A Convenient Truth? Harvard Research on Games
A Convenient Truth? Harvard Research on Games
It's not really fun to be a videogame these days. Well, videogames can't pick their destiny themselves, they are just produced, no one ever thought about asking them how they feel with this. But: It's easy to guess. Because: How would you feel, when by most critics you would be the main reason made responsible for the bad behaviour of children and for youth violence? So, it's good to know that the day has come where videogames can finally rejoice a bit. Because there was a new study done in America. And the results are surprising.
Since 2004 Drs. Lawrence Kuttner and Cheryl K. Olson who are directors of the Harvard Medical School Center for Mental Health and Media have been researching the effects of videogames on young teenagers with a budget of $1.5 million, funded by the U.S. Department of Justice. They now publish their results in the book "Grand Theft Childhood. The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games". This surprising truth looks as follows:
One very encouraging finding was how sophisticated middle-school boys were in their understanding of violent games. They could enjoy playing bad guys without wanting to be them. As one boy told us, "When I play violent games like (Grand Theft Auto) Vice City, I know it's a videogame. And I have fun playing it. But I know not to do stuff like that, because I know the consequences that will happen to me if I do that stuff." We were especially struck by how protective these boys were of younger kids; in fact, their concerns about video game influence were almost identical to those expressed by parents. But their biggest concern was not violence; it was "swears." Another boy said, "I don’t like my little brother or sisters to watch me play Vice City because they might swear at other people, 'cause of how they do in Vice City. They always give people attitude and take swears at other people. That could make my family look bad, like my mom isn't raising us regular."
Olson recently said in an interview with german magazine "Der Spiegel" that people should stop worrying so much about the effects of videogames on their children because according to her research kids that don't play videogames often seem to have much more problems in school and at home than kids of the same age that are pretty much into gaming. Her explanation for this is that nowadays, if you don't play videogames, it's a sign of missing social competence. She also says that a connection between videogames and incidents like the Columbine High School massacre was not found during the research. This leads her to the conclusion that all the other research that has been done over the last few years and that led to bad publicity for games has actually been ill-concepted, because
the most-publicized studies came from a small group of experimental psychologists, studying college students playing nonviolent or violent games for 15 minutes. It's debatable whether those studies are relevant to real children, playing self-selected games for their own reasons (not for cash or extra credit!), in social settings, over many years. But media reports and political rhetoric often ignore that distinction.
But Olsen's research is debatable as well, of course. The question is if research can achieve very much in the whole discussion about new media anyway. But still: for gamers it might be a little stretch of light on the horizon that there is finally a research available which kind of fights for them. Or, to quote Mike Fahey from www.kotaku.com:
After several years of reading contradicting reports on the effects of violent gaming on children, I've come to the conclusion that there is no real research we can trust. What can we do? Exactly what the mainstream press does - pick the one that comes to the conclusion we want!
If you are interested in the topic, you might want to delve deeper by reading another interview with Cheryl K. Olson over here . She ends it with the words: "Parent education seems the only feasible way to go." Well, we already knew that before her research.
But: nobody ever listens to gamers. Let's see if someone listens to Harvard for a change.
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I don't want to sound greedy, but: I think I didn't get experience points for this article being promoted to "Top News". ;)
I don't think that these are necessarily linked, becoming top news doesn't mean you get extra XP all the time, happend to me before too, it's just an extra pat on the shoulder.
Great Article, was a good read. I could use a picture, but I'm not sure if it's ok to just use the cover of the book. Anybody here know about this legal stuff in terms of using pictures from the internet when there is no copyright in sight?
Thanks. And: No, that is a question that I keep asking myself permanently as well.
Picture rights are very complex; in practical terms, it's generally okay to use pictures from publishers' websites or such pictures that you captured on your own from a released product or from a beta product where the publisher is allowing you to do screenshots. With a book cover, it should be okay to use it if you write about that book, as long as you don't use the picture to imply that the book is your own work. Of course, it's not okay to take the cover in order to advertise for another product or service or whatever. It's also important to always name the publisher / Copyright owner, see our rules for writing news.
Thx for the info, I guess it's ok then.
I took the cover and rearranged it a bit to fit our format: here
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