Bonus Post: Conclusion

Hopefully you enjoyed reading my blog, and maybe learned a thing or two about video games along the way. Looking back, it seems like I may have been giving voice to a lot of the criticisms directed towards games. But I’m glad to have ended on the interview with Julio Ortiz, as I agree with his outlook on video games and the current research that’s being done. In case you have any trouble finding the articles mentioned in this blog, here are the citations for the ones I’ve used:

Brooksby, A. (2008). Exploring the Representation of Health in Videogames: A Content Analysis. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 11(6), 771-773. doi:10.1089/cpb.2007.0007.

Fischer, P., Kastenmüller, A., & Greitemeyer, T. (2010). Media violence and the self: The impact of personalized gaming characters in aggressive video games on aggressive behavior. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46(1), 192-195. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2009.06.010.

Hartmann, T., & Vorderer, P. (2010). It's Okay to Shoot a Character: Moral Disengagement in Violent Video Games. Journal of Communication, 60(1), 94-119. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2009.01459.x.

Interview with an expert: Julio Angel Ortiz

For my final blog post, I interviewed Rutgers University’s own Julio Angel Ortiz about his research involving video games. Ortiz, 32, lives in Ridgefield, N.J., and graduated from Penn State with a major in information sciences and technology. Now, as a postdoc at Rutgers, Ortiz is interested in studying how video games impact society, and which communities have access to them.

Video games are increasingly influencing us as a new form of media. “Profits of the video game industry rival Hollywood,” Ortiz said. But despite its increasing popularity, video game research doesn’t seem to get a lot of respect. “As a researcher, I noticed that most of the research that’s been written about video games was all negative. Most of it talked about how video games lead to aggression, violence, etc.,” Ortiz said. He feels that some researchers focused too heavily on the violent games which tend to get a lot of media attention. Other researchers would blame video games as a possible cause of childhood obesity.

Even if research studied the positive effects of video games, it always seemed to focus on medical effects like improved eye-hand coordination. “But there was no research about, ‘what are the policy aspects of games?’ What laws need to be created to ensure this industry is successful? How do different cultures use videogames?” These are the kinds of questions that interest Ortiz and inspire his research.

“I want to know the impact [of video games], whether it’s positive or negative,” Ortiz said. “From a societal standpoint, how do different communities use video games?”

“All media, like the telegraph, the telephone, the television, the radio…all these media impacted society in some form. So if you look at the video game as another medium, then we know that there will definitely be an impact.” Ortiz works to fill in the gaps other studies passed over, trying to balance the seemingly-biased views of past research. “Anytime a new technology is introduced, [the reaction] always starts out negative. Now it’s time to move past that and try to see what we can learn from [video games],” Ortiz said.

Ortiz feels that video game research from the 1990s was all very negative. But within the last decade, there was a paradigm shift, where people began to regard the study of video games as a “reputable field.” “Like any other media, we need to take a hard look at [the video game industry] and see what it means to have it in our society. Can people learn from it? Can it change people?” Ortiz asked.

During Ortiz’s studies at Penn State, he was most interested in the dynamics of broadband networks that are implemented into small cities by the government. Specifically, he wanted to look at how cities were working to “bridge the digital divide.” Ortiz found that income was central to participation in broadband networks, and low-income people usually did not have access. Ortiz took interest in three low-income communities in particular: African-Americans, Latinos, and the elderly.

Ortiz, being a Latino himself, wanted to study how the Latino community viewed video games and saw the long-term benefits of this area of research. “By the year 2050, the Latino community will be the largest community in the U.S., so it’s a growing community… [and it shows] that the face of America is changing,” Ortiz said. Looking at how the Latino community views video games will be telling of how our nation as a whole views them.

“One of the things that I noticed when I was doing my research was that in countries like Taiwan and Japan and South Korea, what really drove people to [adopt] broadband was videogames,” Ortiz said. The families that had access to the broadband network in their city were the same families that played computer games demanding a good Internet connection, such as the MMO World of Warcraft.

Ortiz contends that certain games can teach the player valuable social skills in very subtle ways. “People that play [MMOs] are learning leadership skills…they’re leaning how to build teams, how to collaborate, how to solve problems,” Ortiz said. In this way, video games can be educational in a social context even as they provide entertainment for the player.

“Gaming is so diverse…there are so many different kinds of games. [Researchers] are focusing on gory, violent kinds of games – I bet if they do a study on these other educational, non-violent kinds of games, the results would be completely different,” Ortiz mused. Ortiz is determined to use his research to elucidate how video games play a part in modern society, without the narrow views that hindered previous studies.

To find out more about Ortiz’s previous work and his current goals, check out his website:
http://www.julioangel.com/

Addiction: forgoing reality to play a game

Game developers know that in order to be successful in such a competitive industry, their products must be fun to play. The player should be motivated to continue playing, and they should want to make an effort to achieve something or make progress in the game. But it seems that this theory of design can almost be too successful. Certain games enable the player to become overly engrossed in the content, ignoring all aspects of their actual lives as they devote every waking moment to playing the video game. Many believe that video games have the capacity to become an addiction, potentially on par with substance abuse or alcoholism.

There’s a genre of video game that hasn’t been discussed thus far in this blog: massive multiplayer online RPGs, or MMOs for short. These games often depict fantasy settings with a world that is populated not only by virtual characters, but also by other real people playing the game at the same time. The first MMO to gain widespread popularity was Sony Online Entertainment’s (SOE) Everquest, but a more relevant example would be Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, which currently has more than 11 million players each paying 15 dollars a month to inhabit a virtual world. There are also MMOs targeted specifically at children, such as SOE’s Free Realms, which just recently reached the 10 million subscriber mark.

MMOs are designed to be incredibly immersive, perhaps more than any other genre of video game. You progress through the game in small increments, but each step you take towards being all-powerful is designed to feel significant. MMOs are often referred to as a metaphorical carrot-on-a-stick, where you are always given an incentive to play just a little bit more in hopes of making progress. The trick is that you can never reach the end of the game: new content is constantly being developed and released for games like WoW, so a player can never truly say they finished the game or completed everything. This sort of design is devised to get the player to keep playing the game, often in extended sessions.

These games encourage a player to devote their time to the game, rewarding them with new items or status symbols. But some players can become so addicted that they start to slip out of touch with reality. Video game addictions aren’t common in the U.S., but they pervade much of the adolescent culture in some Asian cultures, specifically China and South Korea. In these countries, internet cafes are everywhere and computer access is available to almost anyone. But within the past decade, there have been a number of tragic events involving video game players who were so addicted to playing their game that they became completely detached from the real world.

In 2005, Qiu Chengwei, a gamer from Shanghai, stabbed his friend to death after discovering that he had sold one of his in-game swords for around $700. Because many players wish to have power in these games but don’t have the time to play them for hours on end, they are willing to play real cash for virtual items in MMOs. When Chengwei discovered that his friend had sold the sword he had lent him, he started a confrontation that ended in murder. Another game-related death occurred in 2005, when a South Korean man identified as Lee died of a heart failure after playing a game for 50 hours straight. He collapsed during his marathon session and was sent to the hospital, where he died shortly after – doctors suspected that his heart failure was the result of pure exhaustion. You can read the full story on these tragic events in the links below.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4072704.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4137782.stm

A more recent, and heartbreaking, game-related death was reported in March 2010. A couple from South Korea let their baby daughter starve to death while they played a game at the local internet café. The game, Prius Online, allowed the couple to raise a virtual daughter in an online world. After a 12-hour marathon of playing, the couple returned home to find that their daughter in the real world was dead.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/05/korean-girl-starved-online-game

These stories serve as shocking examples of what can happen when people let an addiction to video games take over their lives. It should certainly be noted that these individuals did not appear to be mentally stable, or were dealing with a traumatic event, such as being fired or giving birth to a premature child. But the very fact that these games could pull a player in so deep that they no longer cared about harming themselves or others is frightening.

Gamers need to set limitations for the amount of time that they spend playing video games, lest they become addicted and let an enjoyable past-time become an unhealthy devotion. They need to realize that these games are designed to keep you engaged and stay within the virtual world, but that the player has the ability to stop and break away from the game when they choose. China is choosing to deal with the problem of video game addiction by establishing “boot camps” for teens that have embedded themselves in the virtual world. According to the China National Children’s Center, there were 2.3 million Internet addicts in China in 2006. Only time will tell if these sorts of programs are effective, but gamers need to acknowledge the fact that too much of a good thing is often very bad.

You can read about the Internet Addiction Treatment Center in Beijing here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/12/technology/12iht-addicts.4880894.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=addiction%20to%20video%20games&st=cse

Morality Part 2: Senseless violence, or fighting for what's right?

This week we’ll continue our look at the research done by Tilo Hartmann and Peter Vorderer on the concept of morality in video games. Once a degree of believability has been established, a player’s actions will begin to reflect on their satisfaction while playing. Earlier work by Hartmann shows a trend in the connection between their actions in the game and the level of fulfillment they get while playing. Hartmann’s previous studies showed that “if a user violates his or her internal moral standards by doing harm to video game characters, dissonant feelings like guilt and disgust are likely to emerge.” It is assumed that if you feel guilt or disgust while playing a game, odds are you aren’t enjoying yourself as you play. It is also noted that “players reported that disturbing situations interfered with their enjoyment.” One player remarked that if he accidentally shot an innocent bystander (like a kid) while playing a game, it would definitely hinder any fun he might have.

Obviously, developers want to avoid alienating the player and make sure they stay immersed in the game. As Hartmann and Vorderer wrote, “game designers seem to design violent game play to be enjoyably guilt-free.” There are two methods developers can use to reduce any guilt the player might experience for committing a violent act in a game. The first method is to give the feeling of moral justification for one’s actions. If you are killing vicious aliens or Nazis, chances are you won’t feel sorry for such a clearly-defined enemy. But if you’re a criminal mowing down pedestrians, there’s no way to approach the situation as morally justified. The second method is to dismiss the consequences of one’s actions. Killing enemy characters won’t feel like much if they simply vanish into thin air. But if you see a pile of bodies twitching on the floor after you kill a room full of enemies, you probably won’t feel too proud of your actions, even if they’re in a video game.

These two methods are what Hartmann and Vorderer examined in their experiment. To make a long write-up short, they manipulated these two variables in a level they made for the FPS game Operation Flashpoint. Participants were instructed to either attack or defend an enemy torture camp (morality), while the characters they killed would either die realistically or simply disappear (consequences). The results of the study seem both obvious and surprising. If the violence was framed as justified, then the player felt both less guilty and had fewer negative reactions to what they were doing – this much seems like common sense. But what’s odd is that justification had no effect on the player’s enjoyment of the game. Hartmann and Vorderer suggested that justification may not even directly affect the enjoyment one gets from playing a video game. Interestingly, players who felt justified in their actions and saw the consequences of violence enjoyed the game almost exactly as much as players who wrought havoc and had no moral justification but did not have to see any consequences.

I think moral justification is what a lot of the controversy surrounding video games arises from. As long as a violent situation is framed in the right way, it will completely pass under the radar of most parents and anti-video-game activists. The wildly popular Halo series has you playing a super-soldier that kills thousands of aliens to defend humanity, and nobody seems to be offended by this. But games like the Grand Theft Auto series get people up in arms, condemning the game for the violent criminal acts it features. However, the player is the one who controls what they do in a game like GTA4. They can choose to be as kind or as bloodthirsty to bystanders as they want. What matters is the way the violence is framed, and if it’s seen as unjustified, then people will take notice and maybe get upset or disgusted. Game developers need to be careful how they set up the scenarios in their games, and they must take into account both the public’s reactions to violence, and the enjoyment the player will get from playing their game.

Morality Part 1: Believability in video games

Last week, I discussed violence in video games and the effects it can have on the player. But mainstream video games incorporate violence as one small part of an overarching immersive experience. Like any action movie or dramatic television show, immersion is the key to entertaining the consumer, and violence is one way to grab the audience’s attention. But to throw the player into a violent video game with no context would not provide a captivating or enjoyable experience. There needs to be motivation for the acts the player is committing, and morality comes into play. If a player is killing plain enemies left and right with no back story or reason for doing so, they will likely become bored and lose interest. But if they are given a purpose, like saving humanity from aliens or wiping out a group of terrorists, their virtual violence becomes justifiable and they will become more invested in the game.

For the next two weeks, I’d like to delve into the topic of morality in video games, using a scholarly article as a guide. “It’s Okay to Shoot a Character: Moral Disengagement in Violent Video Games,” by Tilo Hartmann and Peter Vorderer, examines the concept of morality in games, and tests the researchers’ hypotheses in two experiments. But for now I’d like to focus on the idea behind moral choices and ethics in video games, and discuss their scientific results later.

A wide range of games today revolve around the concept of being able to influence your character’s decisions and make ethical choices. Games like Mass Effect keep a tally of how often your avatar is kind to others or acts like a jerk, and over time the way you treat others will affect how they treat you. Non-player characters may either praise or spurn you, based on your previous actions and attitude. Morality plays a huge part in the recent hit series Bioshock, where you are given the choice of either rescuing or “harvesting” zombie-like little girls you encounter throughout the game. Rescuing them restores them to normal but gives little monetary reward, while “harvesting” them kills them off-screen and nets you more resources. How you handle the “little sisters” not only affects the ending of the game, but how much power you can acquire as you play through it.

Making characters believable is necessary to the immersion the player experiences. If you don’t care about the characters you are either helping or killing, morality becomes meaningless and the entertainment value will rapidly decrease. Hartmann and Vorderer make note of the many ways in which designers create characters in games that help us suspend our disbelief and become engrossed in a game’s plot and action. There are certain visual cues that game designers can implement into their characters to “provoke automatic social responses.” These include things like blinking, breathing, display of emotion (especially with the face), and natural vocal tones. Individually, these may seem like pointlessly small details, but when combined into the final product of a virtual character, they take on a more “real” existence that players can connect with.

As Hartmann and Vorderer write, “if the media stimulus is well designed and displays social cues appropriately, it takes effort to recall that a character ‘is not real,’ because automatic social perceptions suggest otherwise.” If a player was constantly being reminded that they were playing a game, then enjoyment would suffer and the player would feel indifferent towards the events unfolding as they play. So it may enhance a player’s satisfaction to think of the avatars they encounter as “real social entities rather than artificial objects.” Believability is what keeps a player interested and engaged, just as suspending disbelief during a movie makes the film more enjoyable and compelling. Next week, I’ll talk about how morality comes into play once a gamer realizes that they might be doing harm to characters that almost seem real.

Aggression: the effects of violent video games

Violence in videogames is a topic that is often heard in today’s news. Parents worry that their kids will emulate the violent imagery they see in games. Critics worry that parents aren’t being cautious enough when it comes to screening the games their children play. Videogames can be made into a scapegoat for crimes committed by teens, with games like the Grand Theft Auto series taking heavy fire in the past decade.

Some people assume that playing these games will directly translate into a more violent and vicious child, that is simply trying to act out the images they saw on the screen in real life. When the Virginia Tech school shooting occurred, former attorney Jack Thompson declared that Seung-Hui Cho was an avid gamer who was obsessed with the first-person shooter Counter-Strike. In reality, there was no evidence that Cho played videogames at all. You can read more about Thompson’s false claim here:

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2007/04/msnbc_dont_blam/

Since this is a blog, I can voice my personal opinion on the subject. I think that parents need to take more responsibility in what their children are playing, instead of mindlessly buying whatever their kids ask for. It’s definitely true that a lot of videogames have very graphic depictions of violence which kids should not be exposed to. But the ESRB games rating system exists for exactly this reason, so parents should know better than to buy an M-rated game for their child.

But studies have shown that violent videogames can increase levels of aggression in players. A recent study from July 2009 added an interesting angle to the study of the effects of violent videogames. The study by Peter Fischer, Andreas Kastenmuller, and Tobias Greitemeyer, entitled “Media violence and the self: The impact of personalized gaming characters in aggressive video games on aggressive behavior,” examined what happens when players have a personal connection to the characters performing violent acts.

Fischer et al. wanted to see what happened to levels of aggression when players could create and customize their character before sending them into a fight. They discussed the General Aggression Model, or GAM, as the explanation for aggressive behavior that results from personal and situational variables. As Fischer et al. put it, “videogames show their recipients what aggression is (learning), how it is performed (imitation; modeling), and trigger pre-existing cognitive knowledge structures, emotional associations, and behavioral scripts about aggression (priming).”

A group of 75 participants was put into one of four different test groups. The subject played 25 minutes of either Wii Bowling or Wii Boxing, both part of the Wii Sports game on the Nintendo Wii. The second variable came from the amount of customization they had over their character. In these games, players may create a “Mii” which can be modified in almost every facial feature to resemble the player. It was hypothesized that those who were playing the more aggressive game, Boxing, with their own personal Mii, would display higher levels of aggression due to the connection they felt to the character participating in the aggressive act.

In short, Fischer et al.’s hypothesis was confirmed. After playing, participants were asked to provide an amount of hot sauce to be given to a made-up subject of the same test. This was the measure of aggression, as they were told that the hot sauce was deemed too hot and were asked to try it themselves. It was found that players who had a custom Mii in Wii Boxing gave more than double the amount of hot sauce than those who were playing Wii Bowling, whether the bowlers had custom Miis or not.

More and more games have a customization feature. It started off in The Sims and Tony Hawk Pro Skater series, and has branched out to nearly every genre. It’s fascinating to see that the customization of one’s avatar/character really does have an effect on the player. As Fischer et al. hypothesized, “this innovation could amplify the psychological effects of videogames.” We feel a connection to the character on screen, and we develop a mental link to their emotions, which are a result of our actions as we play the game. This discovery could mean a lot for the immersive elements of gaming, just as health had an effect on how involved you become while playing.

Health: an intrinsic feature of video games

We don’t often think about it, but lives and health seems to be an essential part of playing a videogame. No matter when the game was published, unless it’s a sports simulation game, you’ll probably find some representation of your character’s health on the screen. Mario has mushrooms, Link has hearts, and Master Chief has shields.

There are some exceptions to the rules, though. In some games, you are given infinite lives or continues in order to keep you engaged in the game, so that repeated failure won’t lead to frustration. There are even some videogames where it is impossible to die, like Xbox Live Arcade’s Braid. In this game, you “die” in one hit, but you are always allowed to reverse time and get a second chance to sort out whatever killed you.

Many of today’s bestselling games display your avatar’s health in a way that attempts to fully immerse you in the game. Both Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Gears of War 2 show an increasing amount of blood spattering on the screen as you take more damage. Instead of using a simple 100-point number system to display your health, these games grab your attention by making it harder to see and move when your character is under fire.

The way health is displayed in videogames is of great interest to Alan Brooksby of the School of Medicine, Health Policy, and Practice at the University of East Anglia in the U.K. Brooksby recently published a study entitled “Exploring the Representation of Health in Videogames: A Content Analysis,” that seeks to gauge how health is displayed in games, using a specific set of measurements.

In essence, Brooksby aimed to “explore further ways in which the concept of health is represented in videogames beyond its most common usage in the interface.” When surveying gamers about the important of health displays, he found that “having a constant, onscreen representation of health was mentioned by the majority of players as an essential feature.”

Brooksby set out to measure how health was represented in a sample of 10 games, all released around 2005. He used five categories to measure health: mobility, ability, psychology, social, and pain. Mobility was any effect to your movement speed, such as a character getting shot and being forced to limp around. Ability meant that certain actions could not be performed if your character was too damaged. Psychological effects were changes in your character’s mood, be it happy or sad, based on its health. Social was measured in other non-player characters reacting to you in a different way based on your actions. Pain, which ended up being the most critical measurement, was defined as the expression of “pain behavior” such as wincing or grunting when the character was injured. Pain also included the display of red flashes or arrows pointing to wherever the avatar was being shot at from.

After playing each game for 2 hours, Brooksby filmed 15 minutes of gameplay and rated it based on these categories of health. Interestingly, these five categories are often used to rate “health-related quality of life” in many real-life patients. Brooksby’s results showed that pain was the most common representation of health in games, with 9 of the 10 games displaying it often. He noted that the games tried to give the player a sense of the “interruptive nature” of pain as they played the game. Brooksby noticed that “the representation of pain is used to halt the flow of the game, with flashes of red, cries of pain from the avatar, or the appearance of directional indicators that target the player’s attention to an in-game threat of danger or attack.” I found it interesting that only The Sims 2 showed any sign of Psychological health.

It’s interesting to discover that the representation of pain has become such a fundamental part of health in videogames. Perhaps we feel more connected to our avatar when they cry out in pain, and we want to prevent further harm from befalling our character. Brooksby notes at the end of his article that the study may have had some limitations, and the test itself was done on a very small scale. “Health is a complex concept,” Brooksby writes, “and [it] encompasses a broader range of behaviors than these five categories.” Still, his study is an interesting glimpse at one of the ways in which videogames try to pull us in and immerse us in a different world.