behind most art these days. I could shit on a napkin and encase in amber, and that's art as long as the piece is trying to say something, or at least as long as I claim it is. Videogames can have similar messages and impart them in a far less pretentious manner, and yet they'll never be considered art by whatever circle of pompous windbags sits around and determines what it is that makes art "art". I don't get that. Art is too damned subjective.

SudhamayiKabong

@1rogue007: Final Fantasy VII - The death of Aeris/Aerith: The surprise and emotional aspect may have been lost on you from the prior knowledge of her death but for those that were playing it upon release and hadn't heard anything, it was quite an emotional moment.

Lost Oddessey - Lot's of great emotional pieces in this that really do move all but the most cold-hearted.

Ico - If you weren't moved by this then you really have no heart.

There's plenty of other examples of games doing emotions well too.

-MasterDex-

@HTCguy: I don't think you quite understand what it is that he was saying there. It was just a fancy-pants way of saying "Why are you folks posting this?". I don't quite think that's worthy of recognition. In fact I'm surprised he hasn't been disemvowled like everyone else who says the same thing in one fashion or another.

SudhamayiKabong

IF you only knew what kind of people pretend to study Human-Computer-Interaction. They are pretty good in the quasi science of psychology, but utterly clueless and indifferent to everything technical.

I'm certain every one of these scientists was extremely careful in selecting representative sample of test subjects, carefully thought out the questions to ask and meticulously organized perfect laboratory conditions etc. And finally picked up a NES and a few games from a fee market.

Bloodboiler

@Trey: While video games may be considered an "art form" I have never experienced anything close to rivaling the emotion produced by reading a good book or watching a good movie. In fact, I never considered this until now, but although a video game may convey a plot similar to that of a movie and have the same outcomes, the video game seems to lose out in it's ability to convey emotion. For example, I have felt shallow sorrow when one of my characters dies in Fire Emblem, but the feeling is nothing like when a character you have come to love in a book dies unexpectedly.

1rogue007

@Trey: True. I remember the hullabaloo over a NEA grant for a piece of "art" that had a crucifix in a jar of piss. To some, it was art. To the very vocal and loud others (the ones that got airtime) it was blasphemy. To everyone else, it was a crucifix in a jar of piss, and why the hell did anyone grant money to an idiot who probably spent some of that money to consume enough cheap beer to fill up a jar and stick a crucifix in it??

@ADM86: But is your blue also my blue? Or could it be that i see what you describe as blue actually as red?

@Covert_Knight:
Just to clear anything up, I'm not saying the poor sections are race related, all I'm saying is those who have good parents are generally the ones that are well behaved.

A proposed law for New York City was to ban all children under the age of 18 from playing mature rated games. A researching team sponsored by the government was to come to a surefire conclusion on whether violence in video games ultimately lead to violent behavior in adolescents.

To be absolutely certain they needed to have a wide variety type of children, so they took children from all across the city for this study: Upper East, Tribeca, West Village, Harlem, South Bronx, etc.

They divided the children into three groups, those that would play Manhunt, those that would play Barbie's Fun time Horsey Adventure, and those that would play nothing in sit in a room all damn day.

Their results were absolutely baffling to the researchers. Several kids in each group eventually behaved negatively, whether they were bored or mad that the game had been taken away. It seems as if the kids who had no parent guardianship were ultimately violent while the kids who had dedicated parents were generally very well behaved.

They then decided to narrow the study to the Bronx and change the games so that they could play Manhunt or Grand Theft Auto. They were able to conclude that because these kids played Grand Theft Auto or Manhunt, they became violent and published this study to support the proposed legislation.

The researchers were now a far more reputable research group and at the forefront of video game research while politicians were distracting people from actual problems and still maintaining the image that they were doing something to make life better. Sadly this is the end of our tale.

@Lezard: Well put, sir.

Is that they lie?

@asdf4321: and of course visual art too. gawd, video games r the shit.

asdf4321

must SUCK to not be able to appreciate such a fine art as video games; which incorporates music, cinema, and literature all whilst being interactive.

gb2 ur homework, researchers.

asdf4321

@n00b_pwner: A poster company who doesn't want to get sued by a hardware manufacturer?

@Lezard:
@Trey:
You two have hit the nail on the head. Definitely posts to be shown in the next 'This week in comments' post.

HTCguy

Owen Good,
you sir seem to be having a rough day lol

but yeah i think that's what pisses off the gaming community the most; those researchers literally have no clue what they're talking about, and any 13 year old on this site is more than capable of finding flaw after flaw in the methodology of these studies and, ultimately, their conclusions. all the while the hard working parent who doesn't have the time for first-hand accounts of these games reads this shit and thinks their kid can be the next victim of a veiny penis via picto chat from some anonymous stranger....driving in his car...whilst drawing cocks...on his ds....

Duh.

@Lezard:

Yeah but sometimes some people would like you to believe that the sky is red and have to be reminded.

ADM86

@jedidotflow: Well I guess because I also create them, I view them as a form of art. Always the odd man out.. :(

Dismembered

@Sonira - I am old news.:
In before people take a joke comment seriousl- D'oh!

@jedidotflow:

I hear "it's only a movie/painting/book" as well. I don't see why there's this "real life" plane and "video game" plane, whereas the former is where things matter and the latter nothing should be taken seriously. Why disassociate video game from the real world? Perhaps because it mimics it better than other media forms, yet it's still fiction?

@Dismembered: Neither do gamers themselves. Whenever a "controversial" issue in a video game is brought up, the knee jerk reaction of most gamers is to say "It's only a game."

jedidotflow

Hey I wrote a research paper on this, last quarter at my college. The article is totally right, games studies are so flawed in many ways. It just is not possible to keep track of so many variables outside the study that affect gamers.

@Alternate, I cho-cho-chose the impossible: Blasphemy.

Ashura

pffft why not give up all of gaming like that 11 year old genius over there
[kotaku.com]

I have the magnet of the image here on my fridge. lol.

OoBaSNoRk

@n00b_pwner: They spent their research grant on silly medicine and science.

@Trey: This is true, but members of the media as well as many other non-gamers don't see it as art.

Dismembered

@Alternate, I cho-cho-chose the impossible: Yep.

@Shin-san: I heard things like that too :P

slimky

He only missed one thing in his criticism. The fact that a majority of these studies mistake correlation for causation.

Immolo Draco Gladius

@Bouchart: oh? which grants are you funded by? i want it. :p

@deanbmmv: I believe its really a teaching game.

It teaches kids about the dangers of obesity.

SEE?!

Canadians can be intelligent.

@Dismembered: "Art" is such a loosely defined descriptor that anything can be considered "art". Sure, I could've said it, but it kind of goes without saying, y'know?

That is very true - I am amazed by the fact that in the majority of studies comparing effects of different games, this fundamental flaw is completely ignored.
Unfortunately, this is but one of the many methodological problems which, for some reason, go unnoticed. The question is not really how pretty the numbers presented are, but how exactly they were obtained - that is actually the hard part about doing scientific research.

Observations such as Mr LaVigne's are really not ground breaking; that's very basic stuff, the violation of which is much more critically observed in other branches of social science or other scientific disciplines in general.

Bottom line: Don't get blinded by the numbers, but take a look at how exactly they were produced.

The controller in that guy's hand is totally jacked up... it has 3 analog sticks.

@roscoe: Smart-sounding words.

Bouchart

@Griefy: Yeah, they won't spend the 2 years it takes to get a proper RAGE meter on FFXI players, lol.

Jennacide

That article really pissed me off. Maybe its the video game studies that cause all the rage. I think I'll go play some GTA IV to cool down. :)

@Trey: I couldn't have said it better myself, the only thing I think you left out was the fact that games are a form of art.

Dismembered

Here's one then, pit Portal against Half-life 2 in the next study researchers. Same gameplay style, both involve puzzles with one moreso. One has violence and gunplay, the other only the periodic getting shot at.

Jennacide

@roscoe:
Mario has always been one of my examples that violence is inherent in most video games, just some may be hidden n some may be out front.
Mario's seems like a kid friendly game at first, but when you look at it in it really is one of the most violent games out there.

Most of these studies try to quantify "aggression" with unnatural situations, like measuring the levels of compressed air chosen to blast in the face of other participants. How do these measures have any validation outside of this specific (and frankly, ridiculous) scenario?

>.> Make them play FFXI, you'll see plenty of violent people after the pain of the grind and years of endgame with no reward. But I guess that is a bit outside of the time frame of studies.

@Bouchart:
how does one get published if methodology and conclusions are nonsense?

Why would someone waste their time comparing Doom 3 to Tetris? What they really should've done was make a Doom 3 mod allowing you to fire Tetris blocks at your enemies... or turn all the enemies into different types of blocks that you have to paralyze and line up to make them disappear!

At the vary least, they could've made a Tetris theme mod where the blocks are contorted enemies from Doom 3.

@n00b_pwner: A shitty "frat" college poster company.

The Super Mario games are considered non-violent, but gaming icon Mario actually kills hundreds of creatures by crushing them with his body weight, hurling fireballs at them or feeding them bombs.

that's it... my (future) kids are NOT playing Mario. evar.

@THEJOHNNYOHM: Your comment really wasn't that much better, you know.

@blackhawk249: Does't that make you "In after..."?

@blackhawk249: In before infinite "In before"s

@n00b_pwner:
Yeah, my hands cramped just looking at that thing. Carpal tunnel much?

thatonebigdude

@n00b_pwner: it looks like a backwards version of the original xbox controller

buckeyes75

@THEJOHNNYOHM:

In before "In before 'Well at least it is better than first.'"

blackhawk249

Reminds me of a lot of amateur video game design paragraphs:

I would take the feel of and put it onto the Cryengine3 and give it the story of .

Shin-san

The purpose of studies is to obtain grant money. Their methodology and conclusions are usually nonsense.

Bouchart

That controller seems a bit messed up.

Who would place buttons UNDER the right analog stick?

Great counterpoint to that post about the ABC article ranking a bunch of controversial games nobody played (except GTA IV and Manhunt).

It seems like a lot of these studies just seem to be biased from the beginning, or the people doing the studies don't know anything about what they're studying.

It's high time the general public and scientific community gives video games their due. It's been established that this media form is not only "child's play", but rather a comprehensive, potent, and viable entertainment module. Perhaps it's the "game" part of video games that propagates this stigma, but these "games" are on par with films as far as making money is concerned, and appeal to more senses as far as books are concerned. Movies and books will always have their place, but games are a force that should not be judged with scrutiny, but rather accepted for what it is: a flexible media that has high entertainment values.

@tobybologna:
In before "Well at least it is better than 'first.'"

Sometimes, articles that point out that the sky is blue are necessary. This is one of those times.

*gasp* I never knew!

you don't say...