Study: Video Gamer Aggression Result of Game Experience, Not Violent Content 180
An anonymous reader writes "A new study published in the March edition of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology indicates that a gamer's experience of a video game and not the content of the game itself can give rise to violent behavior. In other words, 'researchers found it was not the narrative or imagery, but the lack of mastery of the game's controls and the degree of difficulty players had completing the game that led to frustration.' Based on their findings, researchers note that even games like Tetris and Candy Crush can inspire violent behavior more so than games like World of Warcraft or Grand Theft Auto if they are poorly designed and difficult to play."
Re:Here we go again (Score:4, Interesting)
I think this article brings up something really interesting that I was actually prodding my friend about the other day regarding UI design. See, he was playing a game with a friends list, and he was telling me that he needed to delete friends. His list is far smaller than mine on this game, only around 40 people. I eventually dug down to his original experience with friend systems for video games - the original XBox. The XBox had an awful UI for sorting, displaying, and finding friends - you could only see 4 or 5 friends at a time, and it would never get a passing grade under today's UI standards. This was a system from nearly a decade ago, and there's a non-zero chance that his experience with the UI still affects his behavior a decade later, manifesting as a vague compulsion to keep his friends lists short.
So, how does this relate to the article? If a UI can train people into long-term compulsive behaviors, it's not unreasonable to research whether they can also nudge people's behavior in other directions on a shorter timescale.