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Study Suggest Violent Video Games Makes Kids Eat more and Cheat!

Study Suggest Violent Video Games Makes Kids Eat more and Cheat!

They have finally found conclusive evidence that Video Games are making our kids fat cheaters. That’s at least what a study coming out of Ohio State University is suggesting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The study was conducted by having 172 Italian students either play violent or non-violent games and then conduct a test of honesty. While playing either type of video game participants were given a bowl of M&Ms to see whether the type of video game would effect how much the participants ate. The students wee either given a Grand Theft Auto game or a Pinball and Golf game, so clearly it was going for the most extreme opposite of games. After playing the games, the participants were asked to take a test to win raffle tickets, which they were then able to retrieve their won tickets from an unsupervised envelope to see if they would take more than their allocated tickets.

The results of the study found that students who were playing Grand Theft Auto ate 3 times more M&Ms than those who played the Non-violent video games, finally showing that Grand Theft Auto is a cause of obesity..wait, what? Likewise, the study found that students who played the violent video games were more likely to “steal” raffle tickets while  unsupervised. Together, these findings suggest that playing violent video games makes players less restrained. The study also suggest that males were more susceptible to this change in behavior than females, but females were also susceptible to the change.

So, should we throw our violent video games out the window for fear that we’ll put on pounds and rig the local raffle? (I’M GUNNA GET THAT BAKED CAKE AT ANY COST!) No. Of course not. These results only show a behavior pattern in a small sample of students that may not represent the population of gamers. Likewise, it hard to make the assumption that stealing raffle tickets from a hypothetical raffle means anymore than what it is.  Similarly, maybe one should ask what about playing games like GTA make players snack more than less encompassing games like 3D Pinball. It may not necessarily be a result of the violence in the video game, but rather the level of experience the gamer is having.

Meh, who knows. Ohio State may have to do additional research to prove their hypothesis.

Forbes Releases Their Choices for the Top 10 Powerful Women in Gaming

Forbes Releases Their Choices for the Top 10 Powerful Women in Gaming

Forbes released their list of the 10 most powerful women in gaming today. In an industry dominated by men, the 10 listed women are blazing new ground for female game developers in the industry. Check out the list and get to know these 10 women shaping the game industry.

That’s all I have for today. Not failed attempts and failed humor or witty insight.

Research Claims There’s A Connection Between Sexist Video Games and Rape

Research Claims There’s A Connection Between Sexist Video Games and Rape

A recent study coming out of Stanford is claiming that there’s a scientific connection between sexist video games and rape. Honestly, the study is more about a connection between video games and self-objectification, but we’ll go with that they’re claiming for right now.

A sample of the sexualized avatars used in the study

The study evaluates shifts in perspectives on rape culture and physical embodiment after playing with sexualized in-game avatars. The research group went about examining these shifts by having groups of female gamers play with highly sexualized avatars and then having them answer questions regarding views on rape and sexism. A control group of female gamers playing with non-sexualized avatars were used in comparrison to those with the sexualized avatars. The study found two things: The first, that gamers who were playing with sexualized avatars were more likely to give into myths about victim-base rape culture and that, two,  when the groups were playing with characters that mirrored themselves (including having their real life faces posted on the characters bodies) the proponents were  even more likely to give into victim-blamed myths about rape.  What the research contends is that gamers embody characteristics of their avatars, which alter their real-world perspectives as players with more sexualized avatars were reported as having much more body related thoughts than those without sexualized avatars. This would contend that sexualized avatars create more self-objectification than non-sexualized avatars.

What’s this mean? It would suggest that sexist female avatars and characters have negative effect on female gamers. Beyond the consequences of being more susceptible to myth about rape, which is what the study focuses on, the research seems to suggest that inaccurate representation of females in games have harmful effects on how female gamers are viewing themselves and females in general. While the study doesn’t go into the effects that sexist video game characters have on men, it does provide evidence that sexism in video games has effects on how gamers view women, which is certainly a great issue.  With a lack of accurate a fair female representations in the gaming world, the surplus of sexist and inaccurate video game females is showing to have more and more effect on female and male gamers alike.

 

I’m not really doing the research justice, so please go check out the link to the research study’s paper that was published in Computers in Human Behavior

IGN Has Created an Interactive Mario Museum Online

Online Video Game Museums: Mario

This is just more of a fun link than anything else, but IGN has created an interactive online museum for the Mario Bros. franchise. Granted, it’s not as complete as many fans would wish it to be, but it’s a fun little time waster. With Video Games making their lasting mark on contemporary culture, museums and preservation of video game history and video game past will become important as the old hardware begins to time out (which is currently happening to many video games). Without proper preservation video game history may be lacking in the future. Digital or non-digital, video game preservation is an important issue in the video game community.

But for now, check out the online museum and play around with them bros.

Research Suggest Some Video Game Promote Unhealthy Foods

Research Suggest Some Video Game Promote Unhealthy Foods

After being gone for an extended time, the Sociology of Video Games is back!

We’re coming back today with….A research study that suggest some video games promote unhealthy food.

Don’t eat that, that’s cat food!

A Michigan State University Research team conducted a study on “Advergames” and their prevalence in the video game world. An Advergame, for those of us who don’t inherently know made up words, is defined as an online game that specifically promotes a product, service, or company.  This isn’t surprising, as marketing teams have realized the obvious connection between kids playing games and kids getting their parents to buy them things. Of course, such games have been around, even before the advent of online video games. Let’s take a quick look at some of those great titles!

McKids (1992)

McKids was the fine product of copying Mario Brothers and McDonalds. Players got the chance to play around the magical Mcdonald world of talking food products, creepy clowns, Hamburger thievery, and whatever Grimace is. If you’re up for the challenge, you may even get your hands on Ronald’s Magic Bag! Oh boy!

 

 

 

Chex Quest (1996)

 Chex Quest was the best cereal based first person shooter of all time. Taking control of The Chex Warrior, players battled their way through levels fending off Chex hating aliens. The game was released as a free-in-cereal-box title for those who bought Chex cereal. Just beware, the game will make your computer smell like Chex!

 

Playstation All-Stars Island-Sponsored by Coke Zero (2013)

One of the more recent offenders comes to us from Coke and Sony. Playstation All-Stars come together for IOS minigames and promotion of coke! All proceeds go to Coke, Sony, and having no respect.

But we have to ask: is this a concern for video game players or advertisers? These games are going to made regardless of players consuming them or not. Similarly, it begs to reason that if a company (like coke or Mcdonalds) is big enough to be able to create an entire game based around their product it’s probably not the best product in the world.

“One of the things we were concerned about was that the majority of foods that received the most interest were those that tended to be energy dense — high in calories — and not high in nutrients,” said Lorraine Weatherspoon, a co-director of the project and an associate professor of food science and human nutrition. “These foods typically included high-sugar snacks and cereals as well as instant or canned soups, sugar-sweetened beverages and several types of candy products.”

Well..yeah, that’s because those companies that are big enough and well known enough for these types of marketing stunts to actually work are products that kids and consumers already know about.

So what’s to be done? Should Video Games cut ties to big corporation and marketing stunts all together? No, because that’s not something that can  realistically happen. Corporations are going to make games to market their products just like anyone can make a video game to push whatever strange idea or thought they have. If anything we shouldn’t be surprised that corporations are using video games to promote their unhealthy products.

Do Game Developers Need to do More to Prevent Addiction?

Published recently in Addiction and Research Theory, a paper entitled “Social responsibility in online videogaming: What should the videogame industry do?” questions whether developers of online video games should actively do more to prevent players of their games from getting addicted. Should they? Will they?

Before we delve into the content of the paper,  we should make note that video game addiction has become a growing problem over the years, grabbing many headlines and creating quite the concern. For some statistics about video game addiction, I’d advise to head over to www.techaddiction.ca for some interesting facts about this problem.

ONTO THE PAPER I SAY!

The paper has already gained notice in the press, as both the BBC and Washington Post have written articles about it:

Do video game makers owe it to players to keep them from getting addicted?

Do Online Game Developers Need to Do More to Prevent Addiction

The paper, given what we know about addiction to video games, calls for developers to decrease some of the elements in their games that cause addictive tendencies. This includes decreasing the number of long missions, decreasing the importance of doing repetitive tasks for the sake of leveling up characters (Grinding or farming), and making crazy uber-rewards for players who sink countless hours into the game. While many gamers may find these aspect of their favorite games essential, they’re often the most time consuming and addicting parts of them. Should game developers comply? Is it reasonable to be asking them to take measures to prevent addiction when video game addiction, for all intensive purposes, is financially positive?

While some of what the paper calls for seems a little far fetched, specifically taking out grinding,  some publishers have already taken steps to prevent their games from getting overly addicted. For example, Blizzard Entertainment, the maker of World of WarCraft and most of the games that will get you addicted, took out a reward in WOW for players who reached the highest level possible to prevent gamers from over doing it for the sake of obtaining this reward. Likewise, warning of over-playing have been used in numerous games in the past. Nintendo, for example, ask players to take a break from playing in several of their games if they exceed a certain number of hours in game. Similarly, games like Animal Crossing even go as far as to only allow players to do certain content during normal hours of the day, not giving players much to do during night hours. These little reminders, while easily ignored, do help to remind gamers that they need to step away from their gaming devices every once and awhile.

With gaming getting more and more intertwined with daily life, it’s only natural that more and more gaming will become addictive. You can talk with your friends, watch shows with them and even share content, so the need to remove yourself from your gaming devices is lessening. So perhaps it is up to gaming developers to at least try and make some in-game  attempt to prevent their players from over addiction. It’s not crazy, honestly; we ask our manufacturers of Alcohol to ask their consumers to not over do it. Social responsibility for their products is not asking too much of game developers. After all, a healthy gaming populace is a happy gaming populace.

If you have an opinion, please let me know! I’m very interested to learn what players of MMOs and other games that fall into what the media calls “addictive” think about this matter. Not being a MMO player, or much of an online gamer, myself I can really only take the stance of an outsider on this.

 

Can Video Games Help Alleviate Dyslexia?

Can Video Games Help Alleviate Dyslexia?

A recent study out of the University of Padua in Italy found some interesting findings on the results that video games have on those with dyslexia.  The study, although very small, found that participants with dyslexia had their reading speeds increased after sessions of playing action-based video games. This begs the question: Can video games help kids with dyslexia improve their reading ability?

The Study: A research group at the University of Padua measured the improvements in reading scores of 20 kids with dyslexia after playing video games. One group had nine 80 minute sessions of playing an action-based video games, while the other group had nine 80-minute sessions of playing a non-action based video games. Essentially, one group played something akin to Sonic and one group played something akin to Professor Layton

Stay away from my dyslexic kids LAYTON!

The Results:

The study found that the kids who played action-based video games had their reading speeds increase moreso than those who played the non-action-based video game. Likewise, the scores outpaced the normal improvements children with dyslexia naturally gain over the course of a year. Thus, there seems to some evidence to suggest that playing action-based games that require a lot of shifting of attention may help kids with dyslexia improving their reading speed.

It can’t just be Krato’s menacing stare that is causing these improvements with action-based video games and not others. The researchers suggest that action-based video games hone visual attention skills, which are lacking in children with dyslexia. Action-based video games help hone these skills by constantly making the player shift their attention and focus in game. This could mean that children with dyslexia can actually benefit from scheduled playtime with games that are more action based. An issue for many parents with kids with dyslexia, the article points out, has been keeping their children’s interest in the programs meant to help alleviate dyslexia, an issue video games typically don’t have with kids.

Obviously more study will have to be done on this issue before anyone can call it definitive evidence, but it is interesting to say the least. I would be interested to see how video games rank in helping dyslexia compared to the gains found in organized programs, if such results are found. But who knows, maybe this is something parents with kids with dyslexia look into- they’ll be playing video games already most likely, so why not choose something a little more action based like Sonic or Mario Kart

Media Molecule Studio Director: “It takes women working on games for games to change”

Media Molecule Studio Director: “It takes women working on games for games to change”

In a recent interview on BBC Radio, Media Molecule Studio Director Siobhan Reddy addressed the issue of gender in the gaming industry. For anyone who doesn’t know of Media Molecule’s work, they’re the studio behind the real-time sock puppet life-simulator that is “Little Big Planet”

“We have a lot of women within the industry who run studios and pack a mean punch, the influence of women within the industry is pretty great, but we need to see that on the game design and programming side as well.”

What Reddy refers to is the lack of female representation in gaming, be it through the lack of female protagonist or the lack of industry focus. As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, with female gamers making up nearly 50% of the gaming population, it’s certainly time for the industry to take notice and start making accurate representation of females in games and making more games that appeal to females and both males and females.

Reddy herself is in a small majority, as most studios are still run by males and the gaming industry in general is a male dominated one.   She believes by empowering females to design and make games that the gaming industry will change for the better. We’ve certainly seen the call for this in other avenues, such as the girl scouts promoting young girls to design video games.

“It takes women working on games for games to change. I know there are all sort of discussions about where it is now and where it has been but I’m interested in where it’s going… particularly like the type of things we’re making at Media Molecule and lots of other studios are making, games which are for both genders and all ages.”

So who knows, will these call for more females to enter the gaming workforce make for diverse and fair games? One can hope. Meanwhile, we can all make our Sackboys as awesomely feminine as we want.

Neat.

 

Study shows Motion Controlled Video Games Make For Less Aggression

Study shows Motion Controlled Video Games Make For Less Aggressioon

Pacific Standard explored a recent study that evaluated the amount of aggression that varying types of Video games produced in players. For the sake of this article, we’re going to pretend like that the link between video games and aggression is completely valid. It certainly does seem that video games can at least stimulate the aggression sensors in brain, but no conclusive evidence has shown that video games necessarily create aggression or violence (Correct me if I’m wrong)

Let’s look at this here study!

The study, conducted by a research team out of Penn State Altoona, measured the amount of aggression created when gamers use  motion controls and when gamers used traditional analog control.

The Altoona mascot tells people to stuff it!
The Altoona mascot tells people to stuff it!

The results were surprising. Despite what many might expect, video games that used motion controls actually led to less aggression than those with traditional analog control. That means your Wii and Kinect are seemingly less likely to make you go postal! Super!

The research team went about the feat by making players play games like “Punch-Out” on the Wii with either the game’s motion controlled option or traditional analog option. After playing the game for an extended period participants were given a test to measure their aggression. In one of the exercise,participant were asked to finish words and their responses were measured for aggression. For example, a participant could answer either finish a “KI” with either LL or SS. Those who wrote Kill instead of Kiss were judged more aggressive. Not the greatest indicator of aggression, but whatever.

“One potential explanation is that motion-capture technology is more cathartic than analog video-game play”…. “A related explanation is that motion-capture technology requires greater physical expenditure. There is evidence that people are less violent after short periods of exercise or exertion.”

That makes sense. Exercise and a physical activity have been known to decrease aggression for sometime, so it’s only natural that games that make you move more than normal would have the same effect. I know I’m much more in favor of breaking someone’s leg after playing Mario than I am after playing Kinect Sports. The study goes onto propose that games with motion controls negate the amount of aggression produced in violent video games, making the amounts of aggression closer to those created in non-violent video games. So, maybe it’s just the Goombas that are making me angry.

What does this mean for all those naysayers of video games.

“Contrary to the fears of industry critics, this research suggests that newer technologies, which create a more realistic experience, will not necessarily increase aggression in video game players”

At least if they have motion controls.. Separate studies will have to be conducted on whether more realistic games produce more aggression than less realistic games. For example, would a violent PS2 title have the same levels of aggression production as a PS4 title because of the added realism? QUESTIONS TO BE ANSWERED MY FRIENDS. With new waves of researchers entering the field, ones who grew up with consoles and pc games in the home, slowly but surely we’ll begin seeing better designed studies and research experiments.

Study using Kinect’s Nat Geo TV didn’t lead to aggression, only confusion and nightmares.

I’m not presenting this article as infallible, as I have plenty of questions not answered by the study’s abstract or the Pacific Standard piece (I’m not going to buy the pdf). I do think it is interesting that this form of research hasn’t really been done before, especially since it makes logical sense. With the violence and video games being such a big controversy, it’s interesting when researchers step outside of the constantly studied questions and explore other avenues.

Video Game Dev. to Show Consequences of Guns in Game

Video Game Dev. to Show Consequences of Guns in Game

Anyone who has played a video game has most likely fired an in game gun. From Megabusters to in-game replicas of real life guns, shooting has become a mainstay in video games. However, not many video games show the real consequences of gun usage besides “splat, there goes his head”. This is where this project comes in. The game, tentatively called Gun Factory, hopes to show players how and where guns are made, as well shown them  the unforeseen consequences of overproduction of guns has on a global scale. Hopefully you’re not asleep yet.

Being developed by a summer program at Concordia University, the game is one of four projects seeking to turn video game conventions on their head. The game puts you in charge of a factory that is manufacturing guns and then goes on to show you the consequences that over-production of guns causes globally. This is an attempt to educate gamers on the real consequences that guns have on the world. It’s a novel idea, as video games and guns have a very confusing history:

Things Video Games have taught players through the ages:

  • 1920s: Carnival shooting galleries make kids really hate clowns and inanimate objects.
  • 1985: Duck Hunt teaches players that the only consequences of firing guns are killing birds and dogs laughing at you.
  • 1993: Yoshi Safari shows kids that riding dinosaurs and shooting guns at the same time are not incompatible.
  • 1994: Virtua Cop teaches players that emotional trauma is not a thing for hostages.
  • 2005: Shadow the Hedgehog teaches kids that small forest creatures are gun ready and willing.
  • 2007: Portal shows that guns can solve any problems, including puzzles!

“The actual idea is about how profiteering works, and it shows that as you develop more guns it doesn’t really solve the world’s problems.”

Sure they do. Hungry? Eat a gun. Too small to reach something? Fire a gun at it. Gun stuck on your other gun? Shoot it. Joking aside, this is an important idea to learn, but are video games really the right medium? The developers sure think so, but that won’t stop many gamers from either not playing the game or not knowing that it even exists.

The game follows in the footsteps of other culture awareness games like “Get Water”, a game about collecting water in areas in which water is scarce. Don’t remember that game? Probably because not many people have played it. These types of games are interesting and compelling, but not to the majority of gamers. While the article conveys that the developers are very much trying to make “fun” the backbone of the game, in a medium where most regular games don’t see many sales or plays, games like Gun Factory and Get Water are almost surely doomed.

But maybe there’s hope in festivals and showings like Games For Change, an annual festival that shows off these types of culturally aware games. Games featured on their website include “Priviledge: The Game of Economic Inequality” and “NarcoGuerra” a game in which you play as the Mexican authorities trying to break-up the drugwar. Clearly these games aren’t Mario and Halo, but perhaps they’re fun (I haven’t tried them out).

With Gun control being a hot-button issue for most Americans, it’s unlikely that games like Gun Factory are going to sway anyone’s opinion, but certainly it might educate gamers on a lesser side of guns’ effects. And hey, people conveying social issues through video games is a neat idea- It worked for Katamari Damacy teaching about waste control, and Harvest Moon for agricultural studies.