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No Evidence to Support Link Between Violent Video Games and Behaviour :
In a series of experiments, with more than 3,000 participants, the team demonstrated that video game concepts do not 'prime' players to behave in certain ways and that increasing the realism of violent video games does not necessarily increase aggression in game players.
The dominant model of learning in games is built on the idea that exposing players to concepts, such as violence in a game, makes those concepts easier to use in 'real life'. This is known as 'priming', and is thought to lead to changes in behaviour. Previous experiments on this effect, however, have so far provided mixed conclusions.
Researchers at the University of York expanded the number of participants in experiments, compared to studies that had gone before it, and compared different types of gaming realism to explore whether more conclusive evidence could be found
[...] "The findings suggest that there is no link between these kinds of realism in games and the kind of effects that video games are commonly thought to have on their players.
"Further study is now needed into other aspects of realism to see if this has the same result. What happens when we consider the realism of by-standing characters in the game, for example, and the inclusion of extreme content, such as torture?
"We also only tested these theories on adults, so more work is needed to understand whether a different effect is evident in children players."
Journal Reference:
David Zendle, Daniel Kudenko, Paul Cairns. Behavioural realism and the activation of aggressive concepts in violent video games. Entertainment Computing, 2018; 24: 21 DOI: 10.1016/j.entcom.2017.10.003
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday November 20 2018, @04:05PM
> The whole idea of the killer training simulator is just a fantasy, if it was real in any way shape or form we would have millions and millions of trained sharpshooters in the world today. We don't.
Disagree.
You don't need to be a highly-trained sharpshooter to commit an atrocity. Training is very important when you're a soldier up against a similarly trained, equipped and prepared military force, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the random murder of unsuspecting innocents. In that context, plenty of force multipliers are readily available (especially in the USA) that make can turn a socially inept GTA fan into a deadly killer with absurd ease. To walk into a cinema or church or school or whatever and kill a bunch of people by indiscriminately spraying bullets around does not require a Navy SEAL skiilset. indeed, the USA thoughtfully schedules weekly mass-shootings to remind us of this fact, and a quick google will provide you with more examples than most people could stomach. And of course it's not just guns, there are plenty of other ways for untrained civilians to kill - look at the use of vehicles as weapons that seems to be coming into vogue. Only basic driving skills and minimal resources required.
No, I would argue that the only real thing that separates a regular member of the public from a mass killer is the mindset of wanting to kill and then actually going through with it. That's the only "skill" that needs to be "trained". That's what supposedly requires a "murder simulator". Once someone has that mindset, the acquisition of weapons and the technicalities of using those weapons effectively are mere details. Weapons training might make the difference between six victims and sixty before they are stopped1, but either way you have a killer.
Whether or not violent games actually do train people in this way is the real question being debated in this thread.
1 although in reality these mass killers tend to stop themselves before anyone else can get there in time - so the limiting factor is, once again, the willingness to kill and keep on killing rather than absence of l33t ninja skillz.