Additivity and Violence in Video Games
photo by Daniel Conway
Recently, we’ve talked about that lawsuit against Lineage developer and discussed about how players spend their time on MMOs. A big amount of them seems to use MMO as a new tool for trouble-solving engaging and socializing, which indicates that MMOs are just another cultural/social/playing activity and not a highly addictive thing such as crack. Well, even though, some people [as the Hawaiian guy behind this lawsuit] do get really hooked up in MMOs, so why this happens?
To talk about this, I think another main discussion on media about games must be raised: violence in games. Much have been said about it, many links between them were proposed, but actually nothing conclusive was found. Many of those researches have many faults, but the main one, as Yee pointed out, “[i]n spite of the fact that the average age of computer and video game players is 30 (Entertainment Software Association, 2005), the articles […] seem to perpetuate the assumption that mainly children and adolescents play video games”, focusing their studies on them.
Particularly, it seems to me that Markeys’s approach is the most accurate one. According to the authors, violent responses are aroused by video games only in people with predisposition to violence in the first place. Therefore, a violent video games can trigger a violent action, but only if the person already have some predisposition to violence. Patrick and Chalotte Markey link this predisposition to personality traits in a really interesting way.
So, if violent responses to violent video games are mainly triggered by personality traits, couldn’t addition to any kind of video games be also triggered by some sort of compulsion predisposition?
Game Comments 
Lineage lawsuit, License wars and MMO Addiction « Game Comments 12:12 pm on September 7, 2010 Permalink |
[…] So, if those games are really addictive, how come such expressive amount of players are not addicted to the point to divert from reality as our friend from Hawaii? [Continues] […]
JRGBruno 9:06 pm on September 8, 2010 Permalink |
I think you are absolutely right. Some people are more predisposed than others to engage in destructive behavior. And since this type of behavior may be triggered by a wide range of factors, the best thing for them is often is to remain vigilant of those triggers and learning how to cope with them if they arise.
After all, if you spent all your time trying to avoid these potential triggers altogether, it would be pretty difficult to lead a relatively normal life. For instance, you mentioned people who are prone to violence. Those people who tend to get more aggressive when playing a videogame are also likely to get aggressive when playing sports. They might fight with referees often and have difficulty getting along with fellow teammates.
Does that mean they should avoid sports altogether? Not really. Does it mean they should stay away from certain sports or certain disciplines within a given sport? Maybe, maybe not. But does it mean the sport in question should be discouraged among the general public? Absolutely not. The same with videogames.
As for the MMO addict….if that guy is sincere, then he has some very serious psychological problems. In that case, he shouldn’t be blaming the game, he should be THANKING it for exposing a very serious condition that needs to be dealt with ASAP. How else could you become so dependent on something that doesn’t give your brain pleasure in any direct way? The pleasure of playing an MMO is strictly a subjective one–if getting to a Level 30 gives you pleasure, it is only because you convinced yourself that getting to that level is a ‘good thing.’ There is nothing intrinsically valuable about reaching that level, it just means you achieved something in a particular game, and no game has ever claimed otherwise. In other words, it’s up to players to decide how important an in-game achievement is to them. If becoming the best WoW player ever is important to you, it’s only because you determined that such a distinction was important. If it becomes the most important thing in your life…well, then it’s time to see a psychiatrist.
That being said, I’m not very fond of most MMORPGs because of their reliance on an endless string of superficial in-game achievements. In that sense, one could certainly accuse them of using drug dealer techniques, since the point of most of those games is always to always get stronger and acquire more and more stuff by constantly playing. There’s no end point to them, no reason for playing except to get to the next milestone. I think that’s a problem, and it should be criticized. But it’s a completely different thing to suggest that the game actually gets you hooked. Most players recognize after a while that the endless search for more stuff is meaningless and empty. I don’t think it’s the developer’s responsibility to warn you about that emptiness…though failing to see it for what it is should definitely be considered a problem for the poor soul involved in the lawsuit.
Violence in Games may Reduce Hostility « Game Comments 10:36 am on October 15, 2010 Permalink |
[…] as was in the 90′s, when many studies claiming to proof this link came out. Most of those studies had some methodological issues, and the most common one was to assume that videogame players were mostly kids or […]
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Thais 2:38 pm on March 2, 2011 Permalink |
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