Digital Violence

How violent video games do not cause violent behavior but serve as an outlet for violent behavior.

Length 10 minutes.

“We know if kids play video games that require movement, they burn more energy than they would while sitting and playing traditional screen games. That’s pretty obvious even without our data,” says Lorraine Lanningham-Foster, Ph.D., Mayo obesity researcher and study leader. “The point is that children — very focused on screen games — can be made healthier if activity is a required part of the game.”

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How does an educational curriculum of mathematics, english, science and video games sound?

David Williamson Shaffer, an education science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, thinks that schools need to start using video games as teaching tools. As children grow up and enter the workforce, they will have to compete on a global scale. Due to different training methods, many of the workers from outside of the U.S. already have years of technical experience when they enter the workforce.

As stated by Professor Shaffer: The current educational system was designed in the late 1800s to prepare people for life in industrial America; not today’s technologically-steeped world. By using technology and video games, children can develop technical skill earlier and feel more comfortable around technology.
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Child’s Play was conceived as a way to combat negative portrayals caused by sensational negative media.  Gamers aren’t ticking timebombs.  Childs Play raises money for toys, games, books and cash for sick kids in children’s hospitals across North America.  Contributions come from individual gamers and the gaming community.  And this year they raised over 1 Million dollars!

From their site:  “You guys did it. You broke a million dollars in just over two months. Child’s Play started as a way to show how good our community can be, but it’s turned into something greater than we could have ever imagined. We’re making an impact on lives.”

http://www.childsplaycharity.org

Wasting no time in 2007, Jack Thompson is continuing his anti-game campaign and this time, he’s going after the big dogs. In a letter sent to various news outlets titled “Bill Gates in the Crosshairs�, Thompson have vowed to rally against the release of Grand Theft Auto IV (which is scheduled to release this year on the Xbox360 and Playstation 3).

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Interestingly enough, while countries like Germany are tightening laws involving violent video games, South Korea has decided to go the other direction.  Previously video games depicting any political or military action against North Korea have not been release in South Korea, due to the current political atmosphere between the South and the North.  Kim Key-man, the chief of the Game Rating Board of Korea, said last week that it will allow the sale of such games after carefully reviewing their contents, to guarantee freedom of expression.

Joystiq is running a rather humorous article with a recap of the major political events affecting the video game industry in 2006.
Read it here.

Psychologists at the University of Rochester and virtual worlds researchers at Immersyve Inc. (wow… they have virtual world researchers…) believe that people may be playing video games for more then just enjoyment. Their research shows that video games may help satisfy fundamental psychological needs.

Their research was published December 26th 2006 in the journal of Motivation and Emotion.

Comments from psychologist Richard Ryan: “We think there’s a deeper theory than the fun of playing,”. Gamers said they felt the best about their experience when the games they played produced positive outcomes in scenarios related to the real world. “It’s our contention that the psychological ‘pull’ of games is largely due to their capacity to engender feelings of autonomy, competence and relatedness,” The draw of video games “also can be experienced as enhancing psychological wellness, at least short-term,”.

This research could have very interesting implications, especially in relation to video game addiction.

After the recent violent school shooting incident in Germany, two German states have been drafting a bill that would subject developers, distributors and players of violent video games to fines and up to a one year jail term. They are deeming ‘violent games’ as anything where cruel violence on humans, or human-like characters occurs.

MSNBC has the full story.

Off Topic: In an interesting twist from the last posting “1 in 5 Parents say their Kids are Online Too Much”, the Kids themselves are starting to complain about parents.   The Wall Street Journal is running an article about parents who are spending too much time with their electronic messaging devices, and the kids don’t like it.

“like teenagers sneaking cigarettes behind school, parents are secretly rebelling against the rules. The children of one New Jersey executive mandate that their mom ignore her mobile email from dinnertime until their bedtime. To get around their dictates, the mother hides the gadget in the bathroom, where she makes frequent trips before, during and after dinner. The kids “think I have a small bladder,” she says. She declined to be named because she’s afraid her 12- and 13-year-old children might discover her secret.”

“For many parents, finding the right balance is a struggle. Although mobile email allows them to attend a soccer game in the middle of the day, it also brings the office into the family room after dinner. In an age of connectedness, they sometimes have trouble disengaging from the office — and many admit they check their messages more often than required.”

Just a little something to think about.