Another Study on Video Game Violence

Since Leland Yee claims there are no dissenters that video game violence is bad for young folks, I thought I’d take up the challenge and see what I could find. It didn’t take long, as the article discussing the study was actually released today.

Paul Adachi is a PHD candidate in Psychology. In studying video games, he came to the conclusion that there are four things that could possibly lead to aggression changes in game players – violence, competitiveness, level of difficulty and pace of action. To isolate violence as the X factor, he chose two games of comparable competitiveness, difficulty, and pace. Taking 50 students age 17-19, he tested their aggressiveness before and after playing.

I like this methodology, and his results were interesting.

The two games he chose were Fuel, a racing game, and Conan, an action game. One might question his choice of Conan, as its not the best game out there, but he believed that they were balanced on everything but violence. He had the gamers then play the games for 15 minutes, and measured their aggressiveness.

Turns out, Fuel and Conan brought out the same level of aggressiveness in the subjects.

More than anything else, this study shows some of the holes in other studies of its type. Competition brings out aggression, whether it is violent or not. If a study is only paying attention to violence, it is ignoring any other aggressive factor.

He plans to conduct another study with more students and more games. It will be interesting to see what he discovers.

via The Standard