Matts Blog

Have I got your attention? Yep? Good. Recently I have noticed the gaming industry has received a bit of bad press, especially in regards to violence in its games. Its not entirely surprising, except that the media feed off it a lot – a gloom and doom story after all does sell well. Initially ITV have done three case-studies (yep, three) of children and their gaming addiction, how it was taking over their lives; the reporter herself then writes about her son and his “gaming problems”.

I feel like I should point out that games are a form of escapism, and given the right environmental scenario they can become extremely addictive, so-to-speak. Certainly in the case of Ned the reporters son, but alternatively they can give hope to those who have never had a good life… curing depression to some extent. Online communities^[1] (given the right one) can be terribly supportive to the point of gullibility and exploitation.

It has not all been negative – Charlie Brooker’s Gameswipe [iPlayer Link] for example paints gaming in its true light, a great mixture of games both fantastic and shocking. Fred Harris sums it up wonderfully from Micro Live (1983):

So if you’ve never played a computer game, don’t dismiss them – there are games for all mentalities. Its just that the good games are hidden behind a mass of crude shoot-’em-ups.

The Nintendo Wii brings this to light with the massive soar in casual gaming for all the family, as well as a large number of shovel-ware games mind. Before the Wii there were adventure games such as The Tales Of Monkey Island and various others.

Not Always For Children:
Another misconception and automatic assumption by many parents out there is “its just a game, its meant for kids”… check again. Check the boxes of games and most of them have a number on them, the lowest I remember is 3+ and these go all the way up to 18+. The latter category can feature sexual content and more than likely blood, gore and swearing to boot. In the end it is down to you to decide what your child should be playing, arguably I got to play many violent games as a teenager, but anything I played prior to that was probably much more kid-friendly.

Online games such as Guild Wars, World Of Warcraft, or many others you should strongly consider. While they may have a low rating this is just the game content – and it is widely known among gamers that online games can be full of some of the worst forms of language and racism around (not necessarily meant insultingly, but used non-the-less). The developers and publishers may have some control through moderation, but it isn’t possible to stop all of it – and often the swear-filters are easily turned off. Once again a good online community would likely be aware of its youth and try and keep their fingers under control.

Gaming media channels often reiterate this often enough… “bad parents/parenting are often the problem”. Gaming is a decent and good hobby to indulge in, I had friends over often enough and we’d try and grab a couple computers to play over the local network on the same game – but if your child is playing alone too often, and worse yet taking food up into their room on a regular basis… there are some serious issues to work out. Don’t do it too forcibly, try talking to them like you are talking to an adult first, failing that you may want to employ more drastic measures.

Information on games rating:

• ESRB (Letter format).
• PEGI (Number format, with additional pictorial overview).

Gaming = Violent Person?
It is a fair enough question, does a violent game make a person playing it more violent? The media have always had this thing with correlating what a person was doing before an act of violent to the act of violence itself. So it doesn’t have anything to do with their mental state or stress levels before and during playing the game then, bad day at work/school or just in general.

Recent articles suggest male gamers can be more aggressive/excited playing against strangers than familiar people^[2]. But it was also studied that violent games often attract violent people, rather than violent games make violent people (I cannot find the article right now, its proving elusive). School shootings have been linked to players of videogames. Claims that Counter Strike can train people as marksmen (oh come on, my experience was a bunch of people bunny-hopping… hardly realistic). Where the divide may appear is in what adults play, and what more impressionable children play – but the mental state and environment the person grows up in are often forgotten because videogames are factored in.

Most gamers or insightful people are more likely to say “it is just a game”, indeed that is all I have ever considered it myself; the media loves to over-hype a story. Much like books, music and television – they have all been demonized at one point in time for being a new form of entertainment.

Conclusion:
Just to tie things up, I have never said gaming addiction isn’t a problem – just tried to highlight how it may occur – i.e. it does not apply to every gamer. What I really have a problem with here is the media, it often highlights in one sweeping judgement that all gamers are violent/addicted, unhygienic and generally worthless people. The other problem I have is the misconception that gaming is just for children, complete piffle. There are adult and/or over 18 ratings for a reason – the problem here occurs when parents don’t do some fact-checking and purchase a game for their children – to only then be shocked that it has adult content.

From my knowledge most sites have a small disclaimer saying “this game has a rating, it is assumed that purchase of this product means you are of the correct age” (or something along those lines). In my opinion that may not be enough, there should probably be a simple age verification (either a date of birth or just age input). It may make parents think twice… although there is still a problem of a child falsifying his or her age to purchase a product; it just lessens the chance of it happening.

Notes:
#1: I feel like I should point out I was a player of Guild Wars for 3 years, racking up over 6,000 hours (250 days). That could be classed as addiction I guess, arguably it cost me grades at school – or it helped me through an unpleasant experience (even with great friends). In addition to this, the game wasn’t 100% fantastic, it was the community of cooperating players doing missions and helping each other that kept me playing.

#2: The actual study used less emotive words than “aggressive” preferring “excited”. Wikipedia suggests testosterone may play a role in flight-or-fight and social status, but is falsely accused of being the [sole?] cause of aggression.

Further links:
I came across a couple of articles I found extremely interesting during my brief moments of research, they may or may not be worth a read:

• What sort of person plays violent videogames – news.com.au – Australia has a strange form of censorship, one man blocks them from having an 18+/adult only rating for the reason “to protect the children” in other words, adults aren’t given the choice of adult media because this one man believes that videogames are for children only.
• Gaming Addiction – video-game-addiction.org – while I am biased against putting this up, it may highlight where you are going wrong in the balance-of-things; I should point out I haven’t said gaming addiction isn’t a real problem, rather that it can be caused via a certain environment… and gaming can be done excessively.
• Gaming Addiction True Or False – billmullins.wordpress.com – [ImageCred] and a fairly good read too.
• Compulsive Gamers ‘Not Addicts’ – news.bbc.co.uk – this surprised me when I saw it, the first person to make a gaming addiction clinic goes back and rethinks the problem, its infact a social issue in most cases. I remember widespread sighs of relief concerning this at the time.