During the last several decades, interactive video games have emerged as one of the most popular forms of entertainment, particularly among adolescents. Globally, annual video game revenues now exceed $18 billion. In the United States alone, video game revenues total $10 billion, nearly double the amount Americans spend going to the movies. On average, American children who have home video game machines play with them about 90 minutes a day.
Video games are extremely varied in their content. In addition to their entertainment value, which is reflected in their enormous popularity, video game proponents point to their constructive uses in education, medicine and other fields. There are, however, trends in game playing that some observers find disturbing. The newer generations of video games often have graphic depictions of violence and have intensified public concern regarding potential harmful effects. As a result, legislative hearings on the issue have been held in several countries, and video game rating systems have been developed for use in the United States, Canada, Great Britain and Australia.
This summary was developed by Mediascope in response to public concern regarding the social impact of interactive electronic games. A 1993 study asked 357 seventh- and eighth-graders to identify their preferences among five categories of video games. The researchers found that the most popular game category is fantasy violence, with 32% of players preferring such games, followed by sports (29%), general entertainment (20%), human violence (17%) and educational games (2%). The study also found that boys who play violent games tend to have a lower self-concept in the areas of academic ability, peer acceptance and behavior. The results, according to the researchers, raise concern about potential "high risk" game-playing habits.
Issues have also been raised about the role of gender in game playing and game content. Boys ages 8 to 14 are the core audience for video games. According to video game manufacturers, boys are five times more likely to own a Genesis or Super Nintendo video game system than are girls.
A survey of the packaging of the 47 top-rated video games found that 115 of the characters depicted on the covers were male and only 9 were female. Almost one third of the games contained scenarios in which women were kidnapped or had to be rescued. Whether the unbalanced depiction of men and women in the games is the cause of the predominance of male video game players, or the result, is a question unanswered in existing research.
Eugene Provenzo of the University of Miami comments in a recent review of video game research that learning about the effects of video games is complicated by the fact that "games and game systems developed in the mid-1970s have very little in common ... with the more sophisticated systems that have (since) emerged." As a result, he argues, "the effect (of newer games) on the behavior of children is almost certainly different."
The theory behind video games' allure is based on a powerful process of demonstration, reward and practice. The compelling graphics and interactive nature of the games serve to enhance the learning of game-playing behaviors.
The newer generations of electronic games have become more and more realistic, moving away from computer-generated characters to real-life action and actors. This trend toward realism might encourage greater identification with the characters and increased imitation of the behaviors of video game models.
This raises some concern over the ability to generalize the current research findings, which are primarily based on the older generation of games. As a result, the discussion of behavioral and social implications regarding the issue of aggressive effects of violent video games may be somewhat limited.
On the other hand, although the technology of video games may be constantly changing and advancing, one can extrapolate from earlier research findings: the technological content of video games may undergo rapid change, but how humans learn and process information does not.
Earlier studies of television violence and aggression have shown a positive correlation between increasing realism of portrayed violence and subsequent aggressive behavior. Therefore, it would be reasonable to assume that the same relation between realism and effects would occur in the video game medium. In this regard, it can reasonably be inferred from the more than 1,000 reports and studies on the viewing of television violence that the playing of violent video games may likely contribute to aggressive behavior.
General Research
Research on game-playing patterns and habits among adolescents, as well as the cultural and social implications of video games and their effects on childhood.
Playing video games may have an influence on the lives of frequent players.
Video games are now an integral part of the educational, social and cultural experience of childhood. Video games reflect and pass on the particular views of mainstream culture. Recurring themes in games include gender stereotyping, aggression, and violence.
A 1994 study of seventh- and eighth-graders found that 65% of males and 57% of females played one to six hours of video games at home per week, and 38% of males and 16% of females played one to two hours of games per week at arcades. Performing violent acts in video games may be more conducive to children's aggression than passively watching violent acts on television.
Cognitive Development and Game Performance
Studies examining the acquisition and development of cognitive skills, such as problem-solving, spatial-visualization and learning. The use of video games for therapeutic purposes such as assisting students with learning disabilities, in addition to how audience pressures may influence game performance, particularly with regard to effects on eye-hand coordination and reaction time.
Students with learning disabilities were able to learn effectively when pursuing highly motivating computer game learning tasks.
Through electronic games, children may control levels of difficulty, game rules and tools for problem-solving, allowing them to construct cognitive skills unavailable to previous generations.
Spatial visualization test scores can be improved with video game playing.
Exposure to computer technology is associated with greater skill in decoding scientific-technical information graphically represented on a computer screen.
Computer games may be an efficient therapeutic tool in cognitive rehab-ilitation programs for children with attention problems.
Certain computer games may enhance the development of spatial ability skills.
Video game playing experience contributes to improved eye-hand coordination and reaction time.
Educational Use and Academic Performance
Determining the relationship between video game playing and academic performance, and how the format of video games, as well as the games themselves, may be used as tools to assist and promote learning.
Video game formats have been shown to be effective when used for such instructional purposes as military training.
In a study of eighth graders, frequent video game players were the heaviest television viewers and performed the most poorly at school.
In a study of college psychology students, no differences existed between frequent and infrequent video game players on measures of class attendance, locus of control, or grade point average.
Subjects significantly improved their arithmetic facts proficiency after four sessions of computer-based practice. The game format had a facilitative effect on the continuing motivation of Subjects who had low initial attitudes toward math.
In a study designed to evaluate two approaches to reading remediation, the poorest readers in a group of primary school children made significantly greater reader comprehension gains on a computer game training program than on a teacher-based program.
Video games can give children practice with hand-eye coordination, facilitate social interaction and develop skills, including pattern and rule generation, hypothesis testing and generalization.
Elderly Adults
The use of video games to help improve the perceptual motor skills and self-esteem of elderly adults.
Elderly adults who played video games responded faster on a reaction time task than those who did not play video games.
Significant improvements in self-esteem were found in elderly adults exposed to video games for eight weeks.
Video games were used to improve a variety of perceptual-motor skills in a group of senior citizens. Subjects also reported improved coordination, better driving habits and few minor mishaps in the home.
In an evaluation of the adaptation and use of video games by elderly adults, the games were shown to encourage concentration and focus attention. Although the games created some anxiety and fear of failure, most subjects enjoyed the games and developed a feeling of mastery.
Video games could be used as a non-threatening tool for the diagnosis of physical and mental problems.
Game Usage, Habituation, and Skills
How video games and the use of other forms of media impact the daily activities and interactions of children and families, including the issue of video game addiction.
Half of the video games seventh- and eighth-graders preferred were violent, while 2% of preferred games were educational. Boys were shown to play video games more frequently than girls.
In an examination of the effects of home video game systems on the daily activities of children, it was concluded that owning a video game does not greatly alter a child's activities.
Findings indicate that video games are merely an option to traditional games and that the term "addiction" may be used too liberally, given the amount of play and the amount of money spent on games by younger respondents.
Results suggest that video games have brought families together for shared play and interaction that they have not experienced since the appearance of television.
Parents had more positive beliefs about the influence of video games than did other adults.
Gender Issues
Differences in motivations for playing video games between genders, preferences for different types of games, acquisition of game-playing skills, etc.
Over representation of masculine culture exists in the adolescent world of microcomputers, particularly regarding video games.
In a study of attitudes toward technology, females were less convinced of its value than were males.
Video game performance expectancies may be more related to skill than gender. Data do not support the idea that females express less self-confidence than males for future performance after losing to a superior opponent on a video task.
Girls indicate a preference for playing on computers over video game systems.
Male video game playing at two mall arcades far exceeded female playing, about 80% to 20%.
Both boys and girls perceived the computer to be more appropriate for boys than for girls.
Health Issues
Aspects of the therapeutic value of video games, especially for treating chemotherapy patients and exploring cardiovascular reactivity, video game-related seizures, and relationships with the development of cognitive abilities among users.
Video game-playing resulted in significantly less nausea among pediatric cancer patients receiving chemotherapy.
Access to video games resulted in a reduction of the number of anticipatory symptoms experienced and observed in patients receiving chemotherapy, as well as a decrease in the aversiveness of chemotherapy side effects.
Hypnosis, systematic desensitization, relaxation training and video games are effective in mitigating chemotherapy in children and adolescents.
Video games can trigger epilepsy seizures. Three triggers of video game epilepsy seizures are flashing lights, special figure patterns and scene-changing.
Children in the United States are fatter, slower and weaker than their counterparts in other developed nations. U.S. children seem to be adopting a sedentary lifestyle at earlier ages.
Findings do not support the usefulness of video games in improving cognitive abilities.
A series of three video games played under three increasing levels of stress elicited progressively higher values of blood pressure and heart rate. Both the race and gender of subjects significantly affected reactivity.
A hand-held video game was successfully used as treatment of a compulsive, self-destructive behavior (lip picking) in an eight-year old boy.
The use of a computer game by adults with traumatic brain injury elicited more range of motion than a rote exercise.
Type A (coronary prone) subjects with diabetes showed a hyperglycemic response to video game stress and demonstrated significantly higher glycohemoglobin values than Type B (noncoronary prone) subjects with diabetes.
Personality and Motivation
Common themes in examining personality characteristics of video game players, such as self-esteem, self-concept, goal-setting and individual differences. The use of video games across genders, to release aggression, suspend reality and assist in the teaching of children are several areas examined.
Video game players who had committed a crime had started playing video games at an earlier age than those who had not committed a crime; they also more frequently spent all their money playing games and reported relationship problems.
Heavy video game use plays a role in managing developmental conflicts, particularly with regard to the discharge of aggression and the open expression of competition, and does not result in increased neuroticism, social withdrawal or escape into fantasy. Heavy video game users also have lower frustration tolerance.
Video games may help adolescents regress to childhood play for a time; but, similar to all narcotizing activities, the ability to suspend reality in video games dissipates, and the dilemmas and conflicts of everyday existence reemerge.
It is suggested that some patients who are socially intractable may be reachable with computers.
High-rate video game playing was not related to neuroticism or other measures of pathology evaluated in this study. Frequent players did seem to be more extroverted and less achievement-oriented than infrequent players.
Women who frequently played video games were less bothered by getting poor scores than their male counterparts.
Computer games could be useful in chronic schizophrenic patients for evaluation of attitudes and responses, psychological testing, motivation and reward.
A computer program can assist children by setting goals, ensuring goal rehearsal, providing feedback, dispensing reinforcement with video games and maintaining records of behavioral change.
Self-esteem scores were not significantly related to time spent watching television, playing arcade or home video games, or in programming home computers.
Violence and Aggression
As the new generation of video games become increasingly interactive, the influence of violent and aggressive themes on the attitudes, imagination and possible subsequent behaviors of players.
Hostility was increased both in subjects playing a highly aggressive video game and those playing a mildly aggressive video game. Subjects who had played the high-aggression game were significantly more anxious than other subjects.
Physiological arousal and aggressive thoughts, but not hostile feelings, were higher for participants than for observers of a violent virtual reality game. Results suggest that technologies varying from observational to participatory models of interaction can have differing physiological and cognitive consequences.
Girls evidenced significantly more general activity and aggressive free play after playing an aggressive video game. Their activity decreased and their quiet play slightly increased after playing a low aggressive game.
Subjects who watched more violent television shows were also those who spent more time playing video games that usually revolved around violence. While no relationship existed between video game playing and self-esteem among females, television viewing, video game playing and socioeconomic status were all inversely correlated with self-esteem for males.
Children who played a violent video game exhibited fewer defensive fantasies and tended to exhibit more assertive fantasies than did those who played a nonviolent video game. Results suggest that aggression in the context of a video game discharges children's aggressive impulses in a socially acceptable way, leaving the children less defensive and more assertive.
In a study examining the short-term effects of playing versus observing violent and nonviolent video games on the aggression of children, no differences were found between the violent and nonviolent conditions.
Video games are a cultural artifact that provide the adolescent male with a particular type of transitional experience useful in neutralizing primitive aggressive impulses.
Young children who play video games tend to act similarly to how their video game character acted.
In a study of students in sixth through twelfth grades, the amount of video game play correlated with aggression and not with self-esteem.
The predominant emotional response to video games was aggression, anger or hostility. Greater feelings of pleasure while playing video games resulted in higher preferences for the games. Combinations of pleasant, arousing and dominance-inducing features can enhance the attractiveness of games and programs to players and learners.
Exposure to violent video games increases children's aggressive behavior.
While preference for arcade games simulating aggressive behavior was found to be independent of personality and mood, preferences were closely related to the performers' capabilities. Players who exhibited higher levels of skill preferred more skill-demanding games and those who showed less skill preferred aggression games. Subjects reported that the games were exciting, but extended play produced discomfort or an increase in negative moods and a decrease in positive moods.
Video games are currently being utilized by the military to assist in training of soldiers in the refinement of their strategic and tactical skills. The widespread popularity of video games that emphasize the anonymity of the character/player and the dehumanization of the enemy is a matter of some concern.
The content of video games did not affect the subjects' heart rates or post-game aggression.
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