Violent Video Games and Their Relation to Aggressive Behaviour in Late Childhood in Pakistan

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 47-59
Author(s):  
Mujeeba Ashraf
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Aggressive Behaviour ◽  
Role Play ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Late Childhood ◽  
First Person ◽  
Violent Video Games ◽  
Play Action ◽  
First Person Shooter

Most of the European and American literature suggests that playing violent video games can increase aggression in real-life situations in children, but the extent to which this is true in Pakistan is largely unknown. This is a correlational study that explored whether the amount of time spent playing violent themed video games was associated with aggressive behaviour and whether playing different kinds of violent themed video games could predict aggressive behaviour in late childhood. The sample of 100 children (mean age 13.37) was taken, and children were asked to fill in a diary when they played videogames for a week. The results revealed the time spent playing violent video games (role play, action and fighting, and first-person shooter) was positively correlated with aggression; however, only role play and first-person shooter video games were positive predictors of aggressive behaviour. Current research suggests that if children spend more than 30 minutes a day playing violent video games, their chances of learning aggressive behaviour may increase.

Null Effects of Game Violence, Game Difficulty, and 2D:4D Digit Ratio on Aggressive Behavior

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 606-616 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Hilgard ◽  
Christopher R. Engelhardt ◽  
Jeffrey N. Rouder ◽  
Ines L. Segert ◽  
Bruce D. Bartholow
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Aggressive Behavior ◽  
Digit Ratio ◽  
Acute Exposure ◽  
First Person ◽  
Large Sample ◽  
Prenatal Testosterone ◽  
Play Session ◽  
Game Violence ◽  
First Person Shooter

Researchers have suggested that acute exposure to violent video games is a cause of aggressive behavior. We tested this hypothesis by using violent and nonviolent games that were closely matched, collecting a large sample, and using a single outcome. We randomly assigned 275 male undergraduates to play a first-person-shooter game modified to be either violent or less violent and hard or easy. After completing the game-play session, participants were provoked by a confederate and given an opportunity to behave aggressively. Neither game violence nor game difficulty predicted aggressive behavior. Incidentally, we found that 2D:4D digit ratio, thought to index prenatal testosterone exposure, did not predict aggressive behavior. Results do not support acute violent-game exposure and low 2D:4D ratio as causes of aggressive behavior.

scholarly journals Always Already Monsters—BioShock’s (2007) ‘Splicers’ as Computational Others

Nordlit ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaroslav Švelch
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Social Bonds ◽  
Computational Algorithms ◽  
First Person ◽  
First Person Shooter ◽  
Game Representation ◽  
Embedded Narrative

The article explores the manufacturing of monsters in video games, using the case of the influential 2007 first-person shooter BioShock, and ‘splicers’—its most numerous, zombie-like enemies. I combine two methodological perspectives on the ‘manufacturing’ of splicers by analyzing [a] the title’s developer commentary and other official paratexts to trace the design of splicers, and [b] the game’s embedded narrative to reconstruct the diegetic backstory of splicers. I argue that video game enemies, including splicers, are ‘computational others’, who may appear human on the level of representation, but whose behavior is machinic, and driven by computational algorithms. To justify the paradoxical relationship between their human-like representation and machinic behavior, BioShock includes an elaborate narrative that explains how the citizens of the underwater city of Rapture were dehumanized and transformed into hostile splicers. The narrative of dehumanization, explored following Haslam’s dehumanization theory (2006), includes [a] transforming splicers into atomized creatures by depriving them of political power and social bonds, [b] creating fungible and interchangeable enemies through splicers’ masks and bodily disintegration, [c] justifying splicers’ blindness to context and their simplistic behavior by portraying them as mentally unstable addicts. The article concludes that all video game enemies are inherently monstrous, and that critique of video game representation should focus on how games fail to make monsters human, rather than how games render humans monstrous or dehumanized.

scholarly journals Games of Drones: The Uneasy Future of the Soldier-Hero in Call of Duty: Black Ops II

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 360-376 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carrie Elizabeth Andersen
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
First Person ◽  
Combat Experience ◽  
Logical Conclusion ◽  
The Future ◽  
First Person Shooter ◽  
The U.S

In this article, I argue that the first-person shooter video game, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, reflects the U.S. military‟s transition as it reimagines the soldier‟s role in war. In the age of drone technology, this role shifts from a position of strength to one of relative weakness. Although video games that feature future combat often “function as virtual enactments and endorsements for developing military technologies,” Black Ops II offers a surprisingly complex vision of the future of drones and U.S. soldiers (Smicker 2009: 107). To explore how the game reflects a contemporary vision of the U.S. military, I weave together a close textual reading of two levels in Black Ops II with actual accounts from drone pilots and politicians that illuminate the nature of drone combat. Although there are moments in Black Ops II in which avatars combat enemies with first-hand firepower, the experience of heroic diegetic violence is superseded by a combat experience defined by powerlessness, boredom, and ambiguous pleasure. The shift of the soldier from imposing hero to a banal figure experiences its logical conclusion in Unmanned, an independent video game that foregrounds the mundane, nonviolent nature of drone piloting. Instead of training soldiers to withstand emotionally devastating experiences of death and violence first-hand (or to physically enact such violence), games like Black Ops II and Unmanned train actual and potential soldiers to tolerate monotony and disempowerment.

scholarly journals Violent acts ((Online)Games)

10.34778/3d ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Wulf ◽  
Daniel Possler ◽  
Johannes Breuer
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Video Recording ◽  
First Person ◽  
Cohen’S Kappa ◽  
Cohen's Kappa ◽  
Violent Content ◽  
Content Analyses ◽  
Violent Acts ◽  
First Person Shooter

The depiction of violence is the focus of many content analyses of video games. Typically, the occurrence and nature of acts of violence or aggression are coded to quantify the amount of violent content in a particular game.   Field of application/theoretical foundation: Quantifying the amount of violence in video games can inform media effects research that looks at the relationship between the exposure to violent video game content and aggression. This allows for more precise measures and hypotheses than simply coding a game as violent or nonviolent which is often done in experimental research in this area. What is commonly coded in content analyses of violent content in video games is the number and nature of aggressive or violent actions. Specific attributes of these acts, such as their realism, graphicness or (narrative) justification (Tamborini et al., 2013) are only considered in a few studies (e.g., Lachlan et al., 2005). While the focus in most studies is on acts of physical aggression/violence in interactions with/between game characters, there are also studies that have investigated verbal aggression between players (Holz Ivory et al., 2017).   References/combination with other methods of data collection: Content analysis of violence in video games can be complemented by survey data asking players about the games they play and their rating of the degree of violence they contain and/or age rating from institutions like ESRB or PEGI (see Busching et al., 2015).   Example studies Coding material Measure Operationalization Unit(s) of analysis Source(s) (reported reliability of coding) Video recording of playing session Number and duration of violent interactions (attacking and being attacked) (a) combat: “periods of playing time in which a player [i.e., the character controlled by the player] fires his gun” (p. 1021) (b) “under attack–the player is attacked by an opponent before or after using his own weapon” (p. 1022)  Distinct phases/events in up to 12 minutes of solo play of the first-person shooter game Tactical Ops: Assault on Terror Weber et al., 2009 (Cohen’s kappa = 0.81) Video recording of the whole game Depictions of injury (present/not present) “An injured or dead character lying on the ground or remnants of blood from a known violent act” (p. 403) 1-second intervals of the game recordings Thompson, Tepichin, & Haninger, 2006 (Cohen’s kappa = 0.93) Video recording of the whole game Depictions of violent acts (present/not present) “Intentional acts in which the aggressor causes or attempts to cause physical injury or death to another character” (p. 403) 1-second intervals of the game recordings Thompson, Tepichin, & Haninger, 2006 (Cohen’s kappa = 0.93) Video recording of the first 10 minutes of gameplay Depicted harm/pain (none, mild, moderate, extreme) in aggressive exchanges between in-game characters “physical injury or incapacitation of the victim” (p. 64) “an aggressive exchange that occurs between a perpetrator (P) engaging in a particular type of act (A) against a target (T)” (p. 63) Smith, Lachlan, & Tamborini, 2003 (coefficient according to “Potter and Levine-Donnerstein's (1 999) reliability formula for multiple coders”, p. 65: 0.87)   References Busching, R., Gentile, D. A., Krahé, B., Möller, I., Khoo, A., Walsh, D. A., & Anderson, C. A. (2015). Testing the reliability and validity of different measures of violent video game use in the United States, Singapore, and Germany. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 4(2), 97–111. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000004 Holz Ivory, A., Ivory, J. D., & Wu, W. (2017). Harsh Words and Deeds: Systematic Content Analyses of Offensive User Behavior in the Virtual Environments of Online First-Person Shooter Games. Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, 10(2), 19. Lachlan, K. A., Smith, S. L., & Tamborini, R. (2005). Models for aggressive behavior: The attributes of violent characters in popular video games. Communication Studies, 56(4), 313–329. https://doi.org/10.1080/10510970500319377 Smith, S. L., Lachlan, K. A., & Tamborini, R. (2003). Popular video games: Quantifying the presentation of violence and its context. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 47(1), 58–76. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15506878jobem4701_4 Tamborini, R., Weber, R., Bowman, N. D., Eden, A., & Skalski, P. (2013). “Violence is a many-splintered thing”: The importance of realism, justification, and graphicness in understanding perceptions of and preferences for violent films and video games. Projections, 7(1), 100–118. https://doi.org/10.3167/proj.2013.070108 Thompson, K. M., Tepichin, K., & Haninger, K. (2006). Content and ratings of mature-rated video games. Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, 160(4), 402–410. https://doi.org/10.1001/archpedi.160.4.402 Weber, R., Behr, K.-M., Tamborini, R., Ritterfeld, U., & Mathiak, K. (2009). What Do We Really Know About First-Person-Shooter Games? An Event-Related, High-Resolution Content Analysis. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 14(4), 1016–1037. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2009.01479.x

Virtual Antiracism

2020 ◽  
pp. 245-263
Author(s):  
David J. Leonard
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
First Person ◽  
Progressive Politics ◽  
Gaming Culture ◽  
First Person Shooter

Often defined by racism, sexism, homophobia, and disempowering representations, video games are rarely thought of us as progressive and hopeful tools of freedom. Examining Mafia III and Watch Dogs 2, this chapter explores the ways that these mainstream games have embraced antiracist and progressive politics within the first-person shooter narrative. Eschewing the tendency of progressive games to repel violence and the dominant gaming opposition to interventionist narratives and “woke” consciousness, the chapter reflects on the power of these games and the possibilities in the paradigm they represent for reception and decoding within gaming culture.

Three Dimensions of Bond : Adaptive Fidelity and Fictional Coherence in the Videogame Adaptations of GoldenEye

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Bryce Jones ◽  
Chris Carloy
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Role Play ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
First Person ◽  
First Person Shooter ◽  
The Relationship

Rare’s 1997 game GoldenEye 007 redefined the first-person shooter genre not only through its mission-based gameplay, improved enemy AI, and architecturally believable level designs, but also how it combined these features to create an internally consistent, believable Bond experience. When the game was remade in 2010, new developers Eurocom had to negotiate intellectual property restrictions and new genre developments to create a game that was both faithful to the beloved original and successful on its own terms. We explore the relationship between these games via the rubrics of adaptive fidelity (how faithfully each game operates as an adaptation of the GoldenEye film) and fictional coherence (how well their own components collaboratively encourage role-play as the character of Bond).

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