Research released by Offerpal Media offers some insight into why so many social gamers are willing to complete marketing actions in order to obtain virtual currency.

The comScore-conducted study among 799 panelists reported that 53.3 percent of respondents would be “very likely” to take part in a marketing action in order to receive social game points or currency, while only 22.8 percent would be willing (and able) to pony up cold hard cash for the same rewards.

Another day, another medical condition that using Nintendo’s Wii may help to alleviate.

Researchers at the Sam and Rose Stein Institute for Research on Aging at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine believe that the Wii can assist people with symptoms of subsyndromal depression (SSD). A pilot study conducted on 19 SSD-afflicted participants between the ages of 63 and 94 years of age had users play a Wii Sports game on the console three times a week for 35-minutes intervals reports Science Daily.

Study lead, Dilip V. Jeste, MD, reported on the results:

More than one-third of the participants had a 50-percent or greater reduction of depressive symptoms. Many had a significant improvement in their mental health-related quality of life and increased cognitive stimulation.

Jeste cautioned that the study needed to be expanded to larger samples and control groups.

Initial results from a University of Toronto study seem to indicate that using Nintendo’s Wii can assist stroke victims in regaining and improving motor skills.

The Effectiveness of Virtual Reality Using Wii Gaming Technology in Stroke Rehabilitation (EVREST) Study utilized twenty stroke survivors with an average age of 61. Those studied were split into two groups, with one group playing recreational games (card games, Jenga etc…), while the other group played Wii Tennis or Cooking Mama. There were eight sessions over two weeks that lasted about 60 minutes each.

While one Wii user reported nausea or dizziness as a side-effect, researchers found that the Wii users exhibited “significant motor improvement in speed and extent of recovery.”

Study lead Gustavo Saposnik stated:

The beauty of virtual reality is that it applies the concept of repetitive tasks, high-intensity tasks and task-specific activities, that activates special neurons…

Basically, we found that patients in the Wii group achieved a better motor function, both fine and gross, manifested by improvement in speed and grip strength. But it is too early to recommend this approach generally. A larger, randomized study is needed and is underway.

The research was funded by grants from the Heart and Stroke Foundation (HSFO) and the Ontario Stroke System (OSS).

|Via the Seattle Post-Intelligencer|

The Pearson Foundation has released a white paper authored by Arizona State University’s Jay Blanchard and Terry Moore which gathers information on how digital media effects learning in children.

The Digital World of Young Children: Emergent Literacy (PDF) examines the impact of cell phones, television, videogames, smart devices and computers, with an emphasis on three to five year old kids in developing and least-developed countries. The report offers that, “digital media is already transforming the language and cultural practices that enable early literacy development, making possible a new kind of personal and global interconnectedness.”

A few excerpts from the section on videogames:

With the exception of a study of video game effects on first- and second-grade children in Chile, there is no research available on the influence of video games on emergent literacy skills development.

However, more and more video games are now tailored for young children, and some are targeted at emergent literacy.

The impact of this increased availability is unclear. It is known that video games can have both negative and positive influences on older children and adolescents. Benefits have been documented in terms of enhanced visual attention and perceptual-motor skills development among older users.

However, negative effects from video game violence and aggression have been a contentious issue, particularly with regard to young children even if they are just watching and listening.

On media that is not “intentionally educational” (i.e. television and videogames):

These types of media activate orienting and selecting processes as direct responses to the visual and auditory features of the content. However, it is not until young children engage and sustain their attention that actual encoding, or learning, occurs.

The white paper offers the following conclusion:

… until more empirical research becomes available, it is only possible to speculate about the effects based mostly on what the research has taught us about television and computer-based learning with older children, adolescents, and adults in developed nations. Factors that may be affected include attention, information processing speed, social collaboration, attitudes and digital literacy.

A pair of researchers with opposite takes on interpreting and analyzing research related to violence and videogames are once again engaged in the scrutinization of each other’s work.

The latest findings of Iowa State University’s Craig Anderson and his team are the subject of an article in the Washington Post. Unfortunately, actual details from the study are scarce in the Post article, other than the research led Anderson to attribute playing violent videogames to increases in “violent thinking, attitudes and behaviors among players.”

Fortunately, another source provides some insight into the research, which will appear in the March 2010 issue of the Psychological Bulletin. Anderson and his team analyzed 130 existing research reports, comprised of over 130,000 subjects, using meta-analytic procedures, which is described as “the statistical methods used to analyze and combine results from previous, related literature.”

The research concluded that:

…violent video game effects are significant in both Eastern and Western cultures, in males and females, and in all age groups.

Anderson, who indicated that this may be his last study on the subject, because of its “definitive findings” added:

From a public policy standpoint, it's time to get off the question of, 'Are there real and serious effects?' That's been answered and answered repeatedly. It's now time to move on to a more constructive question like, 'How do we make it easier for parents -- within the limits of culture, society and law -- to provide a healthier childhood for their kids?

Well, hold your horses there Dr. Anderson. Texas A&M International University researchers Christopher Ferguson and John Kilburn issued their own research paper challenging Anderson’s findings. The paper is entitled Much Ado About Nothing: The Misestimation and Overinterpretation of Violent Video Game. Effects in Eastern and Western Nations: Comment on Anderson et al.

The paper claims that Anderson’s study “included many studies that do not relate well to serious aggression, an apparently biased sample of unpublished studies, and a 'best practices' analysis that appears unreliable and does not consider the impact of unstandardized aggression measures on the inflation of effect size estimates.”

“One very basic piece of information” that Anderson’s research neglected to report, according to Ferguson and Kilburn, is “as VVGs [violent videogames] have become more popular in the United States and elsewhere, violent crime rates among youths and adults in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Japan, and most other industrialized nations have plummeted to lows not seen since the 1960s.”

Ferguson and Kilburn offer the following summation:

Psychology, too often, has lost its ability to put the weak (if any) effects found for VVGs on aggression into a proper perspective. In doing so, it does more to misinform than inform public debates on this issue.

Just a note: Anderson’s study apparently used a Ferguson and Kilburn-authored analyses to contrast their own.

Thanks Adam!

Researchers from Denison University in Ohio have published results of a study into how time spent playing videogames might dislodge other activities, such as studying, among young boys.

ScienceBlogs.com has a recap of the study, which was conducted on 64 boys between the ages of six and nine years old who did not already possess a videogame console. Researchers Robert Weis and Brittany Cerankosky gave half the group PlayStation 2 systems, while the remaining boys continued through life console-less.

All the boys in the study kept a diary on their daily habits. The group with consoles averaged 40 minutes a day playing games and 18 minutes per day on after-school studying, while the non-gamer group averaged nine minutes a day gaming (on a friend or relative’s game machine) and about 32 minutes a day studying out of school.

Four months into the study researchers found that ”the budding gamers had significantly lower reading and writing scores,” while the non-gamer group improved their reading and writing skills. It was also reported that addition of gaming to their repertoire had no effect on mathematical skills in the group of boys with PS2’s, which the author credits more to a lack of math-based leisure activities for videogames to displace.

The researchers concluded: “Our findings suggest that video-game ownership may impair academic achievement for some boys in a manner that has real-world significance.”

The author of the piece believes that more credence should be lent to the study because it was conducted as a randomized controlled trial (RCT). He writes, “By doing a trial, Weis and Cerankosky have clarified the direction of cause and effect.”

Nielsen has issued results of a study into the entertainment spending habits of U.S. consumers and the amount spent on videogames may come as a bit of a surprise.

The company queried over 3,000 consumers in all for their check on spending habits and found that 4.9% of all household funds allocated for entertainment were spent on videogame content. Nielsen defines videogame content as new and used games, downloadable content, rentals and peripherals. Videogame content had the sixth highest percentage, trailing activities (dining out etc…), TV packages, hobbies, live events, out of home movies and cell-phone related entertainment. The latter category garnered 5.3 percent.

Among households deemed “active buyers” in the videogame category, the monthly percentage of dollars spent on videogame content almost doubled, to 9.3 percent. Entrants in this category also spent less on magazines, books and newspapers (3.4 percent to 4.2 percent of the full group), but were more likely to buy or rent movies, purchase music and—perhaps surprisingly—to participate in sports activities.

Dollars spent on sporting activities among the “active buyer” of videogames segment was 4.1 percent, versus 3.1 percent from the whole group. The  category comprised 24.0 percent of all U.S. households.

Nielson is prepping a full report on gaming, dubbed Nielsen 360° Gaming Report: United States Market, which will be released in March.

A study into whether or not videogames, along with other electronic media and devices, cause headaches or migraines in adolescents ultimately determined that there was no link between the two.

Medical News Today details the study (PDF), which queried 1,025 kids between 13 and 17 years of age. 489 of those interviewed claimed to suffer from headaches, while the remaining 536 indicated no such affliction. Comparing the groups, researchers found no deviation between the two when it came to television viewing, electronic gaming, mobile phone usage or computer usage.

The study concluded:

With respect to the current debate on adverse health effects of electronic-media use, we cannot point to systematic effects of single media types nor on specific types of headache which might predominantly be caused by the use of electronic media.

The study did suggest a casual link between daily music intake and headache suffering however.

For those out there looking to create their own massively multiplayer online game, a Pillsbury Law Firm lawyer has some recommendations for you.

Pillsbury’s Jim Gatto, who specializes in intellectual property for the firm, passed along the pointers via a podcast and accompanying article on the Chroma Coders website. Pillsbury claims to represent “many leading companies in the space” [virtual worlds/online games], including Activision.

To begin, Gatto recommends having a “comprehensive IP strategy to protect what you’re doing.” He also recommends that developers keep abreast of evolving legislation, which some developers neglect until it’s too late. Of course for those that require assistance in this matter, Pillsbury can offer their expertise in order to minimize surprises.

Gatto on other surprises that might come up for fledgling developers:

…for example, terms of service, a lot of people, we’ve seen, will cut and paste from someone else’s site and say, if it’s good enough for them it’s good enough for us.

The problem with that is that each business model is different. Second life terms of service doesn’t work for some other companies, and even then the first time that Linden went to enforce their terms of service in a lawsuit with Mark Bragg, that you may be familiar, one of the provisions was struck down. Even they’re not infallible, right?

He continued:

One of the other things that extends to virtual goods involved in a game or virtual world, there’s a lot of issues there in connection with virtual currency and, for example, taxation. China imposed a 20 percent tax on games from virtual goods. The U. S. is looking at imposing something similar.
 

Dealing with the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) might be another aspect that new developers pay little or no heed to:

One of the things – in fact, there’s a company we work with called Privo. I don’t know if you’re familiar with them, but they’re actually one of the few COPA safe harbor things. They’ll come in and do some of the compliance policies, but the companies really care about this, making sure that you have an effective strategy and policy and that you’re actually following it is going to put you in a good position.

With the safe harbor provision under the FCC, even if you intend to comply you take steps. If you’ve got the safe harbor even if you’re not in compliance. Typically, you’re going to get an opportunity to fix it, and you’re not going to put yourself in a situation of being in the headline of the company who is next to not comply with COPA.

Fighting a war on terror demands that military personnel be able to quickly react and adapt to enemy tactics—traits which improve from playing videogames.

Research currently being undertaken by the Office of Naval Research is showing that videogame training is having “surprising” results in helping military personnel adapt to the challenges of fighting terrorists, according to a story on the Department of Defense website.

Ray Perez, a Program Officer for the Office of Naval Research’s Warfighter Performance department, offered comment on what the group’s research has uncovered so far:

We have discovered that video game players perform 10 to 20 percent higher in terms of perceptual and cognitive ability than normal people that are non-game players.

Using the term “fluid intelligence” to describe such field adaptability, Perez believes that cognitive advances gleaned from playing games can last for up to two and a half years.

He continued:

We know that video games can increase perceptual abilities and short-term memory. They allow the player to focus longer and expand the player’s field of vision compared to people who don’t play video games.

We think that these games increase your executive control, or your ability to focus and attend to stimuli in the outside world.

Perez’s group is looking to advance the integration of videogames into training, eventually hoping to be able to “blur the distinction between training and operations.”

A new paper penned by a pair of Widener University researchers examines the track record of psychological research used in past videogame legislation court battles and suggests new ways to create such research in the future, so that it might be more effective.

“Constitutional Kombat: Psychological Evidence Used to Restrict Video-game Violence” is the work of Beth Donahue-Turner and Amiram Elwork and was published in the Open Access Journal of Forensic Psychology.

The article begins by noting:

Although courts have established a clear precedent for overturning restrictive videogame legislation on constitutional grounds, proponents of these laws seem to be relying on the hope that eventually the available psychological evidence on the harmful effects of violent games will become persuasive.

The research then delves into a history of restrictive videogame legislation and the different applications of psychological studies as applied to these cases. The duo then analyze why existing research has lacked persuasiveness in these legislative battles:

Our first impression from this review is that the research results on the effects of violent video games have been inconsistent and equivocal.

Our second conclusion is that none of these studies meets the minimal research criteria that the courts have established as necessary to be probative in a legal context.

For example, there has been no research to address the question of whether violent video games are more harmful than other forms of violent media. In addition, no research has been done on whether violent video games cause long-term or short-term effects.

The pair thinks that substituting an applied minded approach to research, versus theoretical, would help:

… the primary goal of applied research is to solve a real-world problem; its contribution to theory is also incidental. For example, one might study the effects of violent video games on minors in order to answer very specific legislative questions that may or may not be important to psychological theory.

Other suggestions for researchers include: create studies that answer legally relevant questions, use conditions that are representative of real-life conditions (external validity) and to include statistical validity, so “research findings can be attributed to an actual relationship between the scores being measured, as opposed to a chance occurrence (random variability).”

A recommendation from friends is three times more likely than traditional marketing practices to influence videogame purchasing.

This according to research conducted by communications agency Waggener Edstrom Worldwide. The survey polled 507 U.S. residents that were over 18 years of age, owned a videogame system, bought a least one videogame in the last six months and played a game at least one hour per week.

Friends were found to be the most trusted among all spheres of influence, even out weighing the opinions of family members by a factor of two. Following friends on the list of influencers were retail, online demos, reviews and advertising.

The study also found that hardcore gamers, dubbed “Influence Multipliers” in the report, wielded an inordinate amount of influence when recommending games, due to their advanced knowledge and a projected view of them as being more wired into the gaming community.

Waggener Edstrom Senior Vice President Dan Gallagher explained:

Compared to all video gamers, Influence Multipliers are a hyperinfluential subset of friends who are also far more connected to other gamers. As a result, Influence Multipliers have an outsized network influence effect on their gaming colleagues. By targeting the media channels that Influence Multipliers rely on, marketers can optimize their marketing spending.

As more and more videogames are created to tie-in with movies, the question arises… what are the attributes of those who typically purchase such games?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, reports Nielsen, families with children between the ages of 6-12 were the most likely to purchase games based on a movie. Households likely to purchase a movie-based game also had a tendency to have some degree of wealth, with household income averaging over $70,000 a year.

When looking at a tendency to purchase such games by ethnic type, non-Caucasians, especially Hispanics and Asians, were most likely to pull the trigger.

Additionally, households that did buy movie-based games typically spent almost twice as much as average families on games and DVDs.

The Nielsen data was obtained from households that purchased at least one game based on a movie over the past two years.

A Wheaton College psychology professor has released findings from a study which compares how action games versus strategy games impacted a participant’s ability to perform tasks.

As detailed on NewsWise, Rolf Nelson, who specializes in human visual perception, had subjects play either Unreal Tournament (an entry in the action genre) or Portal (a puzzle-solving/strategy game) sandwiched  between chores designed to measure speed and accuracy. Those who played the action game were able to perform their task faster, but with less accurate results, while the strategy game induced more accurate, yet slower responses.

Nelson explained how the research might be relevant to real-life, particularly for students:

If they’re playing an action game and then switch to homework, they may try to blaze through their homework at the cost of making mistakes. Or if they play strategy games, they may work slowly, but turn in more accurate work. In fact, it is striking how dramatically these strategies can be shifted by a single hour of video-game play.

Nelson also believes that other studies continued reliance on first-person shooter type game to measure perceptual effects might be off base:

…it is misleading to base conclusions about video games in general on a single genre, just as it would be misleading to base one's conclusions about the effects of television by considering only crime shows.

Full study results are published in the current edition (Volume 38) of the journal Perception. An abstract is available online here.

A UC Berkley neuroscientist has undertaken research into whether playing a mixture of traditional games along with videogames can help kids advance their fundamental cognitive skills.

Dr. Silvia Bunge operates the Bunge Lab at Berkely and took her team to an Oakland elementary school with historically low test scores in order to begin her research. Second, third and fourth graders were invited to stay after school to play games, which included the card game SET, puzzle games Rush Hour and Quirkle and the Nintendo DS titles Picross and Big Brain Academy. The specific games listed were chosen for their ability to exercise children’s reasoning abilities.

The kids met twice a week for 75 minutes and swapped tables every 15 minutes in order to experience all the games, reports Newsweek. After eight weeks, the children’s intelligence was found to have risen 13 points. By comparison, a 12-point gain in IQ is average for an entire year of schooling.

The researchers also wanted to see if they could target kids’ processing speed as well, so another group of children were exposed to the card game Spoons and Speed, the board games Blink and Perfection and the videogame Brickbuster. Following an eight-week period, the children in this group saw their processing speed rise 27%.

Contrasting typical education intervention results, the two types of training detailed above assisted needy children the most.

Bunge is seeking more Northern Californian schools to participate in the study.

The effect of videogames and media on children is a polarizing topic and one that’s not so simple to nail down writes researcher Neils Clark in a column on The Escapist.

Entitled Developmental Stage Select, the piece begins with Clark cautioning against pigeonholing:

Though two kids may be the same age, they could be in vastly different places developmentally. Each one is a different combination of genetics, environment and age - what's potentially harmful to one specific child in one developmental stage can be innocuous to another in a different stage.

Clark then cycles through the different age ranges of kids, while examining the type of activities that might best match the stage of their development.

Dr. Hilarie Cash, of the ReStart gaming addiction center, recommends no “screens” before age 7 and is  quoted in the article cautioning parents, “… to not associate the internet with entertainment ... I think it's analogous to parents handing their kids a joint.”

Cash’s remark drew a split response from Clark:

Games aren't chemical substances. THC, the active compound in marijuana, mimics the body's native cannabinoids, in effect raising the body's natural dopamine dam. Rhetoric referencing cocaine, pot, booze, or any other physical substance is inappropriate.

But just as importantly, accessible and rewarding behaviors can release dopamine to the point where one can form a behavioral addiction. In such an addiction, a person chooses the singular behavior they love over the many they'll need to survive. And the natural defenses to this are always going to be weaker in humans who are not fully developed.

Proving that there really is a study for everything, an interesting new analysis applies International Humanitarian Law (IHL) to a variety of war-themed videogames to see how they stack up.

Playing by the Rules was undertaken by a pair of Swiss organizations, Pro Juventute, a children’s rights group, and Track Impunity Always (TRIAL), an association with a focus on international criminal justice.

The aim of the study was to “raise public awareness among developers and publishers of the games, as well as among authorities, educators and the media about virtually committed crimes in computer and videogames.”

Titles were played by gamers under that watchful eye of representatives from both organizations, along with three lawyers that specialized in IHL. Games tested included Army of Two, Battlefield Bad Company, Call of Duty 4 & 5, Far Cry 2, Metal Gear Solid 4 (referred to as Metal Gear Soldier in the report) and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow 6 Vegas.

For each title the study offers general information as a lead-in, then offers up context of the conflict in question and lists violations encountered along with legal analysis.

From FarCry 2’s Violations Encountered and Legal Analysis section:

The scenes portray extensive shooting in civilian areas and the shooting of civilian objects, including shooting at a church. All these acts go unpunished in the game. Even if we assume the attacks are not directed against these objects, the excessive destruction of civilian objects amounts to a violation of the principle of proportionality.

 

IHL allows for some collateral damage to civilians and civilian objects in carrying out hostilities, however, any expected damage must be proportional to the direct and concrete military advantage anticipated.

Overall the study stated, “The result is as deflating as reality. The organisation calls upon game producers to consequently and creatively incorporate rules of international humanitarian law and human rights into their games.”

Among the recommendations offered were:

It would be very useful if developers would incorporate more specific rules on how to conduct an operation in their games, in terms of the weapons allowed, the behaviour allowed, the military targets sought, the degree of collateral damage permitted, etc. The message of the scenes should never be that everything is allowed, or that it is up to the player to decide what is right and what is wrong. In real life, this is not the way it works.

The full study can be viewed here (PDF).


Thanks Bart! (Soldat_Louis)

A survey commissioned by CNET UK asked gamers to weigh in on the failure rate of the current generation of game consoles.

Perhaps unsurprisingly Microsoft’s Xbox 360 came in first (last?), with 60% of the respondents indicating that their 360 had failed at some point. Sony’s PlayStation 3 broke for 16% of those who took part in the poll, while the Wii stopped working for just 6%.

Even worse news for Microsoft, of those who did report their 360 breaking, 32% said the console broke twice and 19% claimed it stopped working three or more time. One unfortunate respondent indicated that their 360 failed six times.

The 360 failure rate fell to 34 percent for respondents who had purchased a console since January 2008.

Of those with broken 360s, 72% percent returned their machine to Microsoft for fixing, while 15% chose to toss the 360 or try to fix it themselves.

All in all, 1,128 people took the poll, with 591 owning a Wii, 562 owning an Xbox 360 and 473 possessing a PS3.

CNET notes that the poll has its faults—those surveyed do not constitute a random sample—but adds that since console makers do not release such information, this is about the best we can go on.

GP: What about you, how are your consoles holding up? My launch 360 red ringed once (under warranty) and my original PS3’s Blu-Ray drive failed once (also under warranty) but the Wii keeps on ticking, although it hasn’t been plugged in since February.

Recent research suggests that the Wii Fit is “no panacea” when it comes to providing a workout.

As part of a study (PDF) funded by the American Council on Exercise, 16 volunteers between the ages of 20 and 24 underwent Wii Fit training to determine the effect the title can have on health.

After establishing a baseline fitness level in each participant, each was then subjected to six activities chosen from the game especially for their ability to aerobically challenge— Free Run, Island Run, Free Step, Advanced Step, Super Hula Hoop, and Rhythm Boxing. Of the six activities tested, Island Run and Free Run had the best results, though “neither was sufficient enough to maintain or improve cardiorespiratory endurance as defined by the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM).

John Porcari, Ph. D., one of the lead researchers on the project, had this to say about Wii Fit:

I guess anything is better than nothing, but we were a little bit underwhelmed with the exercise intensity of some of the exercises. The Wii Fit is a very, very mild workout.

In fact, playing Wii Sports may be a better workout than Wii Fit, as Alexa Carroll, M.S., the study’s author, noted:

You’re better off doing Wii Sports than Wii Fit. In Wii Sports there’s more jumping around, and you’re not constrained by having to stand on the balance pad. I just think there’s much more freedom of movement and you get a better workout.”

|Via IndustryGamers|

Research from Nielsen indicates that the average time spent in front of the boob tube by American children is on the rise.

The usage, which includes viewing DVR, DVD and VCR content, in addition to videogames, rose to an average of over 32 hours a week for kids ages 2-5 and to over 28 hours for kids between the ages of 6-11.

Average videogame usage per week was measured at one hour and 12 minutes for the 2-5 age group and more than doubled—at two hours and 23 minutes—in the 6-11 year old range.

The report also noted that children in the two-five year old age group were more likely to watch commercials than any other group, including adults.

A new study undertaken by a group of Massachusetts General Hospital researchers attempts to further explore whether a link exists between playing violent videogames and aggressive behavior in adolescents.

“M-Rated Video Games and Aggressive or Problem Behavior Among Young Adolescents” surveyed 1,254 7th and 8th grade students in Pennsylvania and South Carolina in late 2004. Youths were asked which five games they had “played a lot” in the past six months and were asked to detail any “delinquent,” bullying or physically aggressive behaviors.

Among those who were current game players, 48.8% (67.9% boys and 29.2% girls) had at least one M-rated game on their most-played list. Cross tallying and crunching variables led the researchers to conclude:

M-rated games remained a strongly significant predictor of engaging in bullying and physical aggression However, we found no significant relationship between playing M-rated games and being a victim of bullies, or engaging in delinquent behaviors.

Boys were then split off from girls and their responses analyzed separately. With boys “M-rated game exposure ceased to be a significant predictor of bullying, and aggressive personality,” though “M-rated game play was still a significant, though weaker, predictor of fighting.”

With girls, “frequent M-rated game use became an even stronger predictor of bullying and fighting.”

The group concluded:

Overall, our hypothesis that heavy play of Mature-rated, violent games would predict a greater risk for common problem behaviors, even when controlling for potential confounders suggested by previous research, was partially supported.

The researchers pointed out a few limitations of their study, which included the fact that “Involvement in problem behaviors is common among adolescents.” Also, responses from the children indicating their top five games of the past six months were not independently verified.

Interestingly, in touching on legislation that seeks to ban children’s access to “violent” videogames, and asking “who would determine whether a game fits these critieria,” the study states, “Because of these complexities, it is unlikely that a narrow category of games could be clearly identified and supported by research as broadly harmful to young people.”

GP: We have an inquiry in with one of the researchers to make sure that's it's OK to post the whole study (PDF) on the website.

Update: Just a note that the research team included Dr. Cheryl Olson, co-author of Grand Theft Childhood.

Update 2: Here's a link to a PDF of the full study.

Joystiq’s latest Law of the Game column breaks down the theories of a research paper released last week by a Michigan State University College of Law Professor.

The paper’s author, Renee Newman Knake, argued that videogame legislation advocates could take cues from the environmental movement and employ “ecogenerism” in their bid to improve the chances of such legislation being passed in the future.

Mark Methenitis, the author of the Joystiq piece, begins by noting that Knake’s premise “starts from the basic flawed premise that we have ‘proven’ a ‘causal’ link between media violence, specifically video game violence, and real world violence.”

Methenitis then picks apart Knake’s focus on “ecogenerism,” or controlling “pollutants” (videogames in this case) in a child’s environment. He offers multiple responses to Knake, including the following analogy:

A multi-vitamin for children, in appropriate doses, has many positive and no negative side effects, except in rare cases. However, an overdoes of vitamins can be fatal. Parents who bring home vitamins don't put them out in a dish on the floor and let the kids go nuts with them; they keep them in a childproof container and give them one a day.

Methenitis concludes that the views of this research paper are “at best, a rose by any other name,” offering:

The courts have frequently said that the activity of the bedroom is beyond the scope of government control, and I, for one, think the activity of the living room should be as well.

Results of a study performed by researchers at Iowa State University have led them to believe that there is a relation between “frequent” videogame playing and Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD).

Video Games and Cognitive Control was designed to quantify the effects of playing videogames on two types of cognitive activity—proactive and reactive. Proactive attention is described as a “gearing up” mechanism, or where a player can anticipate what is coming next, versus reactive attention, which is more of a knee-jerk response (a monster jumping out).

A visual task was used to test both attention types with brain waves and responses measured in both frequent videogame players and occasional players. Both groups were charged with identifying “the color of a word when the color and word matched, such as ‘RED’ presented in red, or did not match, such as ‘RED’ presented in blue or green.” This is also referred to as the Stroop task (as seen in Brain Age).

While reactive control was similar in both groups, frequent gamers (particpants in this study who play four or more hours a day) had a propensity for exhibiting “significantly diminished” proactive attention. From a press release:

These data reveal a reduction in brain activity and disruption of behavior associated with sustained attention ability related to video game experience, which converges with other recent findings indicating that there is a relation between frequent video game playing and ADD.

While admitting that the study did have a few limitations, the researchers hoped that “our results may serve to constrain the claims of some scholars, game manufacturers, and journalists who have suggested that playing action video games ‘improves attention.’”

Director of Research for the National Institute on Media and the Family Dr. Doug Gentile, also a professor at ISU and in charge of the school's Media Research Lab, did not have his name listed in this study (other than the citation of his previous work).

The study is being published in the October 2009 issue of Psychophysiology.

Image via http://gonzoartist.blogspot.com

Results of a study conducted by the Mind Research Network indicates that playing Tetris increases gray matter in the brain, leading to improved brain efficiency and a thicker cortex.

Adolescent girls were chosen for the research, which was conducted over a three-month period. Adolescents were chosen because of the likelihood of researchers to be able to see changes in developing brains, while girls were chosen over boys since the latter group typically has had “considerably more computer game experience and, therefore, may not show detectable brain change after game practice.”

MRI scans were used to assess brain activity and progression.

Co-investigator on the study, Dr. Richard Haier, noted:

Tetris, for the brain, is quite complex. It requires many cognitive processes like attention, hand/eye co-ordination, memory and visual spatial problem solving all working together very quickly. It’s not surprising that we see changes throughout the brain.”

Image from Rihards Rozans

Did you know that playing violent multiplayer games will make you more aggressive against strangers than friends? That's the conclusion of a new study published in the latest issue of the Evolution and Human Behavior science journal. PC World's Game On column also looked at the study.

The study, conducted by psychologists from the University of Missouri, observed 42 young men divided into 14 teams of three. The players played Unreal Tournament 2004 within their team and against other teams. When playing against teammates, the mode was Deathmatch. When playing against other teams, the mode was Onslaught. Before and after each match, the testosterone and cortisol levels of each player was tested.

According to the study's abstract from the journal's web site:

For 14 teams of three young men, salivary testosterone and cortisol were assessed twice before and twice after competing in within-group and between-group video games that simulated violent male–male competition. Men who contributed the most to their teams' between-group victory showed testosterone increases immediately after the competition, but only if this competition was played before the within-group tournament. High-scoring men on losing teams did not show this immediate effect, but they did show a delayed increase in testosterone. In contrast, high-ranking men tended to have lower testosterone and higher cortisol during within-group tournaments. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that men's competitive testosterone response varies across ingroup and outgroup competitions and is muted during the former. The testosterone response during the between-group competition also suggests that violent multiplayer video games may be appealing to young men because they simulate male–male coalitional competition.

This seems to follow what I have found personally. In first-person-shooters or player-vs.-player competition in MMOs, challenging people I know is more about camaraderie. Against people I don't know, it is more about survival of the fittest and bragging rights.

What emotional responses have you found when competing in video games?

Kids Help Phone, a Canadian counseling service for youths, has released results of a survey it conducted into online gaming habits.

Entitled Online Gaming: Child’s Play or Obsession, the survey collected data from 2,793 respondents, of whom 63% were aged 14 years or younger and 64% were female. 59% percent of those polled indicated that online gaming gets in the way of their school work, while 47% indicated that their parents do not, or may not know what games they are playing online.

The study noted that respondents from Northern Territories (the Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut) spent more time gaming online and were more likely to be unable to quit gaming on their own versus youths from the rest of Canada. Why? According to one respondent from the region, “Cause [kids] don’t have anything else to do.”

The report includes advice aimed at both parents and gamers themselves to assist in responsible gaming, including putting the family’s computer in a central location of the house for monitoring purposes and encouraging parents get their kids to stop playing online games at least a half an hour before bed.

The report also notes some benefits of gaming:

Despite some negative press in recent years, online gaming does offer young people benefits, such as improving memory, building knowledge, developing better eye-hand coordination, etc. It also offers youth who are isolated (either geographically or socially) a quick and, to an extent, safe way to connect with others.

The full 44-page report (PDF) can be downloaded here.

In a move that has been rumored for awhile, Nintendo announced today that it had dropped the price of the Wii console to $199.99, a savings of $50. The price cut takes effect on Sunday and it marks the first price drop for the console since it was released in November 2006.

Sales for the Wii have been slipping in Japan and the United States, and price cuts on Sony's PS3 and Microsoft's Xbox 360 have only fueled the increased competition. Sony released a statement yesterday saying that PS3 sales had risen 300 percent in the United States with a $100 price cut and the release of the slimmed down version of the console last month.

Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America's VP of sales and marketing, said in a statement:

"Our research shows there are 50 million Americans thinking about becoming gamers, and this more affordable price point and our vast array of new software mean many of them can now make the leap and find experiences that appeal to them, whatever their tastes or level of gaming experience."

NPD released numbers last week that, among other things, gave a breakdown of console ownership in the United States. Kyle Orland analyzed much of the data available to get a better picture of the console landscape.

Have these price drops affected your decision to buy a new console?

A university of Southern California researcher has published the results of what has to be the first ever census of videogame characters.

Dmitri Williams and colleagues other universities conducted their research in 2006, though the results were just made available, according to a New Scientist article.

The researchers gathered the top 150 games sold across nine platforms and had gamers play each title for 30 minutes while researchers made a detailed demographic study of each character that appeared on the screen. Character stats were given additional weight based on the sales total of the game they appeared in. Resulting demographics were then matched up with U.S. census data from 2000.

The data showed that white videogame characters were over-represented in games by 7.0% and Asians by 25.0 percent, while African-Americans were under-represented by 13.0 percent and Hispanic/Latinos by 78.0 percent. Females, children and the elderly were also under-represented versus actual census results.

Games produced in Asia could account for some of that group's over-representation Williams theorized.

He also noted that the games industry may have trouble attracting customers from under-represented segments. Williams added:

For developers this would be a missed opportunity. For players it is a potential source of identity-based problems."

GP: Duplicate story, sorry. Thanks eagle-eyed GP readers.

Dr. Christopher Ferguson (left) of Texas A&M International University dropped GamePolitics a line this morning to say that he has published a new study with some interesting findings about media violence.

Ferguson's new work (co-authored by Claudia San Miguel and Richard Hartley) appears in the Journal of Pediatrics and maintains that youth violence is linked to depression and peer delinquency, not consumption of violent media. Ferguson summarized his findings in an e-mail to GP:

We examined multiple risk factors for violence in a sample of 603 mostly Hispanic youth... We assessed results across seven separate measures of youth violence and serious youth aggression, including the Child Behavior Checklist aggression and rule-breaking scales as reported by both children and their parents, involvement in violent and non-violent criminal behaviors and bullying behaviors against peers. 

 

We found that depressed mood and association with delinquent peers were the strongest and most consistent risk factors for youth violence across outcome measures.  Parents' use of verbal cruelty in domestic relationships and the child's antisocial personality traits were also reasonably strong predictors of violent behavior.  By contrast video game violence exposure and television violence exposure were not found to be predictors of youth violence. 

New research indicates that in-game advertisement which feature violent elements may be more memorable to players than nonviolent ads.

MIT's Technology Review reports on the study conducted in part at the University of Luxemburg

[Researchers] developed a simple racing game called AdRacer... A player drives around a virtual course and scores points by hitting targets along the way--as she drives, unobtrusive graphical ads are displayed as billboard graphics... while a camera records her eye movements. After playing, each player's ability to recall of brands shown on the side of the road was tested.

 

Those who played a violent version of the game, where the goal was to run down pedestrians, resulting in a blood-splattered screen, demonstrated significantly better recall of advertised brands than those who played the regular version...

Of course, while violent ads may increase the player's memory of the product, they could also be a public relations disaster in the making. Technology Review notes that University of Luxemburg researchers have also found that ad violence can lessen a gamer's opinion of a brand.

GP: The screenshot at left is from the University of Luxemburg's AdRacer.