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'Boozy Gamer' Researcher Questioned
Posted by
Zonk
on Wed Apr 26, 2006 04:38 PM
from the we-only-like-good-beer-at-least dept.
from the we-only-like-good-beer-at-least dept.
Via GameSetWatch, a Gamespy interview with Sonya Brady, the person who ran the research study we reported on a while back. The one that claimed gamers enjoy getting high, drinking alcohol? From the article: "What kind of feedback have I received? My feedback from research colleagues and other older adults has generally been positive. What I find most interesting is the feedback I have received from adolescents and young adults. Some people are interested in learning more about the research, even if they are skeptical of the results. Other people have been very angry."
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Games Lead To Violence and Drugs? 228 comments
A joint University of California, SFO/University of Pittsburgh study has been released which finds "playing violent videogames can lead young men to believe it is acceptable to smoke marijuana and drink alcohol", Gamasutra reports. Reuters is also carrying the story, with some information about methodology available in that piece. From the article: "Brady and Matthews had a group of 100 male undergraduates aged 18 to 21 play either Grand Theft Auto III or The Simpsons: Hit and Run. In the Simpsons game, players took the role of Homer Simpson and their task was to deliver daughter Lisa's science project to school before it could be marked late. In Grand Theft Auto III, players took the role of a criminal, and were instructed by the Mafia to beat up a drug dealer with a baseball bat."
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angry gamers (Score:2, Funny)
These are the people that would be better off as "boozy gamers" :D
Boozy Gamer? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Boozy Gamer? (Score:2)
Re:Boozy Gamer? (Score:3, Funny)
Free as in Beer.
Explain to me... (Score:5, Insightful)
And for the question of the year: Who really gives a shit? Come on, young people are demonized as a matter of course, particularly for drinking or doing drugs. Trying to draw a causal link between games and that sort of behavior is unnecessary.
Re:Explain to me... (Score:2)
To the second: You're right, no one should give a shit about it. Such a link, even if it did exist, wouldn't be particularly helpful information to anyone except hand wringers.
Stupid headline... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Stupid headline... (Score:5, Funny)
Get drunk. Play a game.
Parent
Re:Stupid headline... (Score:2)
Excellent idea!
Re:Stupid headline... (Score:2)
Further research needed (and get better summaries) (Score:5, Insightful)
What if they were made to play other sorts of games? What would be the differences between Katamari Damacy and Tetris, for example.
What if they were exposed to other sorts of things? What would be the difference between playing GTA and watching Casino? Or between watching football and watching fishing.
I think more data is needed to avoid making an oversimplified generalization from these results.
People don't like to be questioned (Score:5, Interesting)
Believe it or not young ones but there was a time when some people claimed smoking wasn't just not bad for you but actually GOOD for you. Boggles the mind doesn't it? You can imagine that smokers having grown up with idea that smoking a good thing didn't react all that well when people started telling them how bad it is.
Even worse when smoking parents were being told they were harming their childeren.
It is a sorta holy war. A constant one is the debate as to who is right when it comes to working hours. The americans with long working weeks or the europeans with short ones. Part of the problem is perhaps that their is no right answer but I think the main reason that such a discussion always becomes a flame war is that each side feels themselves being attacked for a fundemental part of their livestyle.
To test the effects of violent games on gamers lets use another hobby but one where we have very clear examples of the violence it generates. Soccer.
I am sure even americans have heard about violent soccer fans (hooligans) that are a major problem in europe and have been since I was a kid. Almost every match needs a sizable and costly police force to keep things under control. Even with this huge cost to the taxpayer it still frequently goes wrong and you the results are very clear closed of city centers that look like a disaster struck and a constant bill for public transport in destroyed vehicles (and a train costs a lot to rebuild).
Now I challenge you with this. You go on public tv in europe and claim that soccer is the cause of this violence and that restrictions should be put in place to curb the violence. Good luck.
The evidence of violence is very clar as is the link. If a hundred hooligans go out of the stadion and on a rampage it doesn't take a genius to figure out that if you forbid audiences at soccer matches you would limit the problem.
Hell, even simpler suggestion. Let the soccer clubs pay for the police presence. They make billions they can afford it. Good luck again.
So, nobody likes to be told that their hobby is the cause of problems. Nobody likes to be told what they should do.
So is that strange that gamers react strongly to being told that their hobby is bad and should be regulated or even banned?
It doesn't matter if the accusations hold water. What matters is that your lifestyle is being questioned. The smoker doesn't want to be told to stop smoking, the soccer fan doesn't want to pay for the soccer hooligans and the gamer does not want to be restricted in the games he can play.
Very normal. But is it helpfull?
Smokers have lost, soccer fans hangon because soccer is a billion dollar industry with a wide fanbase. Gamers? Well, we are not exactly popular are we. We don't have the public on our side.
Does it really help our case of "violent games don't cause violence" if we react violently against anyone who claims it? Isn't that rather like claiming "I am peacefull and will kill anyone who claims that ain't so"?
It is easy to feel attacked in your personal freedom but when you attack your enemy for claiming your violent you are only proving his point.
Worse, perhaps we are like those smokers who claim that smoking ain't bad for you. How many gamers are even willing to consider that the link between violence and gaming could exist? Based on past experience, not many. This is another holy war and both sides got their fanatics.
Re:People don't like to be questioned (Score:5, Interesting)
Police forces in Britain already send the football clubs a bill for policing their event. The police don't make a profit but they do recoup a big portion of the costs.
Violence between fans at football matches is very rare these days, due to policing and segregation and whatnot. What violence there is tends to take place away from the football ground itself. If a fight happens between rival fans on a train 30 miles away from a football stadium, how realistic is it to blame the football clubs? Come to think of it, if there is some sort of causing link between gaming and violence, it's likely so subtle and tenuous that you really cannot point any finger of blame at gamemakers, or censor them. You can't say speech isn't speech because if you say something to half a million people, two of them might twist your words enough to use them to kill somebody. Pretty much every preacher, politician or rock star in the land would have to be forcibly silenced if that was the case.
Top football matches in the UK are already rather expensive and the football fans rarely complain, except if venal American asset-strippers happen to take over their club.
Parent
Re:People don't like to be questioned (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah, but there is a direct connection between smoke and harm. Everyone who smokes harms his health, and the health of the people around them. However, whether the quoted study is correct or not, it only states that gamers are more likely to drink and get high. So while the smoking study says something about ALL smokers, the gaming study says something ab
We don't know enough about the study (Score:3, Interesting)
I just sent feedback to gamespy.com about their article, as suggested on page 2. Hopefully they'll get back to me, but I'm not holding my breath. Here's what I sent 'em:
Re:We don't know enough about the study (Score:3, Informative)
I mean, c'mon, we are talking about a bunch of immature males that just got asked to play games. I remember when I was in college, I would probably intentionally skew the results if I was in such a study.
And I ask again (Score:3, Interesting)
This research is like saying "reading books about food will make people hungry" or "reading a wine tasting magazine will make people more permissive towards alcohol use". Geez!
Re:And I ask again (Score:3, Funny)
Re:And I ask again (Score:3, Interesting)
Besides these were not younger teenagers, but adults. They are allowed to vote, die for thier country, and depending on age and jurisdiction drink.
Her research is anecdotal at best. (Score:3, Insightful)
So they used 100 guys 18-21, likely most of which were from one geographic area. They also had no control group, so there is no way to prove that Gamers are any different than Non-Gamers, only that 18-21yr old males who play these games have some difference.
"Those study participants who played Grand Theft Auto III had greater increases in diastolic blood pressure from a baseline rest period to gameplay in comparison to participants who played The Simpsons."
Which is much more likely based on the fact that GTA has much more realism and realistic punishments. Death and prison register in our minds as real possible penalties. Death of a cartoon figure registers as little more then a Saturday morning cartoon with little association.
"After gameplay, GTA III players had more negative feelings, more uncooperative behavior, and thought that using alcohol and marijuana was less harmful to their health than players of The Simpsons."
other then being subjective and with out statistical backing, this is a great result. With only 100 people in the pool, any findings could be easily skewed by a few outliers. Also, there is nothing that states the pool sizes. So if the GTA pool had 65 participants and the TS pool had 35, it would be factual to say that the GTA group had more negative feelings. Also, the result is poorly worded, I highly doubt that everyone in the GTA group thought that "using alcohol and marijuana was less harmful to their health." It is more likely that GTP players were "more likely to think that using alcohol and marijuana was less harmful to their health."
"Among those people who grew up in more violent homes and communities... Among those people who grew up in more violent communities..."
So now, out of 100 people they are making conclusions for the entire male 18-21 gaming community based on a hand full of people. Assuming a third of the participants grew up in a violent house hold, another third in a violent community, and the final third grew up in Mayberry, and then each of these groups was evenly distributed between GTA and TS, you're looking at 16 people to base your research off of.
"Consistent with the results of many other people's research"
None of which appears to be sited.
With no statistics posted, this should outright be tossed as a valueless publication. And judging by their claims and process, any statistically substantial findings they made are most likely due to outliers skewing the results.
-Rick
Re:Her research is anecdotal at best. (Score:3, Interesting)
>> Death of a cartoon figure registers as little more then a Saturday morning cartoon with little association.
That one sentence could have (and probably has had) an entire study devoted to it. Presenting assertions like this as facts, without anything to support it, weakens your argument in the exact same way you're trying to weaken the study's.
Poor control - weak conclusion (Score:3, Insightful)
Where was this published, in the journal "DUH!"? Since when is it a surprise that people reduce their assessment of other risks when confronted with a specific risk? I don't worry about government wiretapping when I'm high off the deck rock climbing. We are, quite simply, wired to deal with the risk we are facing. A real control in this experiment would have put some of these randomly selected students in a risky, blood pressure raising situtaion (climbing could work, ethics guidelines are not likely to allow a simulated mugging), and ask them the same question.
Games like GTA really do induce a "reptile brain" response. I'm 45 years old, and find it kind of scary getting behind the wheel after virtually driving wrong way the length of the Las Veturas strip at full tilt with a mob goon tied to the hood of the car. In that situation, I am hypersensitive to driving risks, and likely not worrying about other things.
Last, somebody needs to point out that you can't reasonably play these games when you are wasted. GTA is freakin hard to play. I assume that computer games provide an alternative to drug use, rather than fostering it as is implied by the headlines.
Re:Booze and videogames is utterly stoopid. (Score:5, Funny)
And if drinking is too hard... Try drugs instead.
Parent
Re:If you don't lime my study, do your own (Score:3, Insightful)
However, at the same time, it is kind of like asking a WWI General about how the war is going on in the trenches when you are both sitting in a nice French Chateu sipping on noon tea.
Chances are they are quite educated about the analysis and the subject of war fare, but you are going to get quite a d
Re:four words (Score:3, Insightful)
But it is a symptom of causation.
What was the research topic again? Was it where a group of 100 was split into two groups, one playing a GTA game and the other playing a Simpson's game, and the GTA players had a higher level of social tolerance to alcohol? If so, a reasonable person can conclude that the Simpsons game reduces the social tolerance for alcohol. While I haven't played the game in question, I do know that The Simpsons TV show ridicules drunks by the portrayal o