Study Finds Gamers Prefer Control, Competence Over Violence 219
Science News reports on a new study which found that the violence in video games was not a significant contributing factor to players' enjoyment. Instead, the feelings of control and competence the games engendered were closely linked to how fun the players found it. Quoting:
"... the researchers extensively modified a popular first-person shooter video game called Half-Life 2 to have less gore. Half the people in a group of 36 male and 65 female college students were instructed to dispatch adversaries as the original game intended, 'in a thoroughly bloody manner,' says Ryan. The other half was instructed to tag enemies with a marker. 'Instead of exploding in blood and dismemberment, they floated gently into the air and went back to base,' Ryan describes. An extensive survey of the two groups showed that the exclusion of violence didn't diminish players' enjoyment of the game."
Knockback in City of Heroes (Score:2, Interesting)
City of Heroes and City of Villains make extensive use of PhysX to impliment ragdoll physics for humanoid characters. When you, as a super-powered character knock the tar out of an enemy, they can go flying across the room or high into the air.
With some skill, it's possible to use knockback as the ultimate crowd control device. You keep your enemies knocked down or penned into a corner where they can't hurt you.
In my opinion, this is far more entertaining and far more visually stimulating than any other method of defeating your enemies.
Re:Violence isn't necessary to have fun in games.. (Score:1, Interesting)
I think you missed the point. It's that the violence, on it's own is not an attractor.
Let me give you an example. In Fallout 3, there's a perk called something like "Bloody Mess", where when you kill someone, they explode in bloody gore. I was told not to get it, that it was annoying, but I tried it anyway. Not too long after, I used a console command to remove it and replace it with something else.
Why? Because it was annoying and jarring. It didn't fit the atmosphere of the game. I even grabbed a mod that made dismemberment and exploding body parts less frequent and more tied to the weapon used. A single bullet, in general, will not dismember someone. The bloody violence was not adding to the game, and detracting from it.
That said, if you go too far the other way, it is equally jarring. After shooting someone with a sniper rifle, it shouldn't be like "tag" and force the super mutant to walk to the penalty box.
Also, one of the best games ever, Portal, has no bloody violence or killing of others at all, and the game was an absolute blast.
Violent games stopped me from playing (Score:4, Interesting)
I stopped playing first-person shooters at Quake II. I had enjoyed previous FPS games quite a lot, and I gave Quake II a good try, but the bloody chunks with the flies buzzing around them were the limit for me. Similarly, I didn't like that in Age of Empires II committing war crimes - killing enemy peasants to take out productive capacity - was the best way to win. Nor that an apparent flaw with uprisings in CivIII meant that the best way to take over cities was a bit of ethnic cleansing by way of starvation. I still played those games, but it bugged me. I never traded slaves in Elite.
This is why I liked Tony Hawk and Jet Set Radio so much. They are about being cool instead killing things.
I won't make grand claims about the effects on anyone else, but I know I don't want my 3-year old son playing violent games. I am kind of pissed off that many games I might otherwise enjoy are effectively wrecked by violence. Who knows who else is put off by violence? The people like me who are put off don't play, so they don't figure into many statistics.
The real test is none vs. some (Score:3, Interesting)
I think there is something like "enough" of the naughty stuff, and it applies both to gore and the Lara Croft example in GP's post. Beyond that, more just means less believable and it gets old fast.
Personally, one of my favorite games is Day Of Defeat with moderate "blood effects". I find that removing them completely would detract from the game, but excessive gore would not improve it. The same goes for breast size of female MMORPG characters, I like those but don't push the settings for boob size to the maximum.
Re:Violence, maybe, but not gore (Score:3, Interesting)
Portal is not an FPS, it's a puzzle game played from a first-person perspective and with traditional FPS controls.
For an FPS without violence, digital paintball [digitalpaintball.net] comes to mind.
Re:Violent games stopped me from playing (Score:3, Interesting)
I won't make grand claims about the effects on anyone else, but I know I don't want my 3-year old son playing violent games.
I'm sure there will be other obvious points made, so instead I'll say I agree with you on this one completely. By a certain relatively early, say pre-teen, I think most minds have a solid enough grip on reality vs fantasy and right and wrong to be able to handle normal levels of violence in movies and video games. Very young children are such blank slates though that they really can be influenced by just about anything.
My younger step brother was a huge Power Rangers fan when he was in the 4-5 range. He got into the very unfortunate habit of kicking and punching people in emulation of the show. He thought it was great fun. He kinda didn't understand the difference between kung-fu on screen and punching his dad in the leg. So needless to say that show was banned. Only a few years later, he understood real vs pretend violence well enough to participate in tae kwon do classes.
To me half the problem with the whole "do video games cause violence in children" debate is that people use "children" to include everyone under the age of majority. Sorry, but if your high schooler goes out and steals a car because they played GTA, then they were already a delinquent. But children children? Yeah, I am totally on board with being careful about what they're allowed to consume for entertainment.
Re:Control vs. violence (Score:1, Interesting)
Unfortunately, you are wrong. Violence is the absence of control.
It's the developers fault. (Score:3, Interesting)
One time, a friend and I tried to actually be helpful in a World of Warcraft battleground (Arathi Basin) without doing a single point of direct damage to anyone on the opposing team, with a level 31 Undead Warlock and a level 32 Undead Priest. Lowest level toons for the ranked Battleground(think "cannon-fodder").
Short of fearing everyone repeatedly(just pissed everyone off, and the first guy with a trinket would kill us) or simply kiting them around to waste their time, we only found ONE method of actually killing someone without doing direct damage.
I'd park my succubus right next to the flag at the lumbermill, have her go invisible and then just stand there. Then I'd go and hide behind this rock real far away, but close enough to see the flag. The Priest would do the same, but closer in.
I'd wait for some unsuspecting soul to walk up, start to take the flag, then seduce them with the succubus(WTF!?........), then have my buddy the Priest come out of hiding, race up to them, cast mind control, then run the poor slob right off the towering cliff next to the flag. I could usually run up to the edge of the cliff just in time to see them hit, far below.
It wasn't us that killed them, it was the landing!
But seriously, MOST games are based on doing damage to something. This study just says that MOST game developers are simply ignoring a possible playerbase-- the ones that don't really care about doing damage to something.
Think Portal.
frost upon my window; pains. (Score:3, Interesting)
82,000 years ago I was a cat! In time: solid ball became hollow one – concomitant changes in the correlation structure were mitigated and I forgot what this meant. Never condition on the future.
FUCK
Betwixt me! Against me! Forlorn antipathy, against which a lurgid bee doth protest unkindly.
Pie crust: kneading moist dough causes proteins to entangle (not applicable) = unpleasant mouthfeel. Moisturizing the dough to workability with high proof vodka (and the usual buttering/short) instead of water, thus gives superior results! Just ask Vivaldi and the late lobster-murdering Julia^H^H^H^Hesus Child^H^H^Hrist savour of the tulip factory.
THIS IS WORSE THAN SOMETHING BUT I DON'T REMEMBER YET WHAT IT WAS
Mustard is made from mustard seeds and is more properly called "prepared mustard". It's hard to know when to stop, though.
(so see if I don't)
Lol. (Score:3, Interesting)
Half the people in a group of 36 male and 65 female college students were instructed... An extensive survey of the two groups showed that the exclusion of violence didn't diminish players' enjoyment of the game
Yeah, OK. But only because they had so many women in the mix. Put some 12 year old boys in there and the map will be covered in blood.
Postal anyone? (Score:2, Interesting)
Remember postal? big hit. Remember Postal 2? Anyone? Anyyone? Once Postal hit and took the "OMG BLOOD AND GORE" away, the next game in the series sucked. Hardcore. Since then nobody has really cared about the stupid blood and gore games.
Re:Violence isn't necessary to have fun in games.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Violent games stopped me from playing (Score:2, Interesting)
It's a shame that this thread has become a knee-jerk reaction fest defending violence in videogames, when in fact the article brings up an interesting question. Do videogames really need to be so violent to be fun, or could it be that the target demographic consists mainly of insecure young men who play violent videogames to feel macho/empowered?
In that sense, I could very easily see being put off by pointless, over-the-top violence--in a way, it's an insult. I don't need to play a game that involves graphically castrating a man with a pair of pliers to feel like a tough guy, and admitting that Animal Crossing is just as fun doesn't make me feel like any less of a man.
wow, another bullshit study (Score:3, Interesting)
This really just seems to be just bad science to me. For starters, just asking people what they like more as they did in the 2,500 person study is no way to determine anything like this. Next, the sample size is entirely too small on the game play tests for them to mean anything. Finally, why on earth are they using a sample group that is disproportionately female in a study about game violence when it is males that a)generally spend far more time playing games and b) are generally more attracted to violence?
Now just as a disclaimer, I'm not promoting any viewpoint in regards to video game violence. I just think the studies in question here are bullshit (at least as they are described in the article).
Re:Why half-life 2? (Score:2, Interesting)
Are we talking about the same game ? There are parts of HL2 that are really, really violent...
Like using the gravity gun with the saw blades on the zombies to cut them in two.
Or enemies getting impaled on your crossbow bolts.
Or zombies screaming in pain while they burn.
Or using enemy corpses as projectiles.
But in my opinion, it's not a bad thing, since it creates an creepy ambiance that is the goal of the game.