USA Today Battle over violent video games heating up

"Disputes in Florida, California, Washington state and Congress pit parents and lawmakers who say the games may prompt some teens to commit violence against merchants and civil libertarians who say no link exists and that such entertainment is a constitutionally protected form of free speech."

""Fresh ground in law will be made, one way or the other," says William Mayton, law professor at Emory University in Atlanta."

redux [12.20.03]
The New York Times Magazine Playing Mogul
[requires 'free' registration]

""It's as if you just read the music industry through the hard-rock guys," he says. "And you say it's all about bad words, crazy music and that's it. And someone says, What about Mozart? What about Elvis Presley? Oh, we don't know. No image. It's not an easy sell. So we don't talk about it. I think the mass-market perception of video games, for the most part, is 'Wow, those games are too violent, look at Doom, look at G.T.A. 3.' But that represents only about 10 percent of the market. Out of the 60 million Playstation 2's out there today, no game on the planet has sold more than six million. If the video-game business was really just about G.T.A., or just about Doom, if that was really representing what people want to play, why would it be only 10 percent of the install base? That's the whole thing -- people express themselves in what they choose to play.""

redux [11.05.03]
BizReport Video Games Are Addictive - Scientists

""Game entertainment is not a classic media experience. It has a potency that offers a new psychological experience," Kline said, adding he could imagine violent experiences in games to spill over in real life.

Other scientists, who like Chee have carried out scientific surveys, said heavy games players were in fact sociable and not the pathological loners they are often made out to be."

redux [08.14.03]
Reason Birth of a Medium

"For Henry Jenkins, a professor of media studies at MIT, the video game Grand Theft Auto III is a bit like Birth of a Nation , the 1915 film that cineastes praise for helping create the basic grammar of the movies and simultaneously damn for celebrating the Ku Klux Klan.

"In terms of what it does for games as a medium, Grand Theft Auto III is an enormous step forward," says Jenkins. "It represents a totally different model of how games can tell stories and what you can do in a gamespace. It happens to be yoked with some sophomoric images of violence that a lot of us wish weren't there.""

redux [04.25.03]
Wired Magazine High Score Education

"The fact is, when kids play videogames they can experience a much more powerful form of learning than when they're in the classroom. Learning isn't about memorizing isolated facts. It's about connecting and manipulating them. Doubt it? Just ask anyone who's beaten Legend of Zelda or solved Morrowind .

The phenomenon of the videogame as an agent of mental training is largely unstudied; more often, games are denigrated for being violent or they're just plain ignored. They shouldn't be. Young gamers today aren't training to be gun-toting carjackers. They're learning how to learn."

redux [01.16.01]
The Globe and Mail Why kids are smarter than you

"In a culture of couch potatoes where TV quiz shows pass for brain teasers and how-to books "for dummies" fly off the shelves, it can be hard to reconcile the notion that the human species is smarter than ever.

But if IQ tests are any measure -- and even critics say they have some value -- then there is evidence people are making mental gains. For the past two decades, researchers have collected information showing that IQs around the world rose steadily over the past century.

The rise has been too swift for genetics or evolution to explain. And researchers cannot precisely say what's driving the phenomenon. But many suspect that the very same TV-watching, video-game-playing cultural trappings we blame for "dumbing us down" may also be partly responsible for raising our IQs."

redux [07.23.02]
Netfuture Does Television Cause Violent Behavior? Wrong Question.

""The news will stimulate little change, but should be mentioned anyway. A seventeen-year study of 707 individuals, published in Science magazine (March 29, 2002), concluded that

"There was a significant association between the amount of time spent watching television during adolescence and early adulthood and the likelihood of subsequent aggressive acts against others."

"Anderson and Bushman also point out that the weight of the evidence from all the available studies is not trivial. The effects "are larger than the effects of calcium intake on bone mass or of lead exposure on IQ in children". Moreover, "recent work demonstrates similar-sized effects of violent video games on aggression"."