Not good News about Gaming Violence

Playing a violent video game can increase aggression, and when a player keeps thinking about the game, the potential for aggression can last for as long as 24 hours, according to a study in the current Social Psychological and Personality Science (published by SAGE).

Violent video game playing has long been known to increase aggression. This study, conducted by Brad Bushman of The Ohio State University and Bryan Gibson of Central Michigan University, shows that at least for men, ruminating about the game can increase the potency of the game's tendency to lead to aggression long after the game has been turned off.

The researchers randomly assigned college students to play one of six different video games for 20 minutes. Half the games were violent (e.g., Mortal Kombat) and half were not (e.g., Guitar Hero). To test if ruminating about the game would extend the games' effect, half of the players were told over "the next 24 hours, think about your play of the game, and try to identify ways your game play could improve when you play again."

Bushman and Gibson had the participants return the next day to test their aggressiveness. For men who didn't think about the game, the violent video game players tested no more aggressive than men who had played non-violent games. But the violent video game playing men who thought about the game in the interim were more aggressive than the other groups. The researchers also found that women who played the violent video games and thought about the games did not experience increased aggression 24 hours later.

This study is the first laboratory experiment to show that violent video games can stimulate aggression for an extended period of time. The authors noted that it is "reasonable to assume that our lab results will generalize to the 'real world.' Violent gamers usually play longer than 20 minutes, and probably ruminate about their game play in a habitual manner.
"

Sport Gamers

From Gran Turismo to WWE Smackdown, sports-based video games represent a wide variety of pursuits. When it comes to the people who actually play those games, however, little is known. How do sports video game players fit their games into a larger sports-related context? How does their video game play inform their media usage and general sports fandom?

That's what Concordia University communications professor Mia Consalvo sought to discover when she embarked on a large-scale study of video game players, the results of which were recently published in Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies.

Along with Abe Stein and Konstantin Mitgutsch from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Consalvo, who also holds a Canada Research Chair in Game Studies and Design, conducted an online survey of 1,718 participants to pin down demographics, habits, attitudes and activities of sports video game players.

They found that the majority of those who play sports video games are male (98.4 per cent), white (80 per cent) and in their mid-20s (average of 26 years). In comparison with other representative video game player demographics, the field is less diverse and the average player is younger. Based on the data about the larger game-playing population, it seems that the sports gamers are drawn from a more traditional demographic of game players, at least when it comes to console and certain personal computer-based video games.

"Perhaps one of the biggest findings to emerge from this study is unsurprising, but finally documented," notes Consalvo. "The overwhelming majority of sports gamers' -- 93.3 per cent -- self-identify as sports fans. That identity pushes beyond the playing of sports-themed video games. Attending sporting events, watching them on television, participating in those activities themselves as well as following certain teams or sports were regular parts of their daily lives."

Consalvo says that she still hopes to discover more insights into why there is little diversity in the player demographics, and why female players are in a minority. Says Consalvo, "while this study provides new insights into who sports video game players are and what they play and why, we still lack knowledge on how these players relate their passion for video games to their sports fandom in general." She hopes to address these questions in her forthcoming book, co-authored with Stein and Mitsgutsch, titledSports Videogames.