The Decline of the Game and the Gamer

[ajqtrz]

Gaming is a wonderful way to meet new people and have some time-wasting fun. And at the beginning of things nobody thought a lot about the potential impact of gaming on a players real life. But now, 25 years after the "invention" of the Internet (Sorry Mr. Gore, but you didn't invent it), we find that there are quite a number of significant changes to not only how we live with each other in the game, but in real life as well.

From various studies we find that the more you grew up with the Internet the less likely you are to be comfortable with face to face interactions. In fact, many young people use the Internet (social media AND gaming) to establish and maintain a "perfect" or "nearly perfect" set of social alliances to the exclusion of many of the more traditional social connections of the offline world. Studies indicate that, more and more, people are defining themselves by what they do online more than offline. And since their online image is often more controllable (read manipulable), they have a more positive view of themselves when online. This, in turn, encourages isolation and access control. In other words, they can "unlike" and/or "ignore" anyone who might challenge their view of themselves and their behavior.

Social isolation of this type is not, technically speaking, isolation so much as the thinning of relationships. Traditional offline relationships are deeper because it is almost always impossible, over time, to "hide" ones faults AND one is forced to confront those things which are, or might be seen as, unseemly about oneself. Thus, online relationships can be managed and if so, the one doing the managing, is less likely to change his or her attitudes and/or actions since, for the most part, one can filter criticism. Since the rewards of such filters are great they contribute to a higher level of self esteem, but also a lower level of maturity. One grows, in part, by being confronted with one's own immaturity.

In addition to the thinning of significant relationships (a process which has been greatly encouraged by our post-modern society in general), research has shown pretty conclusively that five things lead to an increase in violent behaviors. First, the age and gender. Young males between the ages of 12 and 24 are most negatively effected by online gaming. The third variable is the level of violence in the game; the fourth, the duration of the gaming session; and, fifth, the number of sessions played over the amount of time having played (duration, session, consistency). Most researchers have found that players respond to offline irritations more strongly when the game I more violent; they have been playing a longer session; and they are more invested in the game. And they have found that in young male players, in particular, the effects (i.e. the increase in intensity of response) last longer once the session has ended the higher the commitment to the game.

Now of course, this does not mean the player has become some kind of a Hitler due to his playing the game. But it does means that that game is more than "just a game" since it does effect his body. This should not be too surprising since the physiological responses of the player to the game are nearly the same as they are in offline experiences. In other words, one would expect a person living in a violent world to be more likely to engage in a higher level of violence because his body would be at a longer and heightened level of alertness by habit. Long sessions in a violent game would, naturally, re-condition the players body to be more willing to respond quickly and without too much thought.

So how do or will these things lead to the "decline" of the game and the gamer?

First, it is pretty obvious that at some point the increasingly clear picture research has shown of the negative aspects of intense online (more violent) gaming will become a social issue and will lead to some kind of increased restrictions of who can play and for how long. This will, in turn, reduce the revenues of the game and make their development less appealing.

Second, it is pretty obvious that if you feed a young male a steady diet of violent gaming he will be more likely to commit some kind of truly violent crime and thus be removed from the gaming world altogether. I am not saying that every young male is going to become an ax murderer, or that gaming alone is or would be the cause of their picking up an ax and chopping off their sister's head. But I am saying that, in conjunction with many other factors, including arrested emotional development, isolation, and mental illness, it is more likely that somebody's sister will be found sans head in response to a long session of Call of Duty than not.

In the end then, it is likely that as the evidence piles up that some games are not as healthy as we would like to believe, once we find the headless sister, we may find society taking swift and probably somewhat irrational (or at least overkill) actions against the game and the gamer.

AJ

 

[Ashrem]

But now, 25 years after the "invention" of the Internet (Sorry Mr. Gore, but you didn't invent it)

I'm not sure what you mean by the internet, but it is substantially more than 25 years old*1. Mr Gore never claimed to have invented the internet, but rather said he took the initiative in creating it. The other is a deliberate misrepresentation made by his detractors to attack his credibility and keeps getting repeated by people who can't be bothered to find out the truth before repeating it*2.

From various studies we find that the more you grew up with the Internet the less likely you are to be comfortable with face to face interactions

The Various studies that postulated this tend to have their origins in christian campuses that are pushing an agenda. The bulk of independent research does not support the idea that video gamers are less comfortable in face-to-face interactions, when you look at similar coteries.

Second, it is pretty obvious that if you feed a young male a steady diet of violent gaming he will be more likely to commit some kind of truly violent crime

This is a discredited claim used by lawyers that had no basis in fact. Timely enough, Science Daily a few months ago

Assertions throughout the essay are laced with extrapolations which are not supported by independent evidence. People are not less social than they used to be, they are differently social, and on average, more social, but a large segment of the population refuses to acknowledge anything that isn't exactly the way they do things. People today are choosing with whom to socialize from a much larger pool of people than would have been imaginable a century ago, and are forming strong relationships that benefit from ease of contact. There is some sign that people who are not facile with technology are not benefiting from that, and are, in fact, suffering from being excluded by their peers. People who are not, under most circumstances, inclined to be sociable, are more visible than they were a hundred years ago, when they could have lived their entire lives without being aware of the wider world, nor it aware of them. A hundred years ago, the only news we had of those not in our immediate community was what fit in the international column of the newspapers. A hundred years before that, virtually none of us would have even that, instead constrained in our information to what traveled over weeks, months, or years, by word of mouth. I was in my 20s before I was aware that a man who lived less than 10 miles from me had murdered his entire family and himself one night during my childhood. Today there'd have been an online memorial and gofundme page before the blood was cold, making certain that virtually everyone in western civilization over the age of five would be aware of the details.

*1 - The term "internet" was in widespread use 40 years ago. Our university has been offering ubiquitous access to personal email since the early 80s. I work every day with Earl Fogel, who invented hotlinks in the 1980s, some 30 years ago (transforming the previous lists of addresses you'd have to re-type to get to the required server into an arrow-return-key selectable list.

*2 - Vincent Cerf (typically referred to as the father of the internet) and Robert Kahn noted nearly two decades ago that in the 70s congressman Gore was probably the first political leader to recognize the importance of high-speed machine-to-machine communications for both education and commerce, and to promote the concepts that lead to the internet we have today.

 

[ajqtrz]

@Ashrem

I did not actually think Al Gore meant he invented the Internet nor do I believe anybody took his words so literally despite the silly commentators looking to make a buck on a badly worded phrase. In my defense I was just trying to insert some humor. I was at the University of California, Davis when I went on to what was a DOD driven network of about 32 universities in 1982 and am fully aware of the history of computers and technology. I've lectured on it many times and am known for my knowledge. I apologize to anyone who may, perhaps rightly, thought I was misrepresenting the facts. You are quite correct and what I've always thought Mr. Gore to have meant is that he was, as you state, early to recognize the power of the new technology.

AS for the rest, my research note are at my office and thus I will need to access them tomorrow if I have time. But I will do so. (Lucky you!)

AJ

 

[hvariidh gwendrot]

well i grew up in south texas and we watched kung fu growing up then went out and tried to spear each other and ninja star each other by the creek and there wasn't an internet then..... so the violence in youth is more ingrained in the membrane than whether or not a gorilla throws a banana peel at ya on a screen

 

[ajqtrz]

@Ashrem
Try this as a short discussion on the connection between violent video games and offline aggression from the National Center for Health Research

"Studies have shown that playing violent video games can increase aggressive thoughts, behaviors, and feelings in both the short-term and long-term.[2] Violent video games can also desensitize people to seeing aggressive behavior and decrease prosocial behaviors such as helping another person and feeling empathy (the ability to understand others). The longer that individuals are exposed to violent video games, the more likely they are to have aggressive behaviors, thoughts, and feelings. These effects have been seen in studies in both Eastern and Western countries. Although males spend more time than females playing violent video games, violent video game exposure can increase aggressive thoughts, behaviors, and feelings in both sexes."

http://www.center4research.org/violent-video-games-can-increase-aggression/

The point is not that violence is automatically triggered by a session of Call of Duty, but that, combined with the factors mentioned, aggressive behavior increases. Aggressive behavior is not always violent if one takes a narrow view of violence and restricts it to physical aggression. But if you have a population which, overall, is more aggressive, you can bet that it will also be, overall, more violent.

As for the social aspect of violent gaming, it ought to be patently obvious that if a young man is able to be a capable warrior online his image of himself offline will be altered. While it is true that almost all players can and do make the distinction between the game and real life, the positive reinforcement received by the player in the game, how it effects his image of himself, is not psychologically different than the positive reinforcement received by the player outside the game. The chemical reaction of the brain is the same in both situations since endorphins are at play in both cases and there are not "play" endorphins and "not play" endorphins. Since young men are, at the age of 12-16 at least, still developing their self image it stands to reason playing an online violent game and winning reinforces their confidence in their abilities. This is only negative if their abilities offline are not equal to their abilities online, a situation where access to a credit card is often the way to "win" in the game but not in the offline world. For some insight into the negative aspects of playing violent video games:

https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/PCWorld/story?id=6821347
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...o-games-has-risks-study-idUSTRE51508820090206

The actual study is in Journal of Youth and Adolescence. January, 2012

Both these sources report on one study and the authors do use a lot of caveats in the study. In my opinion, the older one gets the less likely it is that the game will significantly effect his or her self-esteem, but that also means that the younger you are the more the chance it will. Again, not EVERYBODY is effected negatively enough to warrant much concern, but SOME probably are. And playing violent video games is not the only contributing factor in those who are effected.

As for the claim I made, that, "it is pretty obvious that if you feed a young male a steady diet of violent gaming he will be more likely to commit some kind of truly violent crime" to which you replied "is a discredited claim used by lawyers that had no basis in fact" and then offered the reference to a Science Daily article claiming such. Unfortunately, the basis of the article is a single set of experiments done at one research facility AND, in their own words: "We also only tested these theories on adults, so more work is needed to understand whether a different effect is evident in children players."

Perhaps more to the point, while the study quoted was large, it did not focus on the population probably most effected AND it is only one study. What the studies can prove about priming is little since measuring "priming" by a cognitive test only measures cognitive, conceptual, ideas. It does not measure emotive states and behaviors. Aggression is primarily an emotive response and if you don't measure that you have a flawed measure.

Thus, when the authors open their article on the studies and say: "In a series of experiments, with more than 3,000 participants, the team demonstrated that video game concepts do not 'prime' players to behave in certain ways and that increasing the realism of violent video games does not necessarily increase aggression in game players," they may or may not be right that "video game concepts do not 'prime' players to behave in certain ways, and that increasing realism of violent video games does not necessarily increase aggression in game players" but the study, as described, does not prove it.

The whole mistake made is that the authors of the study think that priming is exposure to "concepts," when priming is an emotional set-up, not a cognitive one and must be measured as such.

In any case, the amount of research done on the subject over the last thirty years or more, was, at first, unable to show a relationship between violent games (and violent media in general), but has progressed in the last ten years to being able to measure an increase in aggressive thoughts, words, and actions under the circumstances mentioned in my original post. Here's a good summation of the current research (as of 2016) https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/...h-about-violent-video-games-and-kids-part-1-3

As for the social isolation aspect of my original post, you are probably right to be a bit critical. My theory of self actualization predicts that the fewer channels of connection you have with another person the lower intimacy and the less intimacy the more isolation. If that is true then restricting most interactions to text greatly influences not the contact made, but the quality of that contact. Furthermore, with the ability to filter out those with whom you may be uncomfortable or just wish to ignore for now, it stands to reason both the width (the range of different cultures and beliefs with which you come into significant contact) and the depth (the depth of intimacy as measured by self-exposure) are negatively effected. In any case you didn't seem to be as much bothered by that claim as the connection between violent video games and aggression in real life.

I do hope that I have dealt with your claim that my original post was "laced with extrapolations which are not supported by independent evidence" by showing that while I did not include much independent evidence I was at least basing my comments on research.

Thanks for the response.

AJ

 

[Ashrem]

None of the studies that try to show a causal relationship between violent video games and violent thoughts/behaviour have successfully isolated the subjects from the plethora of other intruding factors like fictional and non-fictional television and movies, music, and the other behaviour readily available on the internet along with a general greater awareness of the world and possibilities. A greater proportion of those coming to maturity in the last few decades have been under greater pressure to absorb more information than any previous time in history.

There has been a broad movement in the last two decades for faith and family based organizations to take advantage of the huge leaps in communication of the computer era to promote their self fulfilling research as impartial. In 2011 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that there is no clear evidence linking violence in video games to violent actions. The APA (in their most recent statements on the matter) have indicated only that there is an association, but do not propose a causal link.

Christopher Ferguson in SAGE journals publishes a meta-analysis of around 100 studies on video games and violence, finding little evidence of a connection, and further writes for The Conversation, (which specifically devotes its energies to rigor in academic publishing) that studies concluding an effect were more likely to be published successfully than studies which found no connection.

There is a great deal of research into the subject, much of which not reliable..

 

[DeletedUser1946]

I don't see this as a violent game. Tiny avatars stagger around and poke at each other and then they fall over.

 

[Ashrem]

I don't see this as a violent game. Tiny avatars stagger around and poke at each other and then they fall over.

I read the OP as a generalization, rather than something specifically related to Elvenar.

 

[DeletedUser3507]

You guys are wacky... to an extreme...
And any game that has a battle feature is inherently violent..

 

[Ashrem]

You guys are just wacky...

not "just"

 

[Sir Squirrel]

Time to stop playing angry birds, before I get the urge to shot birds from a sling shot at my neighbors tree house and try to knock it down!

 

[DeletedUser17510]

I feel that parental oversight or the lack there of has more to do with whether or not young males turn out to be violent. Sure we can take the easy way out and appoint blame to the video game makers. Or we can choose to look a little deeper at the real problem. Young males need a father in the home and more children are raised in a single parent home than in any other time in history. In most of these homes it is the mother raising the children. Not knocking mothers but the fathers role is that of the disciplinarian and without discipline young men in particular lash out. We choose to overlook this simple truth because to think of it or dare to speak against social construct is considered taboo.

 

[Ashrem]

I think the notion that youth today are more violent than in earlier eras is nothing but the standard yearning for the "golden years."

75 years ago, young men were setting fire to churches and hanging colored men for whistling at white women. Fifty years before that they were beating each other with lead pipes for being on the wrong side of whether to unionize or not. It was tough in those times for a young man to get his hands on a repeating firearm and hundred pounds of ammunition, or instructions for turning fertilizer and diesel into a truck-sized bomb. What we are seeing is not any change in how people behave, but the combination of greater access to finding out how to plan and carry-out massive crimes, isolated groups finding each other in secretive chat rooms to egg each other on, and a world-wide instant media so that each such crime is made known to the entire world within minutes. 400 years ago, if a group of men placed large numbers of barrels of gunpowder under the British Parliament in an effort to destroy it with everyone inside, someone a hundred miles away might not find out for a year, if ever for those in rural areas that couldn't read. 2000 years ago they'd have been watching state-sanctioned combat to the death between various combinations of criminals, slaves, and animals