Do you remember the good old days? When game manufacturers fully realised that gamers don't really need a motivation and a back story to make them want to kill everything on screen? The good old days, when Grand Theft Auto 1 was released, and Carmageddon 1 and 2 were made. Those were the days. Somewhere along the way, however, game designers started shoe-horning backstories and motivations into games where the goal is "kill everything", and as a consequence, these games became pretentious. Thank god, however, for Saints Row 2: a game that brings back the good old days of mindless violence - just for the fun of it.
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Member since:2008-07-15
Research with no baseline test is worthless.
One can be a good samaritan, and still watch 300 and The Ruins and play GTA.
I saw that comment and immediately thought non issue. If the groups are randomly assigned, which in any of these studies they are, and you have a decent sample size you shouldn't worry all that much about the underlining differences in the two groups. More specifically the baseline, whatever that means, average response times of the two groups should not be statistically different.
The interpretation is relative not absoloute. Games labeled "violent" relative to those labeled "non-violent".
Member since:2006-04-22
"First neither group was tested before hand to set a base for their individual reaction times. The differences are in SECONDS. Obviously some people think SLOWER than others. Maybe they were considering the personal threat if becoming involved.
After a few seconds everyone seems to become involved. If people were really desensitized they would never become involved. And at no point is the group dynamic addressed.
Just more half assed horror stories seeking outside sources to blame and simplify problems.
Research with no baseline test is worthless.
One can be a good samaritan, and still watch 300 and The Ruins and play GTA. "
You are quoting from a comment some anonymous person has posted as fact. Did either actually read the study?
In regards to the whole
The whole point is that the group that watched the violence had a delayed reaction. Are you implying that by some miracle all the slow people somehow managed accidentally and randomly be in just the one group?
The whole point is that if watching such violence does have an impact, even if it is a delayed reaction, this still warrants further study and discussion. Outright dismissal is the same as censorship. Fact of the matter is that every time some study comes out like this, kids always react the same. But I would rather take the opinions of educated researchers over that of a 17 year old gamer. Sorry.
Member since:2005-08-28
There's another vitally important piece of information they left out, and that is the standard deviation. The article merely claims that people who played the violent video game took five times longer to help... but not all of them did. Certainly five times longer looks significant, but it has to be an average of everyone's results. I can almost guarantee you a few people who played the violent video game responded to it in faster than 16 seconds.
Put it another way, the spread between how people scored the fight was 5.9 to 6.4. We don't know how much overlap there was. If the violent group on average scored it somewhere between 5.5 and 6.5, we might have something. If they scored it between 4 and 8... maybe not.
I'd also like to note this story from the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7826663.stm. In short, kid shoots parents because they took away Halo 3. I know plenty of people who have played Halo 3, and they are neither violent, nor so attached to it they'd plan murderous revenge if it were taken from them, and yet I'm sure some people will be championing this as proof of causation.
I generally take the opposite line on topics dealing with, for instance, the NRA and gun control, but that's because I can't really conceive of a reason to have a gun other than violence: shooting or threatening to shoot someone/thing.
Member since:
2008-04-04
Let me qoute a comment from blog linked by areks
After a few seconds everyone seems to become involved. If people were really desensitized they would never become involved. And at no point is the group dynamic addressed.
Just more half assed horror stories seeking outside sources to blame and simplify problems.
Research with no baseline test is worthless.
One can be a good samaritan, and still watch 300 and The Ruins and play GTA.