TruthBook Religious News Blog

By Aaron J. Leichman
Christian Post Reporter
Tue, Nov. 04 2008

Page one of a two-page article. Please click on "external source" for complete article.

Researchers behind the first study on the longer-term effects of violent video games on aggression say their findings “strongly” suggest reducing the exposure of youth to the “unnecessary” risk factor.

The results of the study on Longitudinal Effects of Violent Video Games on Aggression in Japan and the United States “confirm earlier experimental and cross-sectional studies that had suggested that playing violent video games is a significant risk factor for later physically aggressive behavior,” researchers reported in this month’s issue of Pediatrics, the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Furthermore, “this violent video game effect on youth generalizes across very different cultures,” they added.

For the study, researchers put together three groups of kids from both high- (United States) and low- (Japan) violence cultures.

In the United States, 364 children aged 9 to 12 were asked to list their three favorite games and how often they played them. Meanwhile, in the second group of 181 Japanese students aged 12 to 15, the researchers recorded how often the children played five different violent video game genres (fighting action, shooting, adventure, among others). In the third group of 1,050 Japanese students aged 13 to 18, researchers gauged the violence in the kids' favorite game genres and the time they spent playing them each week.

For the Japanese children, each was asked to rate their own behavior in terms of physical aggression, such as hitting, kicking or getting into fights with other kids. In the United States, the children also rated themselves, but the researchers took into account reports from their peers and teachers as well.

What the researchers found was that in every group, children who were exposed to more video game violence did become more aggressive over time than their peers who had less exposure. This was true even after the researchers took into account how aggressive the children were at the beginning of the study – a strong predictor of future bad behavior.

The findings are "pretty good evidence" that violent video games do indeed cause aggressive behavior, commented Dr. L. Rowell Huesmann, director of the Research Center for Group Dynamics at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research in Ann Arbor, according to CNN.

“These findings also further suggest that common social learning processes underlie media violence effects across cultures, and contradict another popular alternative hypothesis: that only highly aggressive children (either by nature, culture, or other socialization factors) will become more aggressive if repeatedly exposed to violent video games,” the researchers added in their report.

The results are particularly foreboding as children in America today play around three to four times longer than children two decades ago.

While American children played video games around 4 hours per week in the late 1980s, they now average 13 hours overall, with boys averaging 16 to 18 hours per week. Furthermore, 90 percent of American children between the ages of 8 and 16 play video games at home.

“Children's favorite games often are violent,” researchers acknowledged in their report, noting the general public’s definition of "violent media" as typically only those television shows, films, and video games that include graphic images of blood and gore.

Labels: Aaron J. Leichman, aggression, Longitudinal Effects of Violent Video Games on Aggression, pediatrics, video games, violence

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Saturday, March 22, 2008

Religion and Video Games

21 Mar, 2008

It’s Holy Week once again. It’s time to reflect upon the real reason for the holiday.

While we’re at it, I’d like to repost this piece which I did last year (around the same time) at my old blogger blog. It’s about Christian video gamesVideogame-Simulator-Job , its history and how it affects us today.

I invite you to take a look into religion’s foray into the virtual world and then judge for yourself. Is there really a need for religion and games to mix?

The first Christian video game was one made by Wisdom Tee called Bible Adventures This was launched in 1991 for Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The game was a simple side-scrolling game which was further divided into 3 mini-games; namely Noah’s Ark, Baby Moses and David and Goliath. All games involved side-scrolling elements and borrowed, of course, from platform games like Mario, etc.

Since then, many other games were developed with a “themed-element” or involved characters or concepts based on the Bible and other prominent Christian beliefs. Some notable titles for the newer platforms/game systems include The Bible Game which was released (and was the first) for both PS2 and the Xbox.

In the Game Boy Advance version players explore different maps searching for demons. When the player finds one, they must hit the demon with their bible. At this point the demon challenges you to bible trivia in exchange for a piece of key (which opens the end level destination, the church).

Of course, not all games designed with Christian flavor evoke the same amount of approval from the press or critics of the industry. Case in point is a news report from BBC about a game called Left Behind: Eternal Forces.

According to that report, critics call it a “religious warfare. The way to win is to convert or kill. You have both the Inquisition and the Crusades,”

The controversial game is is based on a wildly successful series of novels about the struggles on earth after true believers ascend to heaven. Players can command the army of good - the Tribulation Force - against the anti-Christ’s Global Community. Of course, the game’s developers claim that their purpose is to convert players to true believers by immersing them in an interactive environment with lessons from the Bible.

Whatever happens to that debate, it is clear that the Christian community is eyeing video games as a valid medium to “reach out” and acquire followers or simply teach them about the fundamentals of faiths.

Where this journey will lead is, of course, up to the game developers of this new genre and the levels of acceptance of gamers who will ultimately play these games.

Labels: Christianity, GM T, religion, video games