You Won’t Believe This Violent Video Game Theory

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.

Korean site Inven (via tipster Sang) reports that the professor’s study apparently revealed that a game’s graphics card temperature was 36C when idling. Now, that sounds about right. The card’s temperature apparently increased to 45C during a racing game.

But then Professor Cho’s study stated that when a “violent game” was played, the graphics card temperature supposedly shot up to 57C. In turn, the game emitted more radio waves.

Korean site Inven was bewildered by Professor Cho’s research and pointed out that using a graphics card to decode HD videos can increase temperature to around 80C. What’s more, Inven also noted that people in computer design are often running programs that use GPU acceleration, putting them in a more harmful environment than the vast majority of “violent game” playing gamers.

To prove that this isn’t a “violence” issue and that Professor Cho’s theory is bunk, Inven played Manhunt on PC. While Manhunt isn’t a new game, it is certainly violent. It also hardly put any heat on the computer’s graphics card.

As Yonhap News (also via Sang) noted, Professor Cho hopes to present his findings at an upcoming Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering seminar.

Previously, Professor Cho has apparently published research on how drinking for three days straight will cause liver damage, how watching porn will cause unmarried men liver damage, and how smartphones cause people to have irregular voices. He sounds like a very serious researcher.

Online in South Korea, people are flabbergasted by his latest research. Some are even joking that 3DMark or similar graphic benchmarks should be labelled as “harmful”.

폭력적인 게임일수록 전자파가 높아 위험하다 [Inven]
폭력성 게임일수록 컴퓨터 전자파 상승 [Yonhap News]


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