Posted May 9th, 2008 at 11:53am
Well, this is a refreshing story. A new report is suggesting that boys who play video games are actually less likely to turn to violence or criminal activity, contrary to the popular media opinion. Dr. Lawrence Kutner and Dr. Cheryl Olsen of Harvard Medical School ran a study of 1,250 children and 500 parents to determine the results. While boys and girls who played adult-themed games were slightly more likely to engage in aggressive behavior, other games resulted in absolutely no increase in violence. It was also unclear whether the aggressive children fought more due to the adult games, or were simply drawn to them due to their aggressive nature. All in all, it's a very interesting new study, and hopefully we'll see more experiments like this in the future.
industry, study, violence
Posted April 15th, 2008 at 2:12am
Everyone has met a parent or community leader who is only too happy to stand up on a soapbox and lecture ad nauseam about the perils of video gaming and how it's going to turn our youth into frothing, soulless killers. Well, next time you see this person, show them this: PC Authority has a list of the five most violent games ever to grace the screen (or defile it). That'll get them in even more of a twist than they already are. In case you doubt, check out this one entry about 1982's Custer's Revenge for Atari:Custer’s Revenge is somewhat unique. It’s one of the earliest attempts at on-screen nudity – this is an Atari 2600 game, after all. It’s also just about the only game we can come up with that uses rape as a gameplay tactic, as a curiously pants-free General Custer attempts to ravage a low-res Indian maiden while avoiding getting an arrow straight through his… well, we’ll let you work out the rest. For some reason, every time I hear the alarms go up about how violent a video game is and how it's going to affect our youth, it always reminds me of this:
violence, violent