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Old 11-29-2006, 08:27 AM   #1
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Default Well, it happened again. Scientists are bashing video games.

Violent video games in fact. Scientists and researchers had a new study where they had a set amount of college and high-school students, and two games, MOH and NFS. They had half of the group play MOH and the other half play NFS, each for a half-hour. Then they ran a few tests and ran an MRI. It appeared that the kids who played MOH had a change in the wiring of their brain.

So now, researchers are saying that violent video games change your brain and could, in essence, kill somebody or commit the same acts as in the game.

Discuss.

EDIT: http://cbs5.com/health/local_story_332200804.html
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Old 11-29-2006, 09:59 AM   #2
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Default Re: Well, it happened again. Scientists are bashing video games.

i dont think a video game could make someone kill people like the kid that killed those cops and then blamed it on gta 3 i think he was just crazy and dident have an answer or they made him say that so they could limit sales somehow
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Old 11-29-2006, 12:12 PM   #3
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Default Re: Well, it happened again. Scientists are bashing video games.

This is the same story wrapped up all nice and neat in a new way just in time for Christmas. There's more violence on the news, daytime tv, and primetime tv than anywhere else, especially video games. It's no threat, and nothing new has been proven.
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Old 11-29-2006, 12:20 PM   #4
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Default Re: Well, it happened again. Scientists are bashing video games.

'Tis the season
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Old 11-29-2006, 12:22 PM   #5
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Default Re: Well, it happened again. Scientists are bashing video games.

WTF. Videogames do NOT CAUSE VIOLENCE!

HERE IS STATISTICS FROM THE BUREAU OF JUSTICE, THESE ARE WHAT THE FBI USES TO MONITOR CRIME.

Here are some quotes.

Since 1994, violent crime rates have declined, reaching the lowest level ever in 2005.
(For General Violent Crime Rates) (Refer to Graph 1)

Nonfatal firearm-related crime has plummeted since 1993, before increasing in 2005.
(For Nonfatal Firearm Related Crime) (Refer to Graph 2)



(references http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/)
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Old 11-29-2006, 12:24 PM   #6
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Default Re: Well, it happened again. Scientists are bashing video games.

They fail to mention that several other emotions are tied to the amygdala that could have triggered it.

Scientists can use facts and numbers to perpetuate lies if they're funded by the right organization.

In other news, ol' Jacky heard about a teenage bombing in Maine and instantly called the police chief in the town and asked if the kids owned Grand Theft Auto.

ps - I'm writing a paper on this. 12 pages. Most of it comes from this : http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/myturn/?id=10787
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Old 11-29-2006, 12:29 PM   #7
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Default Re: Well, it happened again. Scientists are bashing video games.

Squeek, Use the website I got the information from above. http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs that will help you out a LOT. These are the graphs that are recorded and used by the FBI. They have proved the opposite, that crime has DROPPED since 1993. And Violence among youth has decreased a lot too.
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Old 11-29-2006, 12:40 PM   #8
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Default Re: Well, it happened again. Scientists are bashing video games.

Yes, it is a 12-page research essay, so it's quite obvious that I would quote the Department of Justice's records of youth violence.

I already have it written. I guess I'll just post it.

Quote:
Violence in Video Games
With the current surge of parents and lawmakers fuming over protecting children from violence at an early age, it was easy to pinpoint certain activities that could lead children down a life of crime. The most obvious answers are where the children grow up and how the people around them live their daily lives. However, those who seek to protect children have reached a little further than that in order to snuff out violence at as early an age as possible. Not long ago, the game of dodgeball was banned in numerous schools across the country for being too violent. Only recently though were more extreme versions of schoolyard bans, like a Boston school banning the game of tag (MSNBC, par. 1). To some, it seemed obvious that the next target would be video games such as Grand Theft Auto. However, violent video games are not the cause of serious crimes among children such as school shootings and those involved in debates over these games are pointing the finger at the wrong entity to take responsibility for allowing children to be exposed to violent video games, misunderstanding what is considered “violence” in video games and other forms of media, and failing to discover the source of the false concerns brought up within the debates.

When any trouble occurs in this country, the citizens will always look for the source of the problem and attempt to remove it. This is the only way to make sure it does not happen again, after all, so it is a fairly efficient means by which to take action. However, this style of attack has a flaw, and that flaw comes into play when the source being attacked is mislabeled. What would America have done if we had decided to make the Soviet Union the biggest threat during World War II and simply ignore Germany?

The same situation on a much smaller scale is occuring with now with a different mis-targeted source: video games. As the years go by and technology improves, video games get more and more realistic, and as a result have a certain level of immersion. No longer do gamers control a small yellow disc with a small piece removed chasing down little pellets, nor do they control a centipede running around trying to find apples to eat without running into its ever-growing self. Games of the twenty-first century can involve a player controlling a single unit in an army of soldiers in a realistic recreation of events that took place in World War II, or an army of one in a futuristic world with battles to preserve the core of mankind.

As games became more and more popular during the nineties, an organization was founded in order to treat video games just as movies are treated with a rating system. This organization, known as the Electronic Software Rating Board (ESRB), has three primary categories for rating games to keep them simple: E for Everyone, T for Teen, and M for Mature. Retailers are asked to ensure that minors are not able to buy games unsuitable for their age, but there are those stores that do not care so long as they get a sale. Is it right to blame retailers for this? It’s a bit of a toss-up, but looking further back into the chain of events leading up to the attempted purchase of a game leads to the source of the money being used to pay for the game—the parent. In another situation, where the parent is actually purchasing the game for the child, it falls on their shoulders yet again. Yet another situation in which the game has been purchased and the parent either notices the box for the game while the child is not playing it, sees it in action, or does not take notice whatsoever is all the parent’s fault once more.

No matter how anyone plays the blame game, the end result is always the parent who either funded, bought, or neglected to take action in preventing their child from playing the game. M for Mature games are not intended to be played by anyone under seventeen, much like how R-rated movies are for the same age group. A study by the Center for Children and Families covered on health news website HealthDay.com reports that underage drinking and smoking have a direct link to the availability of R-rated movies to children. Madeline Dalton, head of the study, says that “media is a very important part of children's lives today, and parents need to take it seriously” (Gordon, par. 1). Dalton goes on to say “I was pretty surprised at how few parents set restrictions and monitored movie-viewing” (Gordon, par. 17).

If so few parents are managing their children's movie-viewing habits, then they will not be monitoring what their children purchase at a video game store. M for Mature means just what it implies: games rated with this letter are not suitable for children. It is therefore the parent's responsibility to regulate what their children watch, play, and interact with and any lack of taking responsibility should not be pushed onto the publisher or manufacturer of the video game. The ESRB knew of the danger M-rated games could possibly pose to children and sought to prevent any problems by rating the game for adults or mature children. If congresspeople, parents, and those involved in the debates are wrong about who to blame for failing to take responsibility, then clearly they can be wrong about other factors in the argument for prevention of violence in video games as well.

As it turns out, they are wrong about yet another key part of this argument. For this argument to be true at all, there would not only have to be a tie to violence and video games, but there would also have to be violent crimes committed with which the link can be formed. However, according to the Department of Justice's crime rate statistics among children, no such link exists. In fact, crime rate has been increasingly dropping ever since video games became popular (Department of Justice).

According to Duke Ferris, owner of gaming news website GameRevolution.com, those in charge of making laws have been so invigorated by trying to protect children from harm that they have completely misjudged children of this day and age. With such events as arrests for eating a french fry (Galveston County News) and strip-searches to find a lost ten dollar bill (OverCriminalized) taking place among children, it is increasingly obvious that the lawmakers assume the worst of our children before even trying to “shield them from harm”. Duke Ferris goes on to say “The most peaceful generation of Americans in recorded history is being shoved through metal detectors, having their civil rights violated on a daily basis, are the victims of unreasonable search and seizure, and are treated with constant suspicion” (Ferris, par. 22).

Yet another problem is that the definition of “violence” is incredibly subjective. What is violent to one person may be commonplace to another, whether the two people are in different towns, states, countries, or continents. Cultural differences play a key role in defining violence along with how a person was raised. What we consider violent and unsuitable for children here in America may be commonplace overseas on prime time television broadcasts. Of course, this can work in reverse too, where a person considers anything and everything to be violent in nature. In fact, according to a study by Dr. Kimberly Thompson, those classic games mentioned before -- the lovable Pac-Man and Centipede -- are so violent that they should never be exposed to children, along with their ratings being changed from the ESRB’s E rating. Her study analyzed gameplay for 90 minutes and calculated how many minutes featured violent gameplay. For Pac-Man, 56 minutes were filled with violence, while Centipede had 84 violent-filled minutes.

Anyone who has played these classics would note the flaw in this study with the way it is presented thus far. Pac-Man featured a small pie-shaped disc eating pellets while running away from ghosts. Centipede had a small snake that grew longer with each apple it ate. The animation of this day was crude at best, which only aides the fact that these games are completely void of violence. To further add incredibility to her theory, Dr. Thompson continued her study with a comparison between old games and their counterparts on upgraded consoles.

With each new console release, graphical capabilities increase and gameplay becomes more immersive, so as a result, the children who are being exposed to these so-called violent games should be much more into the gameplay of newer games than they would with older games. As games shifted from 2-D to 3-D, an entire new level of innovation and realism was added, and it has only continued to become more realistic with each passing year. Thus, it is strange to see that the 1985 release of Super Mario Bros. and the 1987 release of The Legend of Zelda were considered to be significantly more violent than their eventual sequels on later consoles (About.com).

The Legend of Zelda., one of the most widely-recognized classics of all time, is the most violent in the Zelda series according to this study despite being the least aesthetically correct to even be able to form any correlation between the main character and a human being, with the original having 62 minutes of violence, the next in the series having 41, then 32 on the next console, and finally 10 on the newest release of the game at the time the article was written (About.com).Therefore, as realism and interaction with these games increase, children actually become less susceptible to violence from them according to this study.

Clearly there is a flaw with the way this is presented, and it is simply a matter of whether or not those who hold the power to use it as a basis to blame video games for all of life's problems use it as fact. So far, the government is actually listening to this study carefully and using its facts for a realistic basis on whether or not the ESRB has to change its rating system (About.com). The study, in fact, only seems to prove that the word “violence” has mixed definitions among all people and is too vague to describe video games as a whole, so it could be used in favor of those who support video games. It's just one other thing video game manufacturers and producers can use in order to remove the blame from their products and finally allow people to understand what the problem at hand really is and how to help solve it.

When Madeline Dalton, the expert mentioned earlier with a study among young children and their habits to smoke or drink, focused her study, it was based on R-rated movies and how easily the children were able to access them. It's quite true that it is incredibly easy for children to get access to these movies. What is even more true are the statistics that make up ratings in movies. Children have an easy time discovering these movies unsuitable for their age demographic because over half of all movies on the market are rated R. On the contrary, M-rated video games aimed toward the same demographic as R-rated movies only make up about a tenth of the video game market, with E for Everyone titles scoring the top spot of video game ratings at well over half of all video game titles (Ferris, par. 20).

With all of this information, it seems pretty obvious that video games are not the cause of the problem and removing them will not solve the problem. The real problem here is that some parents do not take responsibility for their children's actions. However, another problem is that the media has been taking video games along for a ride in order to slander their name further. They seem quick to jump to conclusions when reporting on a school shooting to say “This child played a lot of video games. Perhaps this is the cause of the problems.” This argument is the equivalent to saying “This child ate bread. Perhaps this is the cause of the problems.” To simply target video games as the primary source of the seed planted in children's minds to lead them into a life of violent crimes is simply wrong. What if the child had psychological problems leading up to the incident? What if there were problems at home? These are the questions that should be asked, not “did this child own a PlayStation?”

This is not the first time an outside source has been wrongfully blamed for the cause of problems in certain children. In the 1950s Rock and Roll had just begun becoming popular among the children of that time period. It was about the same time that more and more teenage incidents took place, so, naturally, the people blamed Rock and Roll for tainting their children. It even went before the House of Representatives, just like this video game violence case has been. As is obvious from listening to radio stations these days, Rock and Roll got off the hook for the “problems” with children of that time (Ferris, par. 18).

There are clearly differences with Rock and Roll and video games, but the fact that Rock and Roll was not to blame for a surge of “bad” behavior among children only continues to prove that there are other factors at play with this kind of behavior. Placing the blame solely on one facet of the media industry, even solely on one company (the creators of the Grand Theft Auto series) at times, is not the way to approach the problem of how to prevent school shootings or adolescent crime. Perhaps hiring security guards for education facilities to ensure the children’s safety is the best course of action. If a child is displaying violent behavior, keeping that child away from R-rated movies, M-rated games, and Parental Advisory music might be the best option. After all, these forms of media are rated solely for the purpose of keeping children away from them.

However the media and congress like to put it, this entire situation has been blown entirely out of proportion. Children are not becoming increasingly aggressive these days. In fact, ever since the PlayStation hit the market back in 1993, crime rate among children has dropped significantly. A fact directly quoted from the Department of Justice’s website on crime rates among United States citizens reads “Between 1992 and 2002, crime in the Nation's schools for students age 12-18 fell, a pattern consistent with the decline in the national crime rate” (Department of Justice). Continuing to browse their site will reveal a line graph with each line representing an age group. While the groups of those who play video games nowadays (12-24) is still the highest in crime rate, the graph spikes in 1992 and plummets every year following that. These are crime rates that were initially over 125,000 crimes per year and only in violent crimes such as “homicide, rape, robbery, and both simple and aggravated” that have since fallen under 50,000 a year (Department of Justice).

With the least violent children seen in years, how is it that most people blame video games for all problems caused by children these days? The source of the problem is a lack of responsibility taken by the parents and the spread of misinformation by the media outlets leading everyone to believe that video games are the root of the concerns adults have with some children’s violent tendencies that make news. There are violent games on the market, but they are rated in such a way that only those mature enough to handle the violence without emulating it are the same people who are old enough to watch R-rated movies without wanting to do the same things seen on screen. If some parents know that R-rated movies are not intended for children, why is it that they cannot see M-rated games in the same light?
When you're done, tell me whether or not I approached the problem the right way. When I presented this in class last week, I had problems because people were telling me I shouldn't be approaching the problem from a "video games are a-ok" standpoint but from a "don't blame the messenger" standpoint instead. So I have to make sure I mention that violent video games can be harmful for children and THAT'S WHY THEY'RE RATED M.

Edit: Haha, it's right in my thesis. I'll need to change that...

Updated thesis:
Quote:
However, to only focus on video games as the sole responsibility for serious crimes among children such as school shootings is to ignore all other factors at work within this debate and blame the messenger instead. Those involved in debates over these games are pointing the finger at the wrong entity to take responsibility for allowing children to be exposed to violent video games, misunderstanding what is considered “violence” in video games and other forms of media, and failing to discover the source of the false concerns brought up within the debates.

Last edited by Squeek; 11-29-2006 at 12:44 PM..
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Old 11-29-2006, 01:13 PM   #9
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Default Re: Well, it happened again. Scientists are bashing video games.

tl;dr

But, I would like to read it. I just can't focus on long posts in forums. I've tried, just can't do it. E-mail it to me once it's finished (because that doesn't look like it's twelve pages), please, Mr. Squeek. SandmanCCL@gmail.com.

Anywho:

Of course Medal of Honor and Need For Speed trigger different areas of the brain. I would like to see them run tests to see the difference in brain areas just from playing two types of games in the same genre that are significantly different (like Need for Speed vs. Gran Turismo) or two non-violent genres (Super Mario Brothers vs. Tetris). I bet they'd discover that different brainwave lengths are used for each and every one of them, and all could "rewire a teenager's brain" if they wanted to interpret the data in that manner.

Something I am very passionate about is exploring Video Gaming as a legitimate art. It is the ultimate bridge between literature, cinema, and graphical creation (like drawings and such). I fully credit my love for reading to Final Fantasy 6. I played that as a young child, and it was rather heavy text-based, and had a very intricate plot. I had a significantly higher reading level than other children in my classes for a very long time. "Studies" are never taken to discover if that can be the case! That'd be too positive a thing and then we'd lose a scapegoat in our society.

We Americans need to get over this utter and total need for a scapegoat. Our society believes nothing is our fault. We're just the sum of negative influences in our lives, and that's what causes us to do bad things. There's absolutely NO accountability in the United States (and from what I see, most other first world countries) and it angers me.
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Old 11-29-2006, 01:21 PM   #10
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Default Re: Well, it happened again. Scientists are bashing video games.

i think videogames keep kids off the streets where they're likely to form gangs and do drugs and kill people.
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Old 11-29-2006, 01:25 PM   #11
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Default Re: Well, it happened again. Scientists are bashing video games.

Congratulations. Video games change the brain. Now prove that the change causes violent tendancies.

Also, if the change does cause violent tendancies, prove that it does it more than any other media.
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Old 11-29-2006, 01:41 PM   #12
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Default Re: Well, it happened again. Scientists are bashing video games.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Laharl View Post
But, I would like to read it. I just can't focus on long posts in forums. I've tried, just can't do it. E-mail it to me once it's finished (because that doesn't look like it's twelve pages), please, Mr. Squeek.
It's nine and a half pages when double spaced.

ps fojar, that's one argument in my essay. I'll put it in because right now it's only in the cited material.

It's a boredom alleviator. Boredom leads to making irrational decisions like making a bomb or smoking pot.
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Old 11-29-2006, 02:08 PM   #13
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Default Re: Well, it happened again. Scientists are bashing video games.

Or talking to girls.
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Old 11-29-2006, 02:11 PM   #14
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Default Re: Well, it happened again. Scientists are bashing video games.

Wasn't it Attleboro that made the tag ban that got so much attention though?
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Old 11-30-2006, 10:34 AM   #15
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Default Re: Well, it happened again. Scientists are bashing video games.

I love violent games and movies, yet I am not crazy. I do not feel brainwashed or anything. NFS actually got me more aggrovated than MoH did (****ing who's got endurance). To get to my point, a kid has to be pretty stupid to want to kill someone because he did it in a game, which could be triggered from movies, radio, magazines ect. Blame the moron kids, not the video games.
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Old 11-30-2006, 12:27 PM   #16
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Default Re: Well, it happened again. Scientists are bashing video games.

Quote:
Originally Posted by dsadsadsa View Post
I love violent games and movies, yet I am not crazy. I do not feel brainwashed or anything. NFS actually got me more aggrovated than MoH did (****ing who's got endurance). To get to my point, a kid has to be pretty stupid to want to kill someone because he did it in a game, which could be triggered from movies, radio, magazines ect. Blame the moron kids, not the video games.
Well, though that may be true, jacko wont listen to kids who play videogames because "they will always take the videogames side, besides, the kids dont even realize they are being desensitized"
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Old 11-30-2006, 03:53 PM   #17
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Default Re: Well, it happened again. Scientists are bashing video games.

I'd personally like to know who these 'scientists' are that are bashing video games. Susan Smiga? Look at her areas of research and expertise. "Dialectical Behavior Therapy, adolescent depression and suicide prevention"


Obviously she's looking for reasons here to put the blame on something. There's no evidence in this article. OBVIOUSLY the brain is going to change when you're playing a game. The brain changes constantly whenever you're doing something different, and that will activate different parts of the brain and cause different emotions.

Does this even show a correlation with violence? Probably. I can't even begin to imagine how many confounding variables there are here though.

It's obviously bull political propaganda. I'm not sure what they're trying to accomplish here.


Adults are (should be) intelligent enough to differentiate between a video game and reality. If they arn't then they're ****ed up in the head to begin with...video games or no video games, it's not going to prevent their behavior. All of these people that commit crimes that play 'violent video games' have a lot of other problems.
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Old 11-30-2006, 04:00 PM   #18
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Default Re: Well, it happened again. Scientists are bashing video games.

That's bologna(boloni).

All that has to do is the whole different gaming genre you think different when you shoot people compared to driving.

Plus i like o curse at every fukin game.

And killing someone would be kinda kewl too though.
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Old 11-30-2006, 07:41 PM   #19
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Default Re: Well, it happened again. Scientists are bashing video games.

Well, what I've got beef with has already been mentioned, but I've just got to say it.
The article linked is written by a journalist, not a scientist. They go into no detail whatsoever about the experiment, nor does the article actually say that playing violent video games causes aggression. So I'm not really sure where this_noob_rocks got that the blurb that is linked is bashing video games. Even the quote from the researcher isn't saying that violent video games cause violence. All she's saying is that she knows of some kids (who knows what age they are, they could be 2 years old for all we know), who "have a hard time differentiating violence in those games from reality".
Also, to anyone who cares, the research is not studying changes in connections in the brain. It is simply measuring which areas of the brain are more active in terms of cellular respiration, since MRI's measure oxygen. They are not measuring brainwaves either. Those are measured by EEG, and pertain to the entirety of brain activation, and the term 'brainwave', by definition, cannot pertain to individual areas of activation. They've also not stated anywhere that the amygdala is being activated. I don't care what you've heard about Phineus Gage and getting a railroad spike in his head and it lesioning the amygdala, doesn't mean that the amygdala is the sole area that can be attributed to 'violence'.

As others have said, different video games affect brain activation differently. That's no surprise. Nor is it any surprise to learn that kids and people and animals can learn from watching things, and yes, I'm sure that a child who's never been exposed to the concept of a firearm will not go around pretending or in reality, shooting things.

BTW, I'm recently done research pertaining to video game usage and spatial ability. Lotsa benign, non-scapegoat research is done on a daily basis, its just that the media doesn't report it. You've got to go out there and find it.
Also, I've lamented somewhere how awesome it would be to research the processes involved in becoming a good FFR player. Hell, there's an entire system set up here already. Hmmm, scanning brains of people playing FFR, what a waste of an fMRI machine that could be used for medical purposes! If only someone were to give me a kick in the ass, FFR could become a research site, even without the use of brain scanning.

But please people, don't diss the researcher when you've not read what the researcher themselves has written, ok?


As well, any research done on violent behaviour and violence exposure including video games has been juggled back and forth in psychology for years, but I think the verdict is that they contribute to violence (although you can find studies which say otherwise, I'm aware.)
I'm talking on an individual level though. You sit a bunch of kids to watch teletubbies for a half hour, and you sit a bunch of kids to watch umm, I dunno, power rangers or something for half an hour. You then watch them play for the next 15 minutes. Guess which kids play more aggresively?

Last edited by Cavernio; 11-30-2006 at 07:51 PM.. Reason: more to say, cuz i'm a loudmouth :-p
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Old 11-30-2006, 08:04 PM   #20
meno_rocks123
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Default Re: Well, it happened again. Scientists are bashing video games.

I don't find video games aggravating at all except
Quote:
(****ing who's got endurance)
That is the most piss-you-off-race in the game.

If anything though, I go online and kill random strangers on CoD or other FPSs and that alleviates stress.
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