Gaming Notes and Links
An interesting article appeared in Next-Gen last week about studies linking violent video games with aggressive behavior. To no one's surprise, they scientifically suck, and a researcher ("Dr. Christopher Ferguson, a Ph.D researcher at Texas A&M International University’s Department of Behavioral, Applied Sciences and Criminal Justice") who has done an analysis of the studies explains why. Here's an excerpt:"...it was found that studies that employed less standardized measures of aggression produced higher effects than better standardized measures of aggression. In other words, better measures of aggression are associated with lower effects."
In other words, when reserachers invent their own definitions of aggression, their studies appear to show a more direct affect on behavior from violent video games. Surprise!
Here's one more excerpt:
He concluded that “there is little evidence from the current body of literature that playing violent videogames is either causally or correlationally associated with increases in aggressive behavior.”
Ferguson isn't automatically correct just because he says what we want him to. But I've been arguing for years that these studies conveniently leap to conclusions that aren't supported by the data, or they've collected data in an extremely narrow, tailor-made way to be able to get the answer they want.
Next are two very interesting articles that appeared in the last week. First, gaming legend Steve Meretzky has written an article titled "What We Could Learn From Board Games," and you can read it here.
Also, Sirius sent me a link to an excellent article on the history of computer role-playing games. This is a multi-part series, part one is excellent, and you can read it here.
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