Video Game Ratings Board Says No Changes Coming After Doctor’s Group Links Violent Vid Games

[Blue_Adept]

"Video Game Ratings Board Says No Changes Coming After Doctor’s Group Links Violent Vid Games To Aggression"

Only days after the American Psychological Association in Washington, D.C., which is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the U.S., called on the Entertainment Software Rating Board to refine its video game rating system for violent video games, the ESRB said no. The APA made the request after its task force made up of doctors found that there was “a consistent relation between violent video game use and increases in aggressive behavior.” However, the ESRB called the group’s suggestion “misdirected or mistaken,” citing studies that suggest parents already trust the rating information and have a depth of information available to them already.

Linkage

With no connection of gameplay to violence out there, certainly an understandable course to take. Parents need to be more involved in monitoring time played, games played and so forth. Any changes that the ratings board would make wouldn't even register with the bulk of consumers/parents simply because it might say... what? Wish they talked more about what the APA wanted in terms of changes.

I'm at a loss otherwise because any further dialogue on packaging won't change a thing.

[jonno99]

1. Yea - it's not like murderers have been de-sensatised to violence...

[whatthehey]

2. I'm no gamer. Anything beyond Minesweeper is too complicated for my dexterity

But any hypothetical link either causal or correlation falls flat on the basis of the undeniable data that show US homicide rates, and indeed violent crime rates, have been dropping significantly and steadily since Minesweeper was in fact the hot violent video game.

[Blue_Adept]

3. Which is why there were no murders prior to videogames existing.

[LanternWaste]

7. I imagine there were indeed murders prior to gaming

I imagine there were indeed murders prior to gaming, as the study merely relates that the video games are only partially responsible, and that an increase in aggressive cognitions is relative to the individual rather than a static determiner of an objective increase.

From the article...

"The APA report stated that “No single risk factor consistently leads a person to act aggressively or violently. Rather, it is the accumulation of risk factors that tends to lead to aggressive or violent behavior.” They stated that violent video game use is one such risk factor."

However, I fully understand the desire to invalidate research studies when they do not correlate to, or validate our own biases.

[whatthehey]

10. So how come murders, and violence, have decreased rapidly since violent video games existed?

Even if they were partially responsible, you would expect to se them drive some upward tick. It's just not there.

This is a Pirates and Global Warming style "link". Murders are far more likely to be committed by males under 40 or so than anyone else. Outside Amish communities or other religious fundamentalist splinter groups or maybe the truly tar-paper one room shack level of poverty, all of which drive plenty of other abnormal behaviors, you'd be hard pressed to find a large control group in that demographic who didn't play violent video games, so there is way too much confounding.

[NuclearDem]

4. There's a world of difference between animated violence in video games

perpetrated against pixels and real world violence committed against actual human beings.

[gratuitous]

5. I was involved in a CPT direct action project

We would briefly interview the store manager and review the placement of video games in places like Game Stop. Practically every manager said they scrupulously observed the ESRB ratings and instructed their sales people on making sure buyers were age appropriate to the ratings. We didn't challenge them on that point; they seemed to know what the right thing to do was, even if we could see they weren't doing it.

But we would point out to them the placement of violent games (rated T or M) at the eye level of young children, and wouldn't it be better to put those a higher on the rack so that younger customers wouldn't be so likely to see them and want to buy them? That non-confrontational, non-judgmental suggestion practically always got a positive response from the store employees. It probably helped that it's the kind of thing that doesn't cost any money: Put MarioKart down where the youngsters can see them, and Grand Theft Auto up top.

[Blue_Adept]

6. That works for some stores...

But have you seen places like Target, which is where a lot of games are sold? ~Everything~ is kids eye level.

The dedicated stores like Gamestop tend to be better on placement but they're also at the whim of corporate on where things get put.

And there's also the issue of the percentage of games that aren't T/M that can fill those bottom shelves. You can't have empty spots, but you can't put the T/M games there?

And hell, my ten year old is the height of a sixteen year old. I'm just screwed there.

[WestCoastLib]

8. Videogames in general and Gamestop in particular aren't typically "browse" purchases.

In my youth I worked at a videogame store for awhile. This was almost 20 years ago now, but even then, people knew what all the games were. (kids in particular, parents maybe not so much). The idea that moving them out of their view would have an impact is just not reality based.

If a game is good, and popular. Kids will know about it and they can find it. And even if they couldn't they would simply ask for it by name.

If a game is not good or not popular, it doesn't matter if it's violent or not, kids won't want it. If "Chainsaw Death Baby Murder" was at a young kid's eye level, next to say MarioKart. And CDBM was some crappy game that nobody plays, the kids will take MarioKart every time.

With that said, GameStop & like minded stores are quite diligent about not selling mature titles to kids. The fact is that most parents just don't care once the kid is around 12 and will buy them anyway. Or if not parents older siblings or cousins, or whoever.

Also, you have to consider that more and more videogame sales are done online anyway. Videogame developers would like to get out of using physical media at all and move to streaming game sales. The Game Store model, itself, is dying and we probably won't have Game Stops all that much longer.

[damnedifIknow]

9. I've played a violent game online

A match up between two players and some of the messages I have received after one has lost would send you into shock. Absolutely off the wall. It's just a game and I believe some don't understand that.