Call of Duty: War game or propaganda tool?

Are video games making society more militaristic? One academic thinks so.

Did video games help Anders Breivik train for his terrorist attack in Norway? Victoria University lecturer John Martino says such questions are missing the point.

“What has not been addressed in the debate generated by violent military games is the role these games play in the process of ‘militarisation,’” Martino states in a CNET.au article published today.

In sum, he’s suggesting that the popularity and increasing realism of military-based games, particularly the best-selling Call of Duty franchise, is contributing to the “militarization of society.” But his article is riddled with errors and mistaken assumptions that leave his argument in the dust.

First, who is John Martino? His two most recent credits involve — you guessed it — looks at gaming and the militarization of culture, including “No Place for Noobs: Computer games and the Militarization of Youth Culture,” presented at the 6th Global Conference: Visions of Humanity in Cyberculture, Cyberspace, and Science Fiction in Oxford in July 2011, and “Gaming and the Militarization of Youth Culture: Some Initial remarks,” presented at the IADIS International Conference ICT, Society and Human Beings in Rome, also in July 2011.

Martino starts off with Wolfenstein and Doom, which are good places to start, if you’re going to talk about military shooters. He talks about how the military modified the game to help train soldiers. Anyone who thinks you can learn how to navigate a real-life war scene by playing through Doom‘s blocky mazes and fighting its pixelated enemies is arguably suffering from loss of contact with reality.

Anyhow, from there he gets into the fact that Call of Duty developers have worked with military consultants to make sure gameplay elements are realistic. This is the same as bringing in consultants for a film, such as Saving Private Ryan or The Thin Red Line. Nobody would call the latter an effort to turn these films into “recruitment tools” — they would, in fact, be described as working toward historical accuracy.

Not Martino.

Such partnerships share the goal of working to enhance the training effectiveness of simulation technology.

Military shooters add to the already potent cultural tools that political systems have at their disposal for propaganda purposes.

Then, he stacks up his evidence that society is becoming more militarized:

1. “The commemoration of war (think Anzac Day) has become integral to our view of Australian history, and the place of Australia in the world.”

2. “Recent data published by the Stockholm International Peace Institute indicates that Australia is one of the largest military-spending nations in the world.”

These are his examples? Has he forgotten that much of the Western world has been engaged in some way with the struggles in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade? Has he forgotten that Australia is within striking distance of the unpredictable North Korea, and might have good reason to want to defend itself?

Martino leaves out obvious counter-examples, such as child soldiers in Africa or other countries where high-end video games aren’t readily available.

I find it much more plausible that the military is responsible for “militarizing” societies, and that kids who grow up in societies undergoing such change might seek military-style games as an outlet, and as a chance to safely explore their natural curiosity about what wartime is like.

Do you think he’s on to something? Are Call of Duty and other games making society more militarized? And, if so, is that a bad thing?

Why do so many gamers heed “Call of Duty?”

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 alone has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide. What makes this series so popular?

Ten years ago, a group of men working with Al-Quaeda hijacked four American airplanes. They crashed two of them into the World Trade Center towers in New York, toppling them. A third crashed at the Pentagon, and a fourth crashed over Pennsylvania. Within weeks, American troops had invaded Afghanistan and declared war on the Taliban. By 2003, the military had moved into Iraq as well. A decade of messy, complicated war followed.

It may be no surprise, then, that the Call of Duty franchise has become one of the all-time best-selling video game series during this decade. Many Americans were justifiably angry, but couldn’t go to war themselves. Others wondered what our soldiers were going through, but the news reports just weren’t enough. The Call of Duty games feed just those kinds of emotions, providing lifelike and detailed versions of military operations in spots around the globe.

As the world looked back this month on September 11, 2001, The Denver Post’s John Wenzel spoke up for Call of Duty, saying the games helped players make sense of the terrorist attacks:

Instead of promising escapism, they provided an outlet for ordinary Americans to vent their rage and frustration by aiming virtual weapons at otherwise nebulous foreign enemies.

Video-game environments are entertaining and tidily self-contained — unlike real war, where the blood lingers long after players switch off the Xbox 360. But as funhouse mirrors of the past decade, “Call of Duty” and other war games have reflected a certain distorted collective therapy that, at times, makes for an eerily lifelike portrait of the aggression and anxiety that violence breeds.

The new Call of Duty game, Modern Warfare 3, is due out next month and is likely to be a top seller at Christmas. The #2 holiday pick is another military game, Gears of War 3. Clearly there’s a hunger for war games in this long era of military exercises in far-flung places.

With such brisk sales, it’s inevitable that some teens and younger kids will play Call of Duty. And there are some who say they shouldn’t. But kids were just as effected by the terrorist attacks and the vagueries of war as adults were — and they have a right to explore these ideas as well.

Call of Duty players: what attracted you to the game? Did playing it help you process the 9/11 attacks or the “War on Terror” in any way? Has it helped you understand your feelings about war and military action better?

Grown-up gamers disprove fears of RPGs’ danger

Despite public fears, kids who play Dungeons & Dragons don’t go crazy or kill people. Mostly, they grow up to be adults who hold down jobs, have families, and … play D&D. Photo by Flickr user super-structure.

As sales of console and PC games fall, gamers are turning increasingly to cheaper alternatives, including online games and role-playing games.

RPGs have never enjoyed the blockbuster success of video games, but they have maintained a steady following since their emergence in the 1970s with games such as Dungeons & Dragons. That game alone has sold some $1 billion in merchandise and has entertained more than 20 million people. Compare that to the Call of Duty video-game franchise, which has sold more than 55 million copies and raked in upwards of $3 billion.

And yet, there was as much panic in the heyday of RPGs as there is now. Campaigning by Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons (B.A.D.D.) coupled with scary fictionalized films like Mazes and Monsters — based on a sensationalized account of a single gamer who committed suicide — frightened many parents into believing that RPGs were a gateway to occult practice, psychosis, suicide, or homicide. While it’s true that a handful of RPG fans explored the occult, suffered mental-health issues, took their lives or killed someone else, the vast majority didn’t.

So what happened to them?

Well, some are still playing. Now in their late 30s to mid-40s, the original D&D generation has grown up, settled into jobs and careers, gotten married, raised kids, and are still enjoying a campaign now and then. Today, as in the 1980s, one of the primary reasons people enjoy such games is that it gives them a chance to spend time with like-minded friends:

That socialization is key, gamers said.

After spending all day on a computer at work, gamers Brandy Hamblet and Travis Fricke said that sometimes the last thing they want to do is go home and stare at a screen for entertainment.

“It’s nice to be able to sit down with several friends at once,” Hamblet said. “I probably wouldn’t get to see some of these people very often outside of the game. I get social-ed out pretty quickly, but that doesn’t happen with D&D. I always want to keep playing.”

People are sticking with — or returning to — RPGs for a variety of reasons: they’re less expensive than video games, for starters. Self-publishing has put many more games on the market, giving gamers an astounding number of choices. And new guidebooks for the old standbys have made them more accessible; some are aimed, specifically, at people who are burned out on video games. It seems to be working.

Still, you can find corners of the Internet — particularly religious corners — where opponents warn against the dangers of RPGs. By now, a longitudinal study of role-playing gamers, had one been conducted, would have found little statistical evidence of long-term harm.

Looking at these gamers, all grown up, disproves the fears that sparked a moral panic in the 1980s. What can we learn from this that can be applied to current and future moral panics? And will we ever be able to end such panics once and for all? Where kids are concerned, I suspect the answer will be no.

Norway’s backlash against video games begins

Norwegian stores have pulled several video games, including Modern Warfare, from store shelves following Anders Breivik’s killing spree.

Remember how I said last week that video games didn’t lead Andres Breivik to kill dozens of his fellow Norwegians? Even Breivik himself already seemed to have terrorism firmly in mind by the time he described Modern Warfare 2 as “probably the best military simulator out there.”

Nevertheless, some Norwegian stores, including Coop Norden and Platekompaniet, have suspended sales of Modern Warfare and other violent video games, such as Homefront, the remainder of the Call of Duty series, Sniper: Ghost Warrior, and Counter-Strike: Source. Coop pulled World of Warcraft while Platekompaniet is still carrying it. In all, 51 games are off the shelves.

It’s unclear why the decision to stop selling some of the top-grossing video games was made. Are they concerned that Breivik’s manifesto — which encourages playing MW2 and WoW — will inspire copycats? Or are they worried about looking insensitive by continuing to sell such games while Norway is grieving?

Coop representatives explained:

In light of Friday’s horrific events, and of respect for those affected, we have chosen to remove simple items from our range … Coop believes that terrorism has been guided by motives other than computer game universes and Coop therefore sees no direct [connection] between them.

Not much of an explanation, eh?

Unfortunately, this decision has the side effect of separating people from a powerful way of processing fear, anxiety, and shock. And Norway is currently a country full of people attempting to process fear, anxiety, and shock. Sure, some of them will find other outlets — but to deny this one seems unreasonable, particularly if nobody truly believes games were to blame for Breivik’s actions.

It also winds up punishing video-game companies for an act of terrorism they had absolutely nothing to do with. Stores usually have the option whether to carry a certain product, so no laws are being broken, as far as I know. But I wonder what the ultimate effect, if any, of this sales decision will be.

What do you think? Should retailers stop selling such games when they’re associated with an act of terrorism? Why or why not?

Oslo: Modern Warfare didn’t lead Breivik to shoot

Alleged Oslo gunman Anders Behring Breivik.

People read newspapers if for no other reason than to understand human behavior. We read for the crimes, the celebrity shenanigans, the “fluff” pieces. When a massive tragedy happens, we want to know why it happened — and who was behind it.

That’s one reason reporters work so hard to find out details about someone like Anders Behring Breivik, who allegedly bombed downtown Oslo and then shot dozens of people, mostly children, on nearby Utoya Island July 22. Before the attack, Breivik penned a lengthy manifesto describing his goals and how he planned to get there. Within it are plenty of juicy details about his life, his tastes, and his philosophies.

A handful of articles this morning focus on Breivik’s use of video games, including one from Kotaku:

“I just bought Modern Warfare 2, the game. It is probably the best military simulator out there and it’s one of the hottest games this year. … I see MW2 more as a part of my training-simulation than anything else. I’ve still learned to love it though and especially the multiplayer part is amazing. You can more or less completely simulate actual operations.”

No doubt, some will see his statement as proof that violent video games are no good. That they inspire murderous rampages. People will see what they want to see in such statements — but that doesn’t make it true.

By the time Breivik got around to buying and playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, he was already pretty far along in his planning process. He was thinking in terms of wanting a “training-simulation.” Playing the game didn’t make him want to go on a shooting spree; wanting to go on a shooting spree made him want to play the game.

This is what people mean when they say correlation is not causation. You have someone who killed nearly 80 people in the biggest mass shooting in history. And you have someone who was fond of a military-style shooter game set in future versions of Afghanistan, Russia, and Rio de Janeiro, among others. That’s a correlation. But in Breivik’s own words, the plot came first; the game came later.

Perhaps of more concern is his use of World of Warcraft to separate himself from society:

Breivik says he spent three years writing the manifesto. In the first year, he played World of Warcraft “hardcore”, living “very ascetic” and in isolation. “I feel that this period was needed in order to completely detach myself from ‘the game,’ my ‘former shallow consumerist lifestyle’ in order to ensure full focus on the matters at hand.”

Many WoW players do wind up disassociated from day-to-day life if they spend the bulk of their time gaming. This is a hazard, and one worthy of attention. It’s worth noting that Breivik did this deliberately; whether other WoW players do probably varies from person to person.

Nevertheless, it’s likely that anti-violent-game pundits will use this opportunity to rail against the dangers of such games, particularly for young people. And indeed, some already are. Not 72 hours after the massacre, “the Australian Christian Lobby [is calling] for games to be banned if the ‘violence is excessive or gratuitous.’”

Australia’s Minister for Home Affairs, Brendan O’Connor, has reviewed existing research on violent video games. He saw Breivik’s mental state as a much more likely culprit for the shootings than the video games he favored:

I think it really points to, of course, a person who — clearly there is something wrong with this person to sort of cause such devastation in Norway. But I’m not sure that the argument goes that as a result of watching a game you turn into that type of person. I think there is something clearly intrinsically wrong with him.

It’s probably also worth noting that many gamers don’t believe that playing shooters appreciably improves their marksmanship. In addition to playing MW2, Breivik also joined a shooting club, though it’s unclear how much in-the-field target practice he’d undergone in addition to his gaming. I find it unlikely that the game alone would help him learn to wield a gun.

Could the game have inspired Breivik’s rampage — and could it have helped him pull it off? What do you think?

MW3 offers catharsis for bombing survivors

The newest trailer for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is out, and it includes compelling footage of gameplay in London and Paris, among other places. The London scenes zoom through an Underground tunnel — and even show a Tube train derailing. It’s understandable that Londoners, particularly those who experienced the 7/7 bombings or know someone who did, would be unnerved by such scenes.

Still, many say the London newspaper Daily Mail is taking it too far, with headlines like, “BAN THIS SICK FILTH” and “BAN THESE EVIL GAMES.” From the Giant Fire Breathing Robot blog:

The paper quotes Vivenne Pattison, spokeswoman for Mediawatch UK, as saying, “I have concerns as these games are hyper-real and take place in a landscape we are familiar with. In light of the fact we have just had the 7/7 inquests, it is in incredibly poor taste.” One of Mediawatch’s self-proclaimed missions is to, “campaign against violent, sexually explicit and obscene material in the media.”

It would be easy to say that game companies are capitalizing on these kinds of events. They are, after all, earning a profit from the games they design and sell. That said, the Call of Duty series didn’t get to be one of the best-selling game franchises simply by being gory and exploitative. If you watch the trailer above, you’ll see that it’s gripping, exciting, and incredibly lifelike. This isn’t just a game — it’s a chance to vividly imagine that you’re in the thick of a conflict on the modern-day streets of London and Paris.

As I’ve said before, these kinds of games can help both teen and adult players make deeper sense of current events such as the 7/7 bombings or other incidents. Anyone who is aware of those bombings, whether they experienced them directly or not, may have some leftover anxiety. Playing a game like Modern Warfare 3, with its built-in rewards and chances at heroism, can help people move past those anxieties.

Instead of banning these games, perhaps they should be handed out for free as a public service to anyone who needs to work through lingering fears about what happened that July morning in London. What do you think?

How parents make sense — or not — of video-game studies, ratings

Two weeks ago, I sat in on a Commonwealth Club panel in which several experts weighed in on the question, “Should sales of violent video games be restricted?” One of the panelists was Jim Steyer, CEO of Common Sense Media, who sat in for California Sen. Leland Yee. Steyer, like Yee, favors a law that would make it illegal for minors to buy “M” rated games on their own. Some of Steyer’s statements left me with lingering questions, particularly about the correlation between violent games and kids’ behavior. Fortunately, he was willing to answer those questions for Backward Messages. Here they are:

Q: At one point during the Commonwealth Club panel you said there were multiple studies showing “demonstrable evidence” that violent video games are harmful to kids. At another point, you agreed with Michael McConnell that those studies only show correlation, not causation. If studies only show a correlation, then how can they provide evidence that these games are harmful?

A: That’s pretty straightforward. As you may recall, Professor McConnell also clarified his statement by explaining that it’s more or less impossible to conduct a study that would show causation, because it would mean subjecting human subjects –- in this case, kids –- to potentially harmful material, which gets into tricky ethical territory. The fact is that study after study finds a strong connection between violence on screen or in games and real-life aggression –- a connection that the American Academy of Pediatrics says is nearly as strong as the medical association between cigarette smoking and lung cancer.

At the end of the day, even the industry would agree that games like Call of Duty or Deadspace 2 were never designed or intended for kids. At Common Sense, we support the rights of game developers to create violent games, and we believe adults should be free to buy them. But we also support parents and believe they’re the ones who should be making decisions about their kids’ media use -– not the video game industry, which stands to profit from a larger consumer base. Therefore, we support reasonable restrictions that put parents in charge of those decisions.

Q: What do you make of studies showing that violent video games are beneficial to kids, particularly by helping them build skills for functioning better in high-stress situations? And what about other research that argues that kids and teens need playful, fictional outlets for exploring aggression safely?

A: The subjects in the studies you shared with me were all 18 and up. The researchers in the Ryerson study even cautioned that their findings can’t be generalized to include all age groups, and that kids may still be impacted by violent video games in a way that university students aren’t. That said, our focus here is really on the sale issue. We’re not suggesting these games should be banned. We’re supporting a law that empowers parents to decide whether they want their kids playing these games or not. If parents believe that playing an M or AO rated game will help their kids in some way, including helping them to explore aggression, they can still buy it for them under this law. But most kids are not able to judge the impact of ultra-violence on their own.

Q: You brought up the issue of corner stores in Hunter’s Point selling violent video games to minors. Why did you mention Hunter’s Point, specifically? Were you drawing any relationship between the availability of these games in Hunter’s Point and the prevalence of youth violence in the neighborhood?

A; I brought up corner stores to highlight the fact that the industry’s self-regulation, though it’s gotten better over the years, is not enough to limit the sale of M and AO rated games to minors. I’ve also worked in Hunter’s Point and seen these examples. The law currently before the Supreme Court would apply to any retail outlet, not just those large outlets which may be monitored by the game manufacturers and ESRB.

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While I respect Steyer’s point of view (and generally agree that parents should be involved in their kids’ choice to play these games), he’s operating on a couple of assumptions that I find faulty, even troubling. First, he assumes that parents might be exposed to the idea that these games can benefit their kids. That idea is certainly out there, but for the most part the media has focused on faulty studies (ones even Steyer admits are faulty) that blame games for kids’ aggression and violence. Parents have to dig to find the good in these games, and why should they do so when folks like Steyer are happy to lead them in the other direction?

Also, it’s a mistake to compare the existing research on violent video games to the studies linking lung cancer to cigarette smoke. The science on the latter is very, very different, and quite able to prove that smoking — and the carcinogens in cigarettes — leads to lung cancer in many who smoke.

His second faulty assumption is that parents are currently able to make good sense of the ESRB ratings system. MIT’s Konstantin Mitgutsch, a scientific board member of Europe’s game-ratings group, Pan European Game Information (PEGI), has uncovered several ways in which the ratings are getting lost in translation:

1. Many parents think the rating describes how difficult the game is to play, rather than its content.

2. Some of the ratings are dated; “a game that was considered ‘shocking’ in the 1990s might appear harmless today,” but may still carry the same rating.

3. Ratings focus on game content, not context — and that context may make all the difference in whether the content is problematic for players.

You can check out Mitgutsch and his team’s first video studying these issues, called “‘Die!’ Censoring Game Violence,” at this link.

Panel: Should sales of violent video games be restricted?

Tonight, we join California Sen. Leland Yee and Blizzard VP/Chief Public Policy Officer George Rose, along with Michael McConnell, Director of the Stanford Constitutional Law Center, at the Commonwealth Club of California. Yee authored a bill banning the sale of “ultraviolent” video games to buyers under 18. Although the bill was passed into law, it was successfully appealed. The ultimate decision rests in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court, expected to make a decision this spring.

First things first: Leland Yee isn’t here. He remained in Sacramento tonight to work on the budget proceedings. Instead, we have Jim Steyer, CEO of Common Sense Media, who is an advocate of Yee’s bill.

Jim Steyer: The issue is straightforward from a kids perspective. Over the past decade, there has been a segment of the video game media creating ultraviolent and sexually violent games. The only issue we care about is whether you can sell it to some 12-year-old kid, or whether the sale should be to someone over the age of 17. There is demonstrable evidence that [these games] have a very bad impact on children. We believe the creators and developers have a total right to make games; we support the right to create. Our only issue is with the sales.

George Rose: How many in the audience think it’s easier for a minor to buy a beer than to buy an ultraviolent game? (Show of hands). The industry, at this point, has done so much — it should not be punished for something it hasn’t done. It should be held up as a shining example of self-regulation. Yee’s law is a perfect example of “legislation out of control.” It’s based on junk science. Just about every court and scientist in the country, including 82 that signed a petition to the court, said there’s no foundation to anything that would show that playing video games, watching movies, watching rock and roll, would turn you into a monster and make you shoot somebody. The problem isn’t the First Amendment, the problem is the Second Amendment.

Yee’s statute is both under-inclusive and over-inclusive. It doesn’t describe how to apply it. Even if this were true that games make teens violent, the staute would be useless.

We don’t want to piss off the parents. We want to do it right. The stores themselves enforce the ratings. The system we have right now allows parents to know far more about the video games than any other form of media. The statistics show — 90% of the purchases of game sales are done in the presence of the parents. The law would fine the clerk who sold the game $1,000.

Under the definition of “ultraviolent” in the law, most of Activision/Blizzard’s games would qualify.

Michael McConnell: In 1968, under a precedent written by Justice William J. Brennan, Ginsberg vs. New York, it’s not inconsistent with the First Amendment to prohibit the sale of material obscene to minors. In the Ginsberg case it was “girly magazines.” It’s constitutional because the state had some reasonable basis for concluding that those materials are harmful. The SCOTUS is going to start with that precedent and see if it applies to video games. It will apply criteria:

1. Content: Does it make sense to say that the First Amendment protects the right of 16-year-olds to purchase ultraviolent games when they don’t have the right to purchase girly magazines? But it does seem that the argument would apply to many other media — movies, comic books, even Saturday morning cartoons. There’s a lot of violence in ordinary American culture. I think the SCOTUS will be worried about how big a hit this will make in American culture.

2. Audience: Minors. But 17-year-olds are very different from 11 year olds, but this law applies the same standard to both. I think the SCOTUS is going to be very concerned about that. My guess is they’re going to be worried about making a serious new law on the issue of when are minors subject to a different law under the First Amendment. Right now, we don’t know which constitutional laws apply to children.

3. Medium: California conceded that interactive media are considered speech, like print media. In video games, the gamer is engaging in simulated activity. They’re not just receiving messages, they’re acting out the story. The gamer is actually beating people, slicing off people’s heads, on a simulated basis, but it’s an activity in which the person is engaged in the extreme violence. It’s not obvious to me that this is the same as a comic book. I think the court is going to be wary that the same standard is going to apply to interactive media.

The vagueness of the law is very troubling. It’s about not maiming or killing an image of a person. Is a zombie a human? Is a character like Road Runner a human-like image?

The Supreme Court is not likely to say that this statute is constitutional. I think they’re going to strike it down. But I don’t think they’re going to go as far as say these types of statutes are unconstitutional — they might uphold more narrowly defended statutes in the future.

Moderator John Diaz: George Rose, how is the regulation currently enforced?

Rose: We get people fired for selling M rated games to minors.

Diaz: Jim Steyer, where do you draw the line? What would be illegal under this law?

Steyer: First, I don’t think the American Academy of Pediatrics is “junk science.” The breadth of the bill is challenging. The vagueness — that’s going to be the key issue that the justices will wrestle with. But I don’t think we can trust the video game industry to self-regulate when it comes to the best interests of kids. The goal is to find a way to respect free speech, to craft laws that are appropriate.

Diaz: Let’s get back to my question. What would be legal and illegal?

Steyer: [Sales of] very narrow category of games, and it should be. It would be really limited. The challenge is on the issue of how do you define it specifically. The author of the statute isn’t here. I think it’s for the court to decide.

Rose: But then it’s “I’ll know pornography when I see it,” and you spend the next 10 years arguing it.

Is Call of Duty [Activision] an ultraviolent game?

Steyer: It’s a very valid question. In Black Ops, there is a good possibility that they would say the sale of that game should be limited to those over the age of 17.

Rose: If that game were prohibited, Call of Duty would carry a restricted label, no store would carry it, and that game would never be made.

Diaz: Why would the law change stores’ willingness to sell these games?

Rose: Because of the “Scarlet Letter” sticker, and the $1,000 fine. Why would they risk selling something to a minor? It’s chilling not only my speech, but the speech of everyone else.

Diaz: Why would this rating be a “Scarlet Letter?”

Rose: Look at what happened to NC-17. Nobody wants to show them in mainstream theaters and nobody wants to carry them in WalMart.

Diaz: To Michael McConnell — the Roberts court has been fairly broad in its definition of speech. A recent example includes the demonstrations put on by the Westboro Baptist Church.

McConnell: It’s one of the strongest free-speech-protecting courts. They struck down a federal statute prohibiting the distribution of “animal crush” videos. There’s also the Citizens United case. If you had to be a betting person, my guess is that George’s side is going to prevail.

Diaz: An audience question regarding Bowling For Columbine. Are violent video games just a scapegoat for the culture of violence?

Steyer: To blame all the violence in the US on video games would be silly. The interactive nature of games is important. Very legitimate scientific data shows that games are different. The repetitive play contributes, but also becoming inured to violence.

Rose: This country is somewhat schizophrenic to begin with. If you look at sex, it’s quite OK to go out there and engage in consensual sex, but it’s not OK to show it on TV. In the case of violence, you can go to prison and be sentenced to death for the acts it’s OK to watch on TV. I’m more concerned about what my child sees on the nightly news, the real violence. I think my kid can recognize the difference between a virtual human being and a real human being. The people in Columbine were storing and stockpiling weapons in their bedroom. Their mother ignored loads and loads of ammunition and guns. That’s where the fault lies. It doesn’t lie with the state. Those kids would have done what they did, one way or the other.

I don’t agree that video games are special because they are interactive. The Bible is one of the most interactive works in history. People go to war over it. If that’s not interactive, I don’t know what is. What drove Charles Manson if it wasn’t the Beatles song? It’s a very simplistic way of looking at video games, and at art.

Diaz: An audience question. If this law survives the SCOTUS, what other precautionary laws might follow?

McConnell: Violence could become treated similar to pornography, which it never has been. Under another theory, minors are subject to more regulation with less constitutional protection. Under another theory, this interactive is considered as something less than pure speech. I can’t see it being treated as non-speech, but it could be subject to some lesser degree of protection under the First Amendment.

Steyer: Think Michael’s analysis is on point. This case had a positive impact on the video game industry. In the past 5-6 years it’s become much more responsible about the sale to minors, and that’s a very good thing.

The kids out in Hunter’s Point are buying these games in liquor stores. I don’t think the industry is getting clerks fired out there.

Diaz: Who is the average gamer?

Rose: The average gamer is 32. About 60% are male, 40% are female. Only 5% of games sold last year were rated M.

Violence among kids has steadily declined. I think it’s mostly thanks to good parental care. To say that all we’re doing is plotting how to sell our dirty little games to little kids, that’s pretty myopic.

Diaz: What about the sales at corner liquor stores?

Rose: Don’t know what liquor stores Jim hangs out in. We sell to WalMart, we sell to Best Buy, we sell to GameStop. The same liquor store that sells these games to kids is the one that would sell a 12-pack of beer to a minor.

Diaz: Which studies do you consider “junk science?”

Rose: One study asked kids the question, “Do you play video games?” “How often?” “Did you have a fight with your teacher?” “Are you depressed?” Is this how you want to decide how to restrict a whole class of people and deprive them of their constitutional rights? The statute is that broad. It’s not just about video games. It could be about anything.

McConnell: All of the studies show correlation and not causation. I don’t think that’s going to matter. You can’t show causation when you’re talking about human subjects. It’s virtually impossible to conduct the kind of study that would show causation because it’s unethical to subject people to certain stimuli. The SCOTUS is going to assume that this kind of game can or might cause harm. Then, given that assumption, they will look at whether the statute is constitutional. I don’t think they’re going to get into the question of the studies. Also don’t think they’re going to get into the issue of self-regulation.

Steyer: I think there’s clear evidence about correlation. There’s no question that there’s potential harm.

Diaz: Audience question: Why should the government get involved at all? Is this a failure of the industry or of parents?

Steyer: A major portion of the public and the medical profession feel there’s harm involved. At the end of the day, this is a nuanced case. It’s not all the video game industry’s fault. It’s not all the parents’ fault.

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Post-debate analysis: It’s a little disappointing that Leland Yee couldn’t be there tonight, since so much of the debate focused on the vagueries of the bill and how, exactly, terms such as “ultraviolent” and “human figure” would be defined. His stand-in, Jim Steyer, does side with Yee on many points but wasn’t able to answer questions about the bill very well. I think one of the key — and most worrisome — aspects of this issue is one McConnell raised: What, exactly, are the constitutional rights of minors, particularly when it comes to the First Amendment? Should they be allowed to purchase violent video games in a country where they can’t legally purchase pornography? Or is this yet another category of media that the government is interested in “protecting” children from?

Video games soothe soldiers’ post-war nightmares, but make kids take risks. What?

A new study suggests that playing “risk-glorifying” games can lead teens to engage in riskier activities, such as illegal street racing. But the study is short on proof. Photo by Flickr user osakasteve.

When soldiers come home from war, they don’t leave it behind on the battlefield. It invades their nights, sparking nightmares and insomnia. A recent talk by Jayne Gackenbach of Grant MacEwan University in Edmonton, Canada, at the Game Developers Conference shared something interesting. Soldiers who played combat-based video games such as Call of Duty reported sleeping better at night. Not only that, but when the nightmares came, those soldiers were more likely to feel like they had some control over their dreams, producing more positive outcomes and happier mornings.

Low gamers [those who didn't play games, or engaged in casual gaming] reported more incidents of feeling helpless against an aggressive, violent enemy. Gackenbach theorises that playing violent games while awake may serve as a sort of “threat simulator,” a way of conditioning the mind to better cope with intense, dangerous situations when they arise in nightmares.

Interestingly, she added that many of these soldiers would bring their war games with them when they went overseas — a fact other video-game writers have corroborated. It’s possible that the soldiers who love their combat games are wired a little differently than the “low gamers,” and thus these games provide them more relief than they would provide others. But for whatever reason, violent games are helpful to this group of soldiers.

This suggests that there is some benefit to the playacting and exploration that takes place in video games, including the most disturbing and worrisome. Plenty of studies have tried to suggest that high-intensity video games are bad influences for kids (and we’ll get to another one of those in a moment), but those studies seem to throw catharsis theory, and the psychological benefits of role-playing, straight out the window. However, when you talk to actual gamers about their use of actual games in actual day-to-day life, as Gackenbach did, you hear time and time again how beneficial it is for gamers to be able to go to these dark places in a safe, fictionalized way.

That’s why this study (PDF), by Peter Fischer, et all, is such a head-scratcher. In it, the researchers found that teens and young adults who are exposed to media that “glorifies” risk (a term they fail to define) are more likely to copy that behavior, particularly if the media in question is interactive, as with video games.

There are a number of issues with this study, the predominant one being that this isn’t an actual study Fischer and his colleagues conducted on actual teens. Instead, they dug through research that other people did, on media influences, which happened to include the data they were looking for. A handful of the included studies were his own. The problem with this is, for the most part Fischer couldn’t really control the methods involved; he couldn’t select his subjects, he couldn’t ask his own questions or design his own experiments. Sure, he supposedly got information on 80,000 subjects, which is nothing to sneeze at, but he didn’t interact with most of them.

The second problem is, his study is based on the assertion that risky behavior is on the rise among teens. However, his “proof” is given in a number of single-year statistics, rather than multi-year figures that demonstrate an increase. His exception is a statistic that shows binge-drinking is on the rise among German teens. However, if you look up actual reports on those figures, you find that teen drinking has actually decreased in Germany. Yes, a handful (8 percent) of German boys confessed to drinking 5 or more drinks in one sitting at least once per month, reflecting an increase in such behavior. But the reason given for this behavior wasn’t media influence, but peer pressure and social lubrication. As it turns out, most of the binge-drinkers live in rural areas, suggesting boredom is one of the biggest factors of all.

While citing statistics, Fischer also mentions a handful of anecdotes in which people reproduced stunts on the outlandish series Jackass (which is thoroughly disclaimered during each episode), as though these stories represent a more widespread problem.

I’m going to focus on Fischer’s discussion of video games, since that’s a topic I cover frequently in this blog. His group looked at racing-based video games, where players are encouraged to drive fast as well as do stunts, mimic reckless driving, etc. for points or other in-game rewards. After playing racing games, some studies found that players then showed more willingness to drive recklessly. In a computer-generated vehicle simulation. How this is substantially different from a racing game is beyond me. It in no way represents how they would behave once they got behind the wheel of a two-ton steel machine.

Fischer turns his attention to another study, which showed that teens who played racing games were also likely to get behind the wheel when they were too young to do so legally. In one of Fischer’s own studies, he found that kids who played racing games reported being in fender-benders more often (and thought more highly of real-life reckless driving, though it’s not clear whether they actually engaged in them). This is getting closer. However, it’s also possible that these kids just loved crazy driving, and that playing games allowed them to do so safely, lowering their risk of trouble behind the wheel. To bear this theory out, you’d have to take two groups of kids who play racing games and engage in reckless driving, take the video games away from one group, and show that their driving became more conservative.

In fact, one of Fischer’s other studies suggests that the problem isn’t gaming exactly, it’s the fact that certain kids think of themselves as reckless drivers. These kids happened to be the same ones who played racing games. They also took more risks when out on the roads. Fischer argues that this self-image comes from playing so many games, but doesn’t provide any evidence to back that up. Remember, correlation is not causation. Maybe these kids’ parents always told them what reckless boys (and girls) they were. We don’t know. There’s no reason to assume it’s the games.

In closing, Fischer talks about the “over 2,000 annual, illegal episodes of street-racing [that] have been observed by police departments in California alone, and nationwide U.S. studies [that] report significant increases in fatal street racing crashes over the last few years.” He blames this on “media and car advertising,” even the Speed Racer cartoon. Granted, illegal street racing has been a problem almost since the invention of the accelerator pedal, but it’s hard to see how recent instances can be blamed on the media (especially since the activity predates most of those media). Street racing tends to be a community activity. That is, kids become involved with a group that race illegally for fun, and they participate in the racing to connect with the group. It’s a social activity, like any other, though with admittedly bigger risks than many other social activities.

To go back to a point I made earlier, the bigger bugaboo here seems to be plain old teenage boredom. Teens who grow up with a lot of free time and not enough supervision are likely to explore the things which excite them, both in simulations (video games) and real life. If you look at kids who engage in real-life recklessness, there’s little to suggest that they got the idea from a game or a TV show, aside from isolated incidents. You can’t prove that video games cause reckless behavior by asking kids to say how they feel. You have to look at their actual day-to-day behavior, compare that to their media consumption, then take that media away and see how their day-to-day behavior changes. I haven’t seen a study yet that does that.

After all that, I want to ask: did you ever do something risky because you tried it in a video game, or saw it on TV or in a movie? If so, what was it, and what happened? Share your stories in comments.

Scholarship rewards video-game skills

Screenshot from Call of Duty: Black Ops.

I’ve been talking a lot with the parents of teenagers lately, and one common thread among them has been their distrust and distaste for violent video games. Many parents ban these kinds of games in their households on the grounds that no children, even young adults, should be exposed to them. But clearly not all parents do this — and not all the parents who let their kids play these games are ignorantly looking the other way, either.

Take Pam Marks, mom of Sheboygan, Wisconsin teen Michael Marks. Michael spends three or four hours a day playing first-person shooters such as Call of Duty and Halo, Pam told the Sheboygan Press. The hours he spends engaging in simulated warfare doesn’t seem to be harming him. In fact, it’s given him the skills necessary to compete next week in a competition that could earn him a $10,000 scholarship.

Marks has already competed in two rounds, earning him a shot at the finals in Florida. The competition was created by Angela Tartaro of ScholarGamers.com, who recognizes that there are certain skills gamers develop that not only can be measured, but rewarded.

“It occurred to me kids can get scholarships for playing basketball, they can get scholarships for being very good at a specific subject in school … they can get scholarships for being very good at designing video games,” Tartaro said in a recent telephone interview. “Why can’t we recognize the skills of the students that play video games as well?”

In the ScholarGamers competition, participants play a number of new-to-them games, testing their ability to adapt quickly to a new gaming environment and beat the game — better than their competitors. This is proof of the kinds of skills gamers develop when they play regularly — even when they play games some believe aren’t healthy for them. Not only that, but it offers a real-life reward in addition to the feelings of achievement and heroism that come along with mastering a challenging video game.

This scholarship is the latest in a series of realizations made by educators in recent years that video-games are a large part of kids’ lives. That realization has led to the inclusion of video games in school curricula. In New York City classrooms, for example, students are studying how video games are designed — and then designing their own. Many educators are beginning to come to the conclusion that video games are so engaging for kids, and are such a large part of their lives, that it makes sense to co-opt games as a learning tool.

We’ve been told that first-person shooters turn young men such as Michael, into aggressive teens desensitized to violence. Michael seems anything but. More competitions like this one would allow more teenage boys to prove that they, and their hobbies, aren’t the enemy.