Are video games harmful?

[Alatar]

Well, here's what the Irish Censors Office had to say.

CUSTOMS officials have been instructed to seize and destroy copies of a brutal video game.


The Irish Film Censor's Office (IFCO) has banned 'Manhunt 2', a severely violent game in which the main character sneaks up on people and bludgeons them to death.

The game is due for release next month and has also been banned by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) which condemned its "unremitting bleakness".

Yesterday, one major home entertainment distribution website was offering the game for sale and a number of copies were also up for bid on the online auction site eBay.

However, a spokesman for the Revenue Commissioners said the games will be seized by customs officials if detected being brought in from outside the country and destroyed. 'Manhunt 2' is the first video game to be banned in the history of the state.

"IFCO recognizes that in certain films, DVDs and video games, strong graphic violence may be a justifiable element within the overall context of the work," said John Kelleher, from the office of the film censor.

"However, in the case of Manhunt 2, IFCO believes that there is no such context, and that the level of gross, unrelenting and gratuitous violence is unacceptable."

The game, from Rockstar Games, the developers behind the controversial 'Grand Theft Auto: Vice City', involves a deranged character who escapes from a mental asylum to find the people that put him there.

The decision by IFCO, which came into effect on Monday, means that the game can be seized and destroyed by customs, although there are no fines for bringing it in.

Jersey-based entertainment site Play.com was yesterday selling the pre-release game to be delivered after July 13. The website could not be contacted for comment on the matter.

A Revenue spokesperson said random checks would be carried out on individual parcels coming in while larger commercial consignments will be able to checked through freight company documentation.

Michael Finucane, commercial director of Gamestop, which has 43 stores across the island of Ireland, said the game had been expected to do "ok" had it been allowed on the shelves.

"You can probably preorder it from internet companies but in reality, whether it comes out is debateable," said Mr Finucane.

The first edition of the 'Manhunt' series was also controversial and Mr Finucane said it was only after the negative publicity kicked in that sales grew. The new game would have been widely available in this country as it was made for Playstation 2 and Nintendo Wii consoles.

Speaking on RTE radio yesterday, Mr Kelleher said the violence is "unrelenting for almost the entire duration of the game".

The game was banned under section 7 (1) (b) of the Video Recordings Act 1989 which refers to "acts of gross violence or cruelty (including mutilation and torture)".

Mr Kelleher accepted there was still a possibility the game could come into the country however, with the use of the internet. Yesterday, calls to Rockstar were not returned.
www.independent.ie

[Alatar]

Interesting:

Here's a rare opportunity to look behind the scenes of one of the videogame industry's biggest names, and it's coming from former employee Jeff (aka badasscat). In his latest blog entry depicting his admittedly-awesome life working in Rockstar, he describes the ups and downs of what it was to be an employee of the most controversial company in videogame history - including a very interesting tidbit about the original Manhunt.

It seems that the first Manhunt, rife with realistic violence as it was, not only caught the attention of many a concerned parent and consumer worldwide, but also by the people working in Rockstar as well. Jeff recounts in his blog entry how they were already used to controversy, a good deal coming from the release of Grand Theft Auto 3 and Vice City.

But for the employees in Rockstar, Manhunt felt different, in the sense that GTA3 was a parody and you had the choice not to hurt anybody who wasn't the bad guy. Manhunt was a completely different case altogether. Here's a snip of that particular statement, verbatim:


Manhunt, though, just made us all feel icky. It was all about the violence, and it was realistic violence. We all knew there was no way we could explain away that game. There was no way to rationalize it. We were crossing a line.

[yovargas]

A new study has found that Action Games Make Kids Smarter:
(what a classically cheap, provocative headline )

According to new research by cognitive scientists from the University of Rochester, playing action video games trains people to make the right decisions faster. The researchers found that video game players develop a heightened sensitivity to what is going on around them. This benefit doesn’t just make them better at playing games, but improves a wide variety of general skills that can help with everyday activities like multitasking, driving, reading small print, keeping track of friends in a crowd, and navigating around town.

http://www.whattheyplay.com/features/ac ... s-smarter/



I've long suspected that video games had likely improved certain cognitive abilities. It really just makes sense. I specifically suspect that video games can make people more adept at learning and understanding new computer skills which is quickly becoming absolutely vital in the work place.

[Alatar]

Yeah, its one of those "Well, DUH!" moments for me too. You exercise anything, it improves.

[Dave_LF]

I know if the world ever needs anyone to act as dictator over a simplified society, I will be well prepared. Especially if it's in ancient Egypt or Greece.

[River]

A new study has found that Action Games Make Kids Smarter:
(what a classically cheap, provocative headline )

According to new research by cognitive scientists from the University of Rochester, playing action video games trains people to make the right decisions faster. The researchers found that video game players develop a heightened sensitivity to what is going on around them. This benefit doesn’t just make them better at playing games, but improves a wide variety of general skills that can help with everyday activities like multitasking, driving, reading small print, keeping track of friends in a crowd, and navigating around town.

http://www.whattheyplay.com/features/ac ... s-smarter/



I've long suspected that video games had likely improved certain cognitive abilities. It really just makes sense. I specifically suspect that video games can make people more adept at learning and understanding new computer skills which is quickly becoming absolutely vital in the work place.

This ties in with a discussion I was having with a labmate earlier today. He concluded that I just don't and didn't ever play enough games.

[Frelga]

So it's a good thing that I let my son play Assassin's Creed? I knew it.

[anthriel]

So it's a good thing that I let my son play Assassin's Creed? I knew it.

Yes!! Isn't that great?

[SirDennis]

Study Shows Games Could Help Stave Off Alzheimer's

Research at East Carolina University has identified improvements to mental acuity among people ages 50 and up who play games.

...

"The initial results of the study are very intriguing, in that they suggest that the 'active participation' required while playing a casual video game like Bejeweled provides an opportunity for mental exercise that more passive activities, like watching television, do not," explained the program's director, Dr. Carmen Russoniello. "Future applications could include prescriptive applications using casual videogames to potentially stave off Alzheimer's disease and other dementia-type disorders."

more: http://www.1up.com/news/study-shows-gam ... -alzheimer

It's odd the twists and turns a thread can take over 4 years.

And yes the Assassin's Creed games are fantastic.

[yovargas]

Neat.

I've thought for a while now that my dad's memory seemed to be slowly fading. It's a fun to think that maybe his Freecell obsession is helping slow that decline a tad.

[yovargas]

So there's a super interesting study out now saying video games may be good for children. The catch - playing a limited amount may be good. But playing a lot may be harmful.:

Playing video games for up to an hour a day 'is good for children'

Children who play video games for up to an hour a day are happier, more sociable and less hyperactive than those who don’t play at all, research has found.

Despite widespread fears that video game usage is harmful, an Oxford University study of boys and girls aged between 10 and 15 found that playing for up to sixty minutes a day could actually be beneficial.

The study tested almost 5,000 children, comparing those who did not play at all with those who spent varying periods of time playing console games such as Nintendo Wii and Sony Play Stations, or computer-based games.

...

Those who played such games for longer, but still “moderate”, periods of between one and three hours a day appeared to experience no effect, either positive or negative.

However, those who played “excessively” – for more than three hours a day – did see some harmful effects.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/n ... ldren.html


Now excuse me while I go back to playing Zelda.

[Passdagas the Brown]

When the job market starts demanding skills only a Mongol chieftain with experience sacking mercantile societies on Pangea-like Earths can provide, I will be at the top of the heap.

[Frelga]

I wonder living in a family that can afford the console and games accounts for the positive effect.

[Dave_LF]

Right; they're effectively allowing the subjects to decide which group they want to be in, and that opens the doors to all sorts of systematic bias. i.e. children who choose not to play video games (or are forbidden to, or can't afford to) are going to be different from ones who make the opposite choice before any of them have even seen a controller. And ones who play for many hours every day are probably experiencing lax parenting in general.

This is the problem with trying to study people.

[yovargas]

I wonder living in a family that can afford the console and games accounts for the positive effect.

I had a similar thought about the kids who play a lot - maybe it's that they play a lot of games because they're unhappy, not that they're unhappy because they play a lot of games. There are ways to check for those kinds of biases in a study but of course, these kinds of reports never tell you that kind of info.

[Passdagas the Brown]

I wonder living in a family that can afford the console and games accounts for the positive effect.

I would be very surprised if they didn't control for that (in all likelihood, the article simply didn't dig that deeply)...

Studying people is hard, but there are some pretty basic ways to control for the influence of socio-economic variables.

[River]

There's also a chance that the journalist completely missed the point of the actual paper. Every now and then, when something close to my particular specialty hits the news I go look up the paper and, as often as not, the journalist misunderstood some key points or buried the lede or apparently wrote about something else entirely. I'm therefore pretty leery of any scientific result I read about in the popular press and try to find an actual expert to talk to if I'm that interested. Or I seek out a review (aka translation for other scientists from other fields). Those are typically written by a peer of whoever wrote the original paper, though even with those you need to be careful because the reviewers will sometimes put their own spin on things and they may or may not be correct.

I suspect foreign policy experts have similar frustrations...

That said, this is not the first time someone's reported that, within reason, video games are actually beneficial to kids for one reason or another.

[Inanna]

Controlling for socio-economic variables is pretty straightforward, and standard practice in all this research now. Especially since the breast milk = smarter kids finding was debunked by accounting for Mom's education and household income.

What we don't know is whether video game playing for an hour is an indicator of a balanced parenting -> "yes, you can play video games, but only for an hour and after that we have to go out and play catch/read book/whatever". Which will lead to a happier child.

That said, the brain studies showing greater mass in certain regions that are exercised when playing violent games are more in the causal study direction - and make perfect sense to me. As does the old age one - my Mom's memory improved by leaps and bounds with Sudoku.