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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: 4, Insightful) by looorg on Monday November 19 2018, @10:06PM (5 children)
It would seem that there is an underlying problem here, the idea that violent video-games are violent or for that matter have any kind of connection to reality. No matter how cool the graphics or how awesome the physics engine. There just are not any transferable usable skills between shooting people in video games and actually shooting guns. If anything it might actually make it worse since you would have to unlearn all the shitty ideas you thought you picked up from video games or just popular culture in general.
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.
Just as there is no transferable skills from shooting combat games there is non from fighting games either. You will not be Bruce Lee cause you played 1000's of hours of Street Fighter (etc) -- no matter how much you try to focus your chi there will be no special hadoken attack.
There is no realism in violent video-games. Even if you have programmed rag-doll physics in it. There is just not enough transfer of game-weapon-skills to actual-weapon-skills. Having played a large amount of computer games could probably even be detrimental to it, so many garbage ideas you have unlearn first. Even if it was a fighting game there would be none. Actually punching someone in the face is not like doing that or other things in a video game.
Out of 3000 "random" people they didn't find any. It might be interesting to see tho if you could find a group where it could be a trigger. Perhaps people with a propensity for violence or just generally poor self-control. They should find loads of those kind of people in the nearest prison.
There is your target audience. People, or children, without a firm grasp of reality. Sure they might actually believe that game and movie violence is real. The same group of people that might also believe that Santa is an actual jolly fat guy that comes and bring them gifts if they are nice. So they are basically idiots. That is why we, try to, teach them things so they won't remain idiots forever and can eventually actually become useful. Somehow I don't see 'All I ever needed to know I learned from playing GTA' being the training we had in mind.
So they assumed something would happen. Proving once again that when you assume you make an ass of u and me. While I am a big fan of the kind of studies, that prove the obvious we already knew before, sometimes it does get a bit tedious. We already know there is no actual transfer of skills and knowledge. If there was it would have revolutionize the entire education system by now. So while reading articles and/or papers like these I usually try and find the paragraph where the researchers explain that they where all wrong and the experiment was kind shit. Somehow finding that is even more rare then the actual transfer of violence and skills of video-games to reality.
/If reality was like a video game/
As an example it would actually be kind of amusing (or horrible) if it had been true. I would have learned to drive a car from playing hours and hours of riding my red Ferrari in Outrun. Sweet tunes, hot babe in the passenger seat. All my driving goals have to be reached in minutes or the engine just stops and I have to insert more coins. If I flip the car over it will magically turn around and float back to the road again, where I once again accelerate away with screeching tires as a bat out of hell. It's a good thing my driving coach wasn't Carmageddon.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday November 20 2018, @01:06PM (2 children)
I would extend your commentary (which I mostly agree with) and provide an interesting observation/example/analogy:
As a trained soldier in the Army (well, a quarter century ago) I'm probably 1000 times more lethal than a member of the general public (zombie movies are not too realistic, LOL), sure there's expert civilian hunters but in the Army we have expert snipers who can outshoot civvies... You'd think having millions of highly trained and experienced professional trigger pullers floating around would result in staggering murder rates for veterans, yet the stat variation compared to the general public is pretty much noise, if that.
Odd how school shootings are always high school kids on anti-depressants who get relatively low scores. If mere skill and experience and enjoyment were issues, you'd rationally expect my bros (grand-bros, I guess, given my age, LOL) in the reserves, guard, and ROTC would be sweeping the streets of college campuses given extensive training skill and enjoyment of the shooting sport, yet... it practically never happens. You get the occasional Muslim at Ft Hood around a decade ago, that's about it.
Odd how the military screening out and/or treating mental illness seems to nearly eliminate school shootings. Yet the legacy media (professional liars) tell us a much more ridiculous story about how touching an assault rifle means everyone gonna die at school because the rifle will give you evil cooties. Almost like they have a hidden agenda.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 20 2018, @03:18PM
I expect you also learned a discipline and respect for the weapon and the power within it.
People going to the gun shop to buy something are not likely to get that from the sales person.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday November 20 2018, @04:44PM
I would add the physicality of shooting a gun and engaging in a firefight further argues against the transference from virtual scenarios. Guns are heavy and loud. The smell of cordite can choke you. Taking aim and reloading are harder to do when you're shaking with fear/adrenaline. Running from cover to cover will have you breathing hard.
Even if you're shooting at targets without anyone firing back, you have to master breath control and aiming. Video games teach none of that.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 20 2018, @01:47PM
It depends on if the game tries to simulate reality.
You might not learn to drive from MarioKart, but Gran Turismo teaches the concepts of how to accelerate out of turns and how to drive on low traction surfaces.
You might not learn how to shoot from Unreal Tournament, but America's Army will teach you that you should shoot at the center of mass, not headshots, and that precise shots should be done at the top or bottom of your breathing.
The only real life examples I've encountered were:
1. Steering into a turn when traction is lost (hours of racing games apparently made it intuitive for me even though it isn't for others).
2. Friends who did paintball using small group tactics they learned from Rainbow Six.
(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.