research

Lego Figures Not As Happy As They Were 25 Years Ago, Says Research

Years ago, all Lego minifigures had a placid, happy expression and a pointedly non-ethnic skintone that fit their role in the larger Lego universe: They were props, the same as a tree or a fire hydrant. But as Lego has made more movie tie-ins — and video games — its minifigs have become more brooding. Darker. Angrier.


You Won’t Believe This Violent Video Game Theory

Professor Dong Wong Cho of Chungbuk Provincial College in South Korea has an idea about violent video games. And it’s truly bonkers. According to Professor Cho’s latest study, violent video games make graphics cards run hot and emit more radio waves. Thus, the scholar argues, this means violent video games are more harmful for the body. M’kay.


FBI Profilers Don’t Believe Violent Video Games Cause Violence

FBI profilers don’t view video games as a cause of shootings and other violent crime, a former profile said yesterday morning on CBS’ Face the Nation.


No, The Government Is Not Paying $1 Million For People To Play Video Games

Did you know the government is spending $US1.2 million to pay people to play World of Warcraft? I didn’t either!


25 Video Game Violence Studies, Summarised

With video games so consistently a topic in the mass media’s examinations of the recent Sandy Hook shooting, we decided to take a look at the studies that try to determine what effect — if any — video games have on violent or aggressive behaviour. President Obama made a call for more studies, providing the CDC with $US10 million in which to do their research. But here’s a handy flash card for the ones that already exist.


Beaten By Bots: Training AI For First-Person Shooter Games

When you first stare down that tough opponent in a video game (think Big Daddies in Bioshock or Striders in Half-Life 2), it can seem impossible to beat the computer-controlled character you’re facing. But come the end of the game and you’re often ploughing through computerised enemies with ease – the bots are no longer the insurmountable challenge they were when you first saw them.


What Kind Of Person Plays A Sports Games? MIT Has The Answers

More than a year ago, Abe Stein of the Game Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reached out to me about a survey he was conducting, an examination of sports video gamers. Stein, himself a committed sports gamer, wanted to know who made up this segment of gaming — long viewed as an outlier to the main gaming culture — and what motivated them.


24,000 Games, From 1975 To 2012, Broken Down By Genre & Platform

These two charts turned up today, reportedly from a “recently scraped database of 24,000 video games to determine percentages of genre and platform releases since 1975″.


Warcraft-Playing Ph.D Candidate Has Some Questions For You About Gaming Addiction

An East Carolina University doctoral student studying MMOs and video game addiction is looking for survey participants to help in a key component of his dissertation. Notably, the researcher conducting the survey is himself a World of Warcraft player.


Video Game Experiment Teaches Angry Kids Not To Rage Against The Machine

There’s a new insane study of children and video games out there, and it makes me grateful the Wii died without that ridiculous Vitality Sensor ever coming to market.


Kotaku Is Hiring a PHP Developer!

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