Do you believe this:
‘Violent video games like Call of Duty change people’s brains’
‘Violent video games makes children grow up into aggressive adults’
‘Violent shooter video games really DO rot your brain’
‘Violent video games leave teenagers ‘morally immature’
Or this?
‘Violent video games do not affect empathy’
‘Playing video games could boost children’s intelligence’
Confused yet? If you read the Daily Mail, this is the barrage of headlines that you will find relating to the impact of gaming, particularly violent video games. Now, you may well wonder why I have decided to write about scientific evidence by using headlines from a newspaper that has been banned by Wikipedia as a source due to its ‘poor fact checking, sensationalism and flat-out publication.’ Essentially, I did it for a cheap laugh and I’m not above such things. However, it does highlight the problem that sometimes there isn’t one answer to a question. It also shows how difficult it can be to explain sometimes subtle findings from a scientific experiment to an unscientific audience flicking through the headlines on their phone.
Essentially, what a lot of people are interested in is whether letting their child play Grand Theft Auto regularly will turn them into a heartless road maniac. Common sense would say that this highly unlikely if they weren’t already a psychopath. Common sense may also lead you not to credit people who get their science news from the Daily Mail as having a surfeit of common sense. However, there are interesting and necessary studies taking place into issues such as gaming addiction, which has recently been classified as a disorder by the World Health Organization.
Despite the fact that violence rates worldwide continue to decline despite violent video games having existed for around 30 years, this hasn’t stopped politicians in particular from falsely claiming that they are directly responsible for school shootings. However, in the shouty headlines and quick answers world of the tabloids, that’s what people are interested in; primarily those who would never go near a console in their entire life.
For those who prefer a more nuanced approach, there has been ongoing research into the impact of gaming for decades. As to whether violent games breed violent people, there’s quite a bit of conflicting evidence. On the one hand, studies have shown increased aggressive behaviour and decreased empathy amongst frequent players of video games. On the other hand, this study saw no difference in empathy between a group of gamers and non-gamers. (And this one said that gamers were better learners, whilst this one concluded that children who played games were more intelligent and performed better in school).
In 2015, the American Psychological Association released a report after analysing 20 years’ worth of research into the link between games and violence, eventually concluding that ‘the research demonstrates a consistent relation between violent video game use and increases in aggressive behavior, aggressive cognitions and aggressive affect, and decreases in prosocial behavior, empathy and sensitivity to aggression.’ However, no link was found between violent games and criminal behaviour.
Despite the playing of violent video games being mentioned in the media as being a causal factor when mass shootings occur in US schools, without scientific evidence they are just a convenient scapegoat for people to blame, in the same way Marilyn Manson was blamed for Columbine in 1999. There is a lack of research into the difference between male and female gamers, and the long-term impact of playing violent games. And what about games that contain some violence, but are mainly focused on other themes? Or fantasy violence like Skyrim? What’s a frequent gamer? How long do effects last? Are different frequent gamers impacted differently depending on other, external factors? I have a feeling this blog post will be asking more questions than answering them…
Proliferation of violent games
Video games hit the mainstream in the late 70s and 80s, with Space Invaders and Pac Man leading the wave of arcade gaming and Atari, Sega and Nintendo launching their now famous home consoles. Even from the early days of video game development violence has been a main feature. Mortal Kombat, released in 1992, had characters pulling off each others’ heads and tearing out spines. The First Person Shooter (FPS) style of game was also launched in 1992 with Wolfenstein 3D, complete with a cover showing a topless, heavily muscled man firing a gun into the air whilst simultaneously booting a Nazi in the face. Cartoonish extreme violence was also the name of the game for 1993’s Doom (playing a space marine on Mars shooting their way through hoards pouring from hell), 1996’s Quake (fighting alien death squads in an overrun marine base) and Duke Nukem 3D (also fighting aliens, but with added strippers).
This, along with heavy metal and OTT gore-splattered video nasties, led to a backlash in the ‘80s and ‘90s. 1985 saw the beginning of parental advisory labels being slapped on albums such as Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite for Destruction, whilst the Entertainment Software Rating Board was set up for rating video games in 1994. The most violent games are now separated into ‘Mature’ for 17+ and ‘Adult’ for 18+, depending on the gore, violence, sexual content, strong language and gambling. Wet: The Sexy Empire, anybody?
One game series that is repeatedly referenced when talking about video games and violence is Grand Theft Auto. First released in 1997 as a top-down open world where you steal cars, engage in an epic crime spree and, of course, mow down pedestrians with the same amount of thought you may give to buttering a piece of toast. It went to the top of the charts, making Grand Theft Auto V the most successful entertainment title ever, having made over $6 billion.
Interestingly, the original designers of GTA, David Jones and Mike Dailly, credit the late UK publicist Max Clifford with being central to the game’s success. They hired him to whip up a moral panic in the press before it was released, with questions even asked in the House of Lords. It subsequently sold half a million copies in Christmas 1997. And how many of those Lords do you think ever actually played the game? Probably too busy filling in their expense forms.
Why people love playing violent video games
Some of the biggest games franchises right now – Assassins Creed, GTA and Call of Duty – are incredibly violent. Violence in games is clearly a massive selling point. So what is the appeal?
Some studies have looked into who was playing violent games and why. In one, 1000 gamers were surveyed, both men and women. The authors theorised that the reason why people play violent video games is that these games tend to be more competitive, and the human need to feel competent and in control is most satisfied in more competitive gaming. ‘People may play more violent video games to improve their self-perceived social standing, dominance, or value as a romantic partner,’ was the conclusion. The authors also found that women playing violent games reported a greater sense of attractiveness to romantic partners.
In addition, the same study quotes a range of others which have shown that the ‘effect of cooperative violent video games demonstrate a positive effect on prosocial behavior and reduced prejudice’. So one study shows increased antisocial behaviour, whilst another shows increased prosocial behaviour?
To confuse the debate even further, this long-term study monitored the aggression, sexist attitudes, empathy and interpersonal competencies, impulsiveness, and mental health of two groups of gamers. One group played GTA V and the second played either The Sims 3 or no game at all. After two months, no significant differences were observed. The authors say that earlier studies have only shown the immediate effect of playing violent video games, and that these effects may disappear within 15 minutes of not playing the game rather than the long-term impact. They say that there are problems with other studies looking into the impact of video game violence, ‘namely that the outcome measures of aggression and pro-social behaviour are poorly standardised, do not easily generalise to real-life behaviour and may have lead to selective reporting of the results.’
Game immersion
From this evidence, and by being a gamer who knows other gamers, I feel it is safe to conclude that it is the competitiveness or setting of a game, rather than specifically killing other people, that is what attracts those who enjoy violent games. That is why Fortnite is so popular, not because the majority of players love killing other players, but because they have to outsmart other players in order to win.
Whilst looking into this difference between what the content specifically is and what the game mechanics are I came across this article discussing the role of immersion in how gamers interact with violent games. Yes, as a gamer I want to be immersed in a game and in the same way I can be caught up in a book. I want the game to provide me with escapism. However, I never actually believe that I am capable of shooting a sniper rifle just because I used one in Far Cry, in the same way playing Skyrim doesn’t make me think dragons exist. It’s a fantasy.
In their book Rules of Play, Katie Salen Tekinbaş and Eric Zimmerman discuss the idea of immersive fallacy, saying that the idea that gamers get so absorbed in a game that they believe that they are part of the imaginary world, is false. ‘Players always know that they are playing,’ was one conclusion, which allows for changes in viewpoint as a game progresses, and that ‘the many-layered state of mind that occurs during play is something to be celebrated, not repressed’.
So, do violent games beget violent people?
From what I can find out, and admittedly as a gamer I am biased, there may be an increase in aggressive behaviour immediately after playing a violent game, but no research has seen long-term changes to people’s psychology because they liked to play a FPS. Unfortunately, it also means that the positive news stories about gamers being better at task switching and task performance may also need to be taken with the same pinch of salt.
It’s unlikely that conservative attitudes towards violent games will change any time soon, especially when scientists themselves can’t agree on whether there is a correlation with real life violence. However, with the number of active gamers worldwide expected to increase to 2.7 billion by 2021, I find this an interesting debate that will continue to roll on.
Hypervelocity Science 