Kids are aggressive. They get into fights all the time. The reasons
are so varied that it's really not fair to label one thing the media
keeps leeching itself on to : Violent games. How do you know it wasn't
bullying? Child Abuse? Drug Abuse? Mental Illnesses? Bad Parenting?
Stupidity? the list goes on. The studies themselves, that seem to show
that violent games lead to aggressive behavior, however are a complete
farce... They just are.
The methods used are designed to incite
the result the anti-gamers want. That result is that violent games
always increase aggression. You can't take several kids, measure their
aggression in any way and determine it's result without careful study of
all the factors involved. These hack psychologists don't do that..
They engineer fake results in many of the studies, (not all, but many).
This is the process used to get that result...
A) Take Half of your study group and make them play 'non-violent games' like sports games and puzzle games.
B)
take the other half, subject them to electroshock therapy (I'm not
kidding you there, I read it off a PDF of a study I cannot find the link
to, because the article I linked was on my old blog, which I shut down
to avoid libel.), And make them play 'uber violent games, GTA, Killzone
2,etc...
(From this article)
C)
They now select the kids and make them all look at violent imagery or
'normal imagery'. Then they measure the brainwaves while this is
happening. Problem 1, lack of a reaction to an image doesn't mean the
game caused the lack of a reaction! It doesn't prove Aggression at all!
All it proves, is Apathy! The lack of caring for a subject... People are
offended by different things. Person 1 could find violent image 1
disturbing but person 2 will not. If person 2 played violent games, how
the hell do you know it isn't some other issue causing the 'lack of
brainwaves', which to me is quite the hack method in determining
reaction. It sounds like a very flawed science to measure brainwaves, to
determine a response. How do you know the result of the brainwave drop?
Out of all the possible results? They don't test for these results do
they? No they don't. Now the other problem, is that the kids are going
to be aggressive for a time being after being pumped up. They test for
the 'aggression' immediately, they don't wait till later when the levels
drop... Now the other, less obvious problem, is that they don't know
what causes the brainwave drop, they don't know the source. They want to
make the games look like the source.. So
(Also From this article)
D)
They subject the kids who played violent games to compete against
eachother in a game where one kid gets to blast loud noise in the losers
ears for a certain amount of seconds. But the time values involved are
so small, that it's not much of a result. The time lapse is literally
less than a second in some cases. So the more 'aggressive' kid holds
down the button a millisecond longer. Yeah... Nice proof there. The
point is, is It doesn't prove aggression... Which is always mixed up
with VIOLENCE, by the anti-gamers. Like these kids are at risk of being
the next Eric Harris. BS.
E) Fail to even do basic research to
eliminate other causes of aggression! No investigation is done on the
kids to see if they might have problems that could lead to aggression,
from factors such as bullying/drug abuse/child abuse/etc. It's not even
brought up.
To bring up another point, "desensitization" to
violent games doesn't prove much. All it proves is that your brain has
become more accustomed to the violence in the portrayal. It doesn't mean
you will act it out. Watching CSI does the same thing. But another
thing bothers me about these studies. What games are the 'violent' ones
chosen by psychologists. Are they games with violent combat but not
disgustingly violent or are they the ones where you gun down people and
chop their heads off like GTA. The choice will determine the result.
Likewise do they choose sports games or kiddie games. I think they
purposely chose ones that will set up the biggest difference between
brain scan results and blast test results. Why not? Fudging the study
for results isn't a new thing. I think they should make the kids play 10
violent games OF DIFFERENT violence quantities, not the same one per
kid! Same thing with the non-violent ones. How do you trust a study that
purposely chooses the least violent game for group 1 and the most
violent game for the other group. You don't.
Another issue is the
background of the 'subjects'. You make a kid who plays violent games (do
they check that first?), and make him play Killzone 2, or Modern
warfare. He will like it more and become more 'aggressive'. Then you
take someone who plays a lot of puzzle games and he won't. Do they
choose these kinds of people on purpose as well. It's really flawed if
they put in the GTA loving kid to prove aggression when he plays GTA....
Isn't that biased or what?
All of this will make it so that the
aggressive result favors the kids who played the violent games... It's
biased... It's dirty. It's a fraud. And it's being used to create fear
mongering among anti-gamer circles that eventually will lead to full
Bans on violent games... It has to stop. Prove tendency of violence by
other more obvious factors such as mental illness, drugs, etc, not
violent games. Millions of kids and adults play violent games. Some of
them, the less mature ones, will be more aggressive, but that doesn't
prove they will go on school shooting rampages at all, it just proves
they can't control themselves well enough to stop the aggression.
(Aggression =/= Violence!). According to a poster on the article linked
above there is not ONE study that proves a casual link between gaming
and violence. NOT ONE!
