Don't Hate the Player, Hate the Game

Violence, Video Games & Virtual Reality: the Case for More Variety in Game Design

I love technology and exploring new worlds but the thrill of gaming escapes me. While I liked Game of Thrones on the small screen, I don’t enjoy constantly hunting people, or being hunted and shot at. So, as I peruse the XR industry press each morning, I find myself wondering why are there so many violent VR video games and how will that affect people as the realism of the technology improves? And couldn’t we promote…other types of games?

“Video games could be expected to have a larger effect than media violence. The player is participating. They’re being reinforced,” says Psychologist Rowell Huesmann

GAMING IS A HUGE INDUSTRY; SHOOTER GAMES IN PARTICULAR

There Are More Than 2.7 Billion Gamers According to New Zoo, and The Video Gaming Industry is now estimated to be worth $159.3 Billion in 2020 — a sizeable increase of 9.3% from 2019. The global Shooting Games market size is projected to reach USD million by 2026, from USD million in 2020, according to MarketWatch.

Looking at Aggression as a Science

“We did a comprehensive review of every experimental study, reviewing 381 effects from studies involving 130,000 people, and results show that playing violent video games increases aggressive thoughts, angry feelings, and physiological arousal,” says Brad Bushman, a psychologist at Ohio State University who is one of the best-known proponents of the idea that first-person shooters influence real-world violence.

Naturally, there will be those who say people have been claiming hard rock, punk or rap would incite teenagers to violence. As a former teenager who loved all three genres I can attest that it felt like a soundtrack to heightened emotions. But that doesn’t mean — and there are no studies to suggest — that one thing (music) led to another (violence).

But gaming may be different. According to the PBS article, if violent music or television don’t seem to produce violent behaviors, “it’s a mistake to treat video games as an equivalent technological form. Video games are interactive rather than passive, an advantage that in other contexts, such as education, is regularly exploited. Games also create a system of constant reinforcement, rewarding behaviors practiced again and again.”

TOO REAL? OTHERS DISAGREE

In his article, "Can Video Games be Too Real" author Mike Snyder asked Taylor Kurosaki, studio narrative director at Infinity Ward, the Santa Monica-based studio that created the game, about the violence. He replied

"Just because we cover some heavy subjects, we are not treating them in a flippant way," he said, "The game puts you in some tough spots."

In a report, published earlier this year in the journal Royal Society Open Science by Aaron Drummond from New Zealand’s Massey University, researchers found that, when bundled together, 28 studies from previous years that looked at the link between aggressive behavior and video gaming, the studies showed a statistically significant but minuscule positive correlation between gaming and aggression, below the threshold required to count as even a “small effect”. 

It concluded that “current research is unable to support the hypothesis that violent video games have a meaningful long-term predictive impact on youth aggression,”

I don’t hate the player — I hate the game. Here's The Case for more Variety in Game Design for Realistic Media Platforms

While that link may be slim, other studies have shown interesting effects on wider emotional behavior. In 2018, Research from the University of new South Wales found that people who frequently played violent video games were less distracted by violent images in other contexts, a phenomenon the study author called “emotion-induced blindness”.*

THE REALISM OF VIRTUAL REALITY

My concern as a VR Strategist for Entertainment is that the increasing realism by enhanced graphics and refresh rates turn cartoon-like shooting into something that very closely resembles first-hand murder in real life.

I don’t see that as a good thing. To me, that’s not entertainment. It’s something much darker, and I don’t want to go there.

The reasons are simple. To illustrate, it’s perhaps easier to refer to Dr. Mel Slater’s work with the team at the University of Barcelona on the “Virtual Hand Illusion“ published in 2010. In this study, researchers used the illusion of a hand while the study participant was in a VR headset:

As the researchers stroked, then prodded, the “rubber” hand that seemingly “belonged” to participants, research participants displayed reflex reactions of someone whose actual body had been attacked. 

Their research uncovered “a fundamental synchrony between visual and proprioceptive information along with motor activity is able to induce an illusion of ownership over a virtual arm. This has implications regarding the brain mechanisms underlying body ownership as well as the use of virtual bodies in therapies and rehabilitation.”

In other words, the brain could not separate the “illusory” hand from their own embodied hand and, specifically, “how the central nervous system distinguishes what is part of the body and what is not.”

So, if the human mind in a 3D immersive environment has difficulty essentially identifying reality — how does that translate to violent acts?

"GIRL" GAMERS WEIGH IN

I asked a friend and ardent Virtual Reality fan and tech geek who enjoys gaming, about Shooter games. She replied,

When you’re part of a population that does actually end up as the victim more often than being the perpetrator in real life, living out that victimhood is disempowering and frankly frightening in a way that goes my deeper into my psyche than “just a game” levels.

In 2020, according to less than a quarter of game makers in the industry are women.

BUILDING FRIENDSHIPS, NOT KILLING ENEMIES

In an article in "Hacker Noon" Timmu Toke saw the major appeal of games for Gen Z was not, in fact, Shooter games, but Building:

Games are becoming the way kids communicate with their friends these days. Much like the previous generation used to do at basketball courts and skate parks.

Hanging out on a basketball court was never only about the game. It was about spending time with your friends and socializing. Having an activity to gather around.

AMONG US: A CLEVER TWIST

Scrolling through Twitter last weekend, I was heartened by a tweet about a group of young players in Among Us: The designated murderer decided they didn’t want to kill anyone; they ended up playing hide and seek instead.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Catherine D. Henry is a VR/AR/XR Strategist for Enterprise and Entertainment. She leads innovation strategy, decoding and driving emerging tech solutions for Enterprise - from manufacturing, production and facilities maintenance - and solutions for higher engagement combining XR for B2CAdvertising and Entertainment. She currently heads Palpable Media, an XR consulting firm www.palpable-media.com

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REFERENCES

• Source: *Alex Hearn: Playing video games doesn’t lead to violent behavior, study — The Guardian. Link: www.theguardian.com/games/2020/jul/22/playing-video-games-doesnt-lead-to-violent-behaviour-study-shows
• Source: Aaron Drummond, Massey University, New Zealand https://royalsocietypublishing.org/journal/rsos
• Source: MarketWatch: Global Shooting Games Market Report
• Source: Best Games Made By Women, June 2020: https://www.gamedesigning.org/gaming/made-by-women/
• Source: Timmu Toke https://medium.com/virtual-worlds/fortnite-and-roblox-are-the-future-of-social-media-58004223eb2e
• Source: Call of Duty Modern Warfare Ramps up Realism https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/gaming/2019/10/24/call-duty-modern-warfare-video-game-takes-realism-next-level/4021879002/
• Source: Brandon Keim, What Science Knows About Video Games and Violence https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/what-science-knows-about-video-games-and-violence/