Damn! I'm late!

@ Jabrwock

About the gang allusion, Gentile may have some points in there. Although, he shouldn't throw that around so callously. Have you heard stories where gamers interrupt am in-game funeral service, harrased newbies or gold farming? Theses activities are considered bad things to MMO players, so gang behaviours are not very far behind.

@monte

about the ratings system, the DSM-IV has basically the same problem. Mental health professionals don't follow its guidelines religiously, but use it as a general guideline. I believe that NIMF is trying to get an impossible rating system. If they have their way, we'll get tooooo many ratings and it won't be simple and useful anymore. Like I said, ratings are general guidelines for parents and parents should create their own personal rules based on their own experience and the ratings given.

About gang behaviour in MMOs, thankfully a majority of gamers are well-intended gamers, so Gentile is probably interested in studying those that don't behave right. And MMOs are structured so that high-level players must cooperate with each others in order to advance or enjoy the game. "Play alone, get looted alone."

@Hayabusa75: I agree with you completely. @sidewinder:you're not seeing the whole thing. and Gentile is only making an inference that MMO may have an effect on violence because no research is done on them.@Terminator44: Thanks for reminding for the control group, I always forgot about it.@Mulk: Your personal experience do show something about MMOs, it's all about maintaining social pleasure and social networking, not the individualized violence. To anyone in cultural psychology or anthropology: compare the number of gamers between the U.S. and Korea.

Agreed, Terminator44. If you don't have a control group, its not a valid test. And I'd like to see 4 groups, the FPS group, MMO group, Highschool/College sports group AND the control group.

I so would like to see how the college athletes stack up against the FPS groups on aggression. I used to fence, both sabre and foil. That most certianly builds up aggression (touche - point!). And isn't that really a game based version of how to kill someone? In the day, that's why you went to fencing school, to defend yourself - or pick a fight.

[...] Gamepolitics refers to an interview with media violence researcher Doug Gentile.  Gentile has also written a book, “Violent Video Game Effects on Children and Adolescents: Theory, Research, and Public Policy,” which surveys existing research and concludes that violence in video games still matters.  I’m going to put the book on my to-read list, but based on the interview and existing info on the book I’m not yet convinced. [...]

@Monte

What about PvP guilds vs PvE guilds? I mean if we want to go there, wouldn't PvP have a different mindset then the planning involved in PvE?

Though that aside, I have to agree that this is fairly stupid. 'Gang' is such an easy word to throw around. You can call just about any gathering of people a gang if you want it to look bad: Sports gangs, book reading gangs, the Young Men's Christian Gang... See? Easy as pie! Makes the word sort of meaningless when you think about it.

I'm glad somebody else here pointed out that when studies on media effects are reported on we are never told about the difference between causation and correlation. That really isn't the fault of the researchers. If you read their papers, the issue of causation vs. correlation is clearly mentioned when correlational measures are used- that's just good methodological practice. In fact, many of these studies try to avoid having to use correlational data due to how hard it is to establish causal links in effects research.

And it seems like these researchers are picking on games because that is where a lot of the attention is focused right now. We already have a large body of research on television, newspapers, and radio. Video games are relatively new and thus offer an attractive subject of study for researchers looking to generate new knowledge in the field of effects research.

Ok... I do not deny the effects that video games have on the mind. However, if parents instilled morals and ideals onto their children prior to letting their minds being filled with the worlds media and social conditioning they would be able to tell the difference between good and bad as well as between reality and video games much better if not completely.

I believe our workaholic lifestyles mixed with our need for instant gratification has prevented children from recieving even so much as half of the parenting that they need.

I would have to say that Im the least violent person out of all my friends... And yet nothing makes me feel better than killing as many people as I can in first person shooters or PVP in MMO's. Especially after dealing with real-life people that make me want to pull my hair out. (at school/work)

Also... Ive never met an avid gamer that would leave their house to do anything other than to get more energy drinks or go out to eat somewhere. How is one supposed to be violent when their out of shape and lazy?

Im sick of peoples censorship trying to 'protect' people.... So we should strive for ignorance? We should police our life experiences?

I'll stop now as my opinion should be clear.

Sometimes I wonder why we even pay the NIMF any attention- all they want to do is create a society in which the only media is the Bible...

Once again, where is the freaking control group? This guy keeps saying that video games cause non-aggressive people to be aggressive, but how can he know that unless he's tested people for a baseline reading of aggression without games at all?

This is just more of the same kind of junk science we see on the news every day. I can tell this guy is trying to contend with that claim, but his conclusions don't match the results.

......

What about healers? Are we being aggressive?

@Brokenscope

i don't know about you but every time i heal someone i'm screaming "AAARGH, TAKE THAT HEALING, YOU ALLY!" /sarcasm

"People think more aggressive thoughts and behave more aggressively immediately after playing ..."

Can I get a WHOOPWHOOP? Thought Police in the house y'all.

If thinking bad things is a crime, everyone in the world belongs in jail. It is possible to have violent thoughts without acting on them.

Good read. I say hooray for anyone who is genuinely honest and forthright, especially when careers and fortunes are made by making mountains out of molehills. It's sad to me that Chicken-Little-esque headlines and sound-bites so frequently drowned out what is intellectually honest.
I have no problems with a universal ratings system across all entertainment media. Of the existing systems, I think the ESRB rating is by far the most clear and useful, but the MPAA ratings are probably the best known. Whatever form a new, universal system may take, it is essential that it be clear, specific, and objective and the process by which a rating is assigned must be completely transparent.

"People think more aggressive thoughts and behave more aggressively immediately after playing NFL Blitz or MLB Slugfest compared to equally competitive football and baseball games that don’t include the ability to rumble with the other team."

What has never been well examined was what exactly this means. Are they more excitable? Are they more likely to punch their buddy? Do they need a minute to calm down? How long are the effects? How pronounced? Are they equivalent to watching violence on TV, or reading about it?

"it mixes violence and cooperation… So it’s a really interesting question where MMOs could make (aggression) worse, or they could actually totally wipe out the effect of the violence."

I love how he alluded to the gang mentality. As if gang members do stuff like take first aid training so they can heal up their buds. ;)

Seriously though, how do you differentiate between the effect? Are there any MMOs where you are completely on your own, and there is no ability for players to play in a supportive role?

"Media violence exposure is just one among many dozens of risk factors for increased aggression… That’s one of the things I think people misunderstand about this research, that aggression researchers aren’t out to pick on games… violent video games are just one of those (aggression) risk factors. They’re not the biggest. They’re also not the smallest."

Oh no, it's not that we don't consider video games to be a risk factor, it's that we notice that your attention to video games is FAR greater then any attention they pay to other forms of media such as movies. For instance, the harsh critism of the ESRB. Constantly NIMF is on their tails about how they need to improve the system and that it doesn't work and crap like that. However, the MPAA either suffers from similar problems or is actually far worse off. Thing is, when consider all the factors, the ESRB is probably working much harder has a system than the MPAA, yet ESRB gains all the critism, while the MPAA gets practically nothing.

“People think more aggressive thoughts and behave more aggressively immediately after playing NFL Blitz or MLB Slugfest compared to equally competitive football and baseball games that don’t include the ability to rumble with the other team.”

Question... what about the PLAYERS of actual football games? do they not cause similiar if not worse effects? they may actually want to do a study on that... esspecially since that in training for football you actually increase your physical strength and learn to use it against others, unlike video games which physically doesn't help you much at all and gives you no real world experience when it comes to violence... not to mention the fact that, unlike video games, stuff like playing football and other such aggressive sports is not only considered to be very exceptable to everyday person, but also praised...

really, if a study is done on football players that yield similar results as the video games, then it would just prove that NIMF are targeting games and being hypocrites in what they consider to be exceptable and what's not. Cause really, if they use those studies to be angery about football video games, then they should be equally as mad about football in real life... can't except one set of studies and ingore the other if they yield similar results... you got either except both, or reject both (i tend to reject them, seeing the flaws in them, partically in not being actual proof of what they claim)

“It’s a fascinating question no one has looked at. What happens with MMOs? …often when you’re doing things, you go out on a raid, you’re with your guild… so you’re supporting each other being aggressive. So you’re actually getting rewarded by people for your aggressive actions. You know, think about gang behavior.”

y'know, giving this one some thought, i think guilds have more in relation to team sports than they do to gang behavior. Gangs are all about agression and nothing but, the game plan there is cause as much as hell you want and that's it. from my experience with guildes, guildes are more about support and cooperation. During a raid, a guild doesn't just charge on in like a gang would, planning and preperation is taken, and like on a sports team, each member has their roles in a raid. Some are high offence, some are tanks, some provide healing, and some others provide additional support. Heavy teamwork is often needed to succed in a raid, something that gangs don't have. Not to mention that good guilds tend to support their members in many positive ways outside of raids and such

This goes back to the whole "NIMF is targeting games" and such. When it comes to drawing conclusions and wording their results, they seem to blow things out of proportion and make things seem FAR worse then they actually are. Comparing guilds to gangs for instance seems like a clear why to try and say that guilds are nothing but bad and have nothing possitive to offer and that we should be clearly against them, however, Guilds do have far more positives to them and are more complex than gangs are and probably have more in common with a sports team. But ofcourse, comparing it to sports would put a more positive spin on the issue so that comparison is ignored for the more extreme overblow comparison.