"Torture good, videogames bad" -- APA
August 18, 2015 9:52 AM Subscribe

In 2013, 230 researchers signed an open letter condemning the American Psychological Association's public stance on video game violence, which they say ignores all the evidence against claims that video game violence causes real violence. (Via RPS)

The letter also raises concerns that are becoming familiar in discussions of psychology research, involving replication, publication bias, and "researcher degrees of freedom" in experiment design.

We also express concern about the overgeneralization of controversial laboratory measures of aggression to public health issues and violent crime. Laboratory measures certainly have their place, but we believe that greater caution should be used in generalizing them to real-life behaviors they may only obliquely measure. Further, the unstandardized and “ad hoc” nature of many of these measures is of concern to us, given they may create false positives. During the video game epoch, youth violence in the United States and elsewhere has plummeted to 40-year lows, not risen as would have been expected if the 2005 APA resolution were accurate. Although we do not assert video games are responsible for this decline (such would be an ecological fallacy), this decline in societal violence is in conflict with claims that violent video games and interactive media are important public health concerns. The statistical data are simply not bearing out this concern and should not be ignored.

posted by grobstein (79 comments total) 20 users marked this as a favorite

The RPS discussion (linked above) is quite good as well.
posted by grobstein at 9:56 AM on August 18, 2015

It's never a bad time to remind the world that the APA under Martin Seligman was involved in CIA torture programs during the Bush Administration.
posted by edheil at 9:57 AM on August 18, 2015 [28 favorites]

i wish video game creators would get bored of the repetitive and boring violence/misogyny/racism/etc and make better games, but i've never understood trying to ban violent video games before trying to cause some sort of change to the million law&order-esqu shows which seem to run on a constant stream of portraying sexualized torture/violence (and also seem to aid the perception that cops going above and beyond is a good thing instead of a gaping horror that's destroying us).
posted by nadawi at 9:58 AM on August 18, 2015 [42 favorites]

It's never a bad time to remind the world that the APA under Martin Seligman was involved in CIA torture programs during the Bush Administration.

Yes indeed. Metafilter has 5 previouslies on this, well worth looking at. And I try to name Seligman personally, from time to time.
posted by grobstein at 10:00 AM on August 18, 2015 [10 favorites]

I would like to see a list of studies and the games that they used for the 'violent' and 'non-violent' game variable. I also wonder how playing Street Fighter would compare to playing table tennis.
posted by demiurge at 10:09 AM on August 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

It's weird to bury the entire lede here in the "via."
posted by koeselitz at 10:11 AM on August 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

I mean - the point of this post isn't something that happened two years ago, is it? The point of this post is a study the APA released just the other day. Yet the post doesn't mention that at all - which feels more than a little deceptive. Only the article in the "via RPS" link actually addresses the study, which it says is faulty.
posted by koeselitz at 10:14 AM on August 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

i wish video game creators would get bored of the repetitive and boring violence/misogyny/racism/etc and make better games

Lots and lots and lots of game creators have done this. Lots. The continued existence of boring violent misogynistic games does not mean better stuff isn't being made, any more than terrible Michael Bay movies prevent high-quality films from also appearing in your local cinema. Sturgeon's Law applies.

Kentucky Route Zero; Gone Home; Thomas was Alone; Transistor; Everybody's Gone to the Rapture; Life is Strange; The Road not Taken; Hatoful Boyfriend; Braid; Octodad; Mountain; Papers, Please; Roundabout; Mini Metro; Broken Age - and I literally just wrote that list by running through a mental list of games I've played in the last few months.
posted by Tomorrowful at 10:17 AM on August 18, 2015 [37 favorites]

I've long tried to square the 'violent media has no appreciable effect on behavior' narrative with the 'misogynist media has a clear and longterm effect of reinforcing and normalizing cultural misogyny' one.

Well, most video games I've played are pretty obviously escapist fantasy. I've never thought it was particularly likely that I was at some point going to actually run around with a broadsword and iron armor, or be a space marine that fights aliens with laser guns, or fight Nazi zombies or shoot cop cars with rocket launchers in real life. Maybe for some people it's different, I don't know. Misogyny in media could reinforce what is already present in real life, make it seem more normal, and would be fairly realistic as opposed to completely escapist. Personally I see a pretty big difference but YMMV
posted by Hoopo at 10:20 AM on August 18, 2015 [13 favorites]

I think the context matters in how unethical I think it is (note me thinking something unethical is not a statement of health effects or legality of it).

Like for example, I could conceive of situations were I and people I know could actually have to fight for survival. It's a real thing that happens in the world and various people are faced with it to varying degrees (some us have never been put in a position of having to fight.)

I can see fighting for survival (against zombies, out of control beasts, invaders, criminals, aliens, war time actions) as being legitimate... sort of something we want to decrease or eliminate the need of, but that somewhere within the human spirit we will need to keep alive the willingness and ability to fight for self defense in the event of horrific circumstance.

I get the desire for kids (and adults) to play out self defense tactics, wrestling, play fighting, violent video games---

I can see the utility of it. Games that offer an opportunity to wrongfully kill/torture/rape and carry out misogyny and violence on innocent people just for fun; I have a problem with that regardless of what long term effects do or don't show up. I mean, why do people want this so much, and that indicates a problem exists whether or playing the games makes the underlying problem worse or not.

I mean, does being willing to deal with fighting or killing if needed necessarily mean one must indiscriminately delight in the suffering of innocent people? They do tend to go hand in hand (wartime brings out a lot of rape and sadism toward innocents and not only the actually threatening people), but I don't know that they have to or that we should treat or celebrate them as the same thing in culture or entertainment. It seems that side of the human character that almost seeks out wartime situations as an excuse to carry out unrestricted sadism, torture, misogyny and rape on any and everyone- is something we should actively be questioning and combatting within ourselves and others.
posted by xarnop at 10:32 AM on August 18, 2015

Well, most video games I've played are pretty obviously escapist fantasy. I've never thought it was particularly likely that I was at some point going to actually run around with a broadsword and iron armor, or be a space marine that fights aliens with laser guns, or fight Nazi zombies or shoot cop cars with rocket launchers in real life.

The point, Hoopo, would be to ask if the more primitive parts of your brain that influence your unconscious biases and behaviors make all these distinctions and understand what you're doing in the same way that the relatively puny, mouthy part of you that lives in the front of your brain does, and the answer is probably not. Parts of your brain really may not be able to tell you aren't actually doing those things the tiny little consciously self-reflective part of your brain knows it is not really doing. But I think there are also possible arguments that responsible violent video game play may be therapeutic for helping to release natural aggressive impulses, and anything involving the functioning of the brain and human behavior is so complicated, nobody should proceed from any simple premise as if the problem space were completely understood and there were simple, self-evident, one-size-fits-all best policies to follow.
posted by saulgoodman at 10:32 AM on August 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

(Good on calling out the APA for their hypocrisy on this issue relative to their complicity in torture, btw.)
posted by saulgoodman at 10:34 AM on August 18, 2015 [4 favorites]

Lots and lots and lots of game creators have done this.

i'm well aware, thanks (and i own everything in your list besides 2). i guess i should have qualified that although i thought it seemed obvious - i wish the creators that keep making face-shooter-rape-simulator 25k would get bored of that. there's room for all sorts of things and i'm not asking for anything to be banned - i'm just saying it's boring as shit and i think they can do better if they wanted to.
posted by nadawi at 10:37 AM on August 18, 2015 [12 favorites]

Parts of your brain really may not be able to tell you aren't actually doing those things the tiny little consciously self-reflective part of your brain knows it is not really doing

I don't know man, somehow the tiny part of my brain has managed to get me through 20+ years without so much as getting in a fist fight, and the times I did as a child in grade school predate violent video games and being mature enough to control myself. Not sure what part you're referring to, but if it's there's a part of my brain that makes me feel like I'm actually in a fight or experiencing a threat to my safety while I'm sitting at a desk in front of a laptop with a beer in my hand, it is pretty quiet about it.
posted by Hoopo at 10:45 AM on August 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

Misogynist fiction is real misogyny. Violent fiction is not real violence. Next question please.
posted by howfar at 10:46 AM on August 18, 2015 [60 favorites]

The discussion of context (realism vs. fantasy) applies pretty directly to how we've dealt with it in our household. Our older child was allowed to play games with sword and similar tech weapons before he was allowed to play games with laser-type guns before he was allowed to play games with current real-world guns--I suppose we'd have allowed muskets before that, but the question didn't arise. Our youngest is currently allowed to play games at the sword level only. Somewhat similarly, when he was old enough for us to allow realistic guns, we still disallowed crime-simulator games like Grand Theft Auto.

We do try to watch for other issues, like misogyny, but they're not as easy to notice without playing through ourselves. Most of the games our eldest was interested in avoided misogyny by simply not having women in them at all, which is a decidedly suboptimal solution, admittedly.

(As a random aside, our oldest was constantly pushing our limits for both games and other media, while our youngest just doesn't seem to care very much, and in fact repeatedly returns to media for even younger ages, which is frustrating in its own way. I thought we were *done* with some of those particularly mindless cartoons, but no.)
posted by Four Ds at 10:58 AM on August 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

Twitch Plays Dark Souls made me want to violently swing my mace at a wall.
posted by sfenders at 10:58 AM on August 18, 2015 [3 favorites]

Also, there's great societal and institutional pressure not to haul off and punch/suplex/shoot/throw fireballs at other people, but misogynist/racist fiction reinforces societal and institutional pressure in favor of those things. Not to mention that, like howfar said, misogyny in fiction isn't just a representation of misogyny but is the thing itself, just expressed through a different type of speech.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 10:59 AM on August 18, 2015 [14 favorites]

I don't know- I once punched a man over Professor Layton and Pandora's Box.

I could be an outlier, though.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 11:02 AM on August 18, 2015 [6 favorites]

if it's there's a part of my brain that makes me feel like I'm actually in a fight or experiencing a threat to my safety while I'm sitting at a desk in front of a laptop with a beer in my hand, it is pretty quiet about it.

I don't know. While recently playing through Resident Evil 6 with a friend, I know I've let out exclamations such as "S---, they're in here!" while fully grasping the reality that (a) zombies don't really exist and (b) my life is in no actual danger. In the same way, I'm able to react with sympathy towards Dr. Sheldon Cooper while knowing that Jim Parson wasn't actually filmed having an anxiety attack. There is a part of the brain's reasoning center that has to shut down for entertainment to work. Of interest here may be whether or not that function is letting other things through as well.
posted by dances with hamsters at 11:05 AM on August 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

It's your lizard brain, man! Your lizard brain! (I don't know either, in a philosophical sense, Hoopo, I'm just passing along information I have received from lots of better and more reliable sources than whatever parts of my brain or the spaces in between comment on the internet.)
posted by saulgoodman at 11:09 AM on August 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

[Caveat: I am a game designer who helped make violent but narrative-focused AAA games (Bioshock, Bioshock Infinite) until last year, and now as an indie dev I - where financially possible - work on non-violent narrative-focused games (The Black Glove, Perception). Opinions are my own, duh.]

If there's a sin that is specific to gaming it's that as an interactive medium there is the possibility to deliberately include addictive reward patterns and feedback loops, or not. Far too many developers opt for "include", and that goes double for everything in the greater MMO* category.

Everything else is just standard cultural shit that applies to any popular creative medium: movies, novels, comics, music can all be violent or not, pulp or artistic, casual/deliberate/anti in relation to misogyny or any other axis of social justice. These are all things that have everything to do with being expressions of culture and very little to do with games qua games.

It is the willingness of some game designers to exploit their audience through this unique capacity for addiction that deserves special scrutiny beyond what we apply to any other creative work. Pretending otherwise is just the tedious shrill cries of "[new thing] is worse than all previous forms of expressions!!" that every new medium gets until the next one comes along.
posted by Ryvar at 11:16 AM on August 18, 2015 [11 favorites]

I should probably have mentioned that the positive corollary to this is that as an interactive medium it is possible for games to build relationships with the player - whether this is in a passive role as a social channel for building human-to-human relationships, or the far more perilous and experimental active role of attempting to build a human-to-fictional-character relationship - I think there's an enormously positive possibility here that you can't find elsewhere.

The very worst thing is when a game exploits that capacity to foster relationships as yet another means to enhance deliberately addictive system mechanics - which is yet another aspect of the extreme ethical problems surrounding the majority of MMOs.
posted by Ryvar at 11:34 AM on August 18, 2015 [3 favorites]

Violence in video games seems to me much like violence in any art form; sometimes it's used in an effective manner, sometimes it's gratuitous. However, whether it's Hector getting cut down by Achilles in the Illiad, a Russian getting sabred in an Iron Maiden song or a player getting shot in Counterstrike, it's not the art that's at fault if the audience subsequently goes and attacks someone, it's the person who cannot separate reality from fiction. Enforce age restrictions on violent art, limit access to deadly weapons in real life and make sure people are educated and respect other people's rights, but don't censor the art.
posted by dazed_one at 11:42 AM on August 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'd say that "violence" is a pretty primitive set of behaviors, driven mostly by hormones, the fight-or-flight response, by fear and rage. Most real violence is caused by poverty, by malnutrition and lack of sleep and lead exposure, by childhood neglect and abuse, in short, by desperation.

Misogyny is not so stupid, not so simple. Misogyny is often casual, or even "polite". It is defended with sophisticated rationalizations. It is deployed by privileged people. Misogyny is a phenomenon of hierarchies and in-groups; it is nothing but culture.

I think misogyny happens because people justify it to themselves it based on what their culture accepts. Whereas I think violence mostly happens because of poor impulse control and adrenaline, so that culture is a lot less relevant.
posted by OnceUponATime at 11:58 AM on August 18, 2015 [7 favorites]

nadawi: i wish the creators that keep making face-shooter-rape-simulator 25k would get bored of that.

Well, the thing is, when creators get bored, they tend to just leave the industry altogether, and be replaced by newcomers eager to make their mark on the face-shooter genre.
posted by baf at 12:17 PM on August 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

I've long tried to square the 'violent media has no appreciable effect on behavior' narrative with the 'misogynist media has a clear and longterm effect of reinforcing and normalizing cultural misogyny' one. It's an odd bit of cognitive dissonance to be sure.

I struggle with this sort of cognitive dissonance, too. I am very pro game. Heck, I went to grad school for digital media & game design and am a believer in games for good. I have not done any research in game violence, aside from the reading the random article here or there. But it can be very frustrating to hear friends and colleagues being so adamant that there are few to no negative consequences with games but oodles of positive ones. If games can be utilized to to build on positive things, does it not also hold that the same mechanics can be used for negative ones. I mean, there's a reason why the US military has invested in games for simulation training and beyond. Now, of course, it's purpose is not to increase violence, but a goal for many simulation environments is desensitization. Do I think desensitization leads to violence? No. For certain situations it may make violence easier, but it can also make it easier to avoid violence. It's how the tool is used that matters.

For another example (non video game), I massively gamified my weight loss. It worked. My "Half-Assed" game was a very positive thing for me, but it would likely be very dangerous for an anorexic.

The APA's stance on violence in video games is extreme at best, dangerous at worst and, as a whole, flat out irresponsible.
posted by imbri at 12:22 PM on August 18, 2015 [5 favorites]

Avenger: " ProgressiveBros "

Brogressives, surely?
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 12:34 PM on August 18, 2015 [3 favorites]

Misogynist fiction is real misogyny. Violent fiction is not real violence.

I'm honestly confused by this. Why is one different than the other when both are fictional?
posted by herda05 at 12:35 PM on August 18, 2015

Why is one different than the other when both are fictional?

My take: Misogynist and violent fiction are both a reflection of our culture. Yet when written out, the misogyny, not being a physical act, retains its misogynist attributes while the violence, usually thought of as physical, is only a representation.
posted by imbri at 12:45 PM on August 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'm honestly confused by this. Why is one different than the other when both are fictional?

Misogyny is a set of ideas and attitudes. Fiction can really spread ideas. Fiction cannot really bash anyone over the head and leave them bleeding.
posted by OnceUponATime at 12:45 PM on August 18, 2015 [8 favorites]

We express the concern that […] we further express the belief that

I express the conclusion that you don't have to read any Austin to get a psychology degree.
posted by RogerB at 12:47 PM on August 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

Misogynist fiction is real misogyny. Violent fiction is not real violence.

I'm honestly confused by this. Why is one different than the other when both are fictional?

They're not both fictional. The category mistake is introduced by a grammatical identity being confused for a logical one.

"Violent fiction" means fiction about violence.

"Misogynist fiction" means fiction which perpetrates misogyny.

Fiction about misogyny and fictional misogyny are not the same thing as misogynist fiction. Feminist criticisms of fiction are never simply complaints about portrayals of misogyny.

There is a difference between misogynist art and art depicting misogyny, in the same way that Birth of a Nation is racist and Twelve Years A Slave is about racism.
posted by howfar at 1:07 PM on August 18, 2015 [31 favorites]

For me, at least, violent video games act as a cathartic and safe release of violent urges. I like piloting my 100 ton battlemech around blowing stuff up and killing people so that I feel less of an urge to drive around blowing stuff up. In the real world, shooting somebody is a very serious thing that I hope I never have to do. But in a game, it's actually fun. There isn't any other place that I can kill people and blow stuff up for fun. I don't feel a strong need to act out violent tendencies but I feel like it does mean that I want to punch the next jerk I have to deal with in the face at about a 2 out of ten instead of a 4.

But, I don't really have any misogynistic tendencies that I feel like it helps to express in a safe way. I don't beat up hookers in Grand Theft Auto and then feel less like being sexist or anything.

I'd also point out that most of the violence is video games it comically over-the-top, even in more "realistic" games like the Battlefield series. There is some misogyny in video games that is as comically far over the top as the violence but I'm not really worried about that sort of stuff. It's the more subtle stuff that is a reflection of misogyny that we encounter everywhere else that I'm worried about.
posted by VTX at 1:16 PM on August 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

Why is one different than the other when both are fictional?

Representational works are interesting because they are things in the world that are also about things in the world. Because of this, it is possible for a work to be about violence, to denote violence, without itself being violent. I can say "pow! pow! I am shooting you!" without performing any actual act of violence, I can draw pictures of violent scenes without performing any act of violence, I can create a model world in a digital game in which I can shoot people left and right without actually performing any act of violence, and so forth. This is not to say that violent works cannot themselves actually be acts of violence - for example, I could draw a picture of me punching your teeth out and give it to you as part of a threat ("give me your money or this will happen to you"), and then the violent representation would in fact actually be an act of violence.

Misogynist works tend to experience this coicidence of what the work is and what the work is about much more frequently, though. If I say "pow, pow, I am shooting you!," I am not performing an act of violence. however, if I say or imply that women should be subordinate to men, I am in fact both denoting and also enacting misogyny.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 1:18 PM on August 18, 2015 [5 favorites]

Here's the APA summary which links to the full report. The claim is evidence suggests a link between video games and aggression, but not between video games and actual criminal behavior. That sounds plausible, though I've not yet read the full report. The problem is when people read the statement of "lack of evidence" to read "evidence of lacking an effect."
posted by nicodine at 1:22 PM on August 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

Misogynist fiction is real misogyny. Violent fiction is not real violence.

That's an interesting way of framing it, thanks. I think part of the contrast is viewing one as a reinforcement of ideals, and the other the stimulus of an action. Would it be different if instead of calling it 'violent fiction/media' we thought of it as 'media which reinforces aggression as a problem-solving technique'? (not as succinct, I know) In either case, the media itself isn't *doing* anything until it serves to communicate its content, and the question seems to be at what point does that communication serve to reinforce an audiences' belief in its narrative.
posted by FatherDagon at 1:24 PM on August 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

for whatever it's worth, I would urge parents who ban their children from playing "crime simulator" games also keep their children away from media that glorifies police work and valorizes police officers. Games that suggest that police officers are decent, trustworthy people and that police work is worthwhile can give children terrible ideas about the world and how to behave in it.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 1:26 PM on August 18, 2015 [3 favorites]

Misogynist fiction is real misogyny. Violent fiction is not real violence.

I don't disagree, but the question wasn't whether violent fiction is real violence. It was whether violent fiction contributes to real violence.

And I don't think we'll ever get a definitive answer to that. Any study of the subject, no matter what its conclusion, will be flawed because there are just too many other variables involved.
posted by rocket88 at 1:36 PM on August 18, 2015

yeah, it really comes down to the extent to which the human brain can be trusted to separate things that are things from things that are about things. If you stand in front of your dog and point to the moon, the dog is more likely to look at your finger than at the moon, unless you have a particularly smart dog. The question we're dealing with when talking about violent representative media is the question of whether we are more like particularly smart dogs or more like ordinary ones.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 1:44 PM on August 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

"Violent fiction" means fiction about violence.

"Misogynist fiction" means fiction which perpetrates misogyny.

Thanks howfar, I see the point your making, but I'm not fully on board. Fiction can also perpetrate violence and support it, no? One can write fiction that normalizes violence against homosexuals, transgender, etc.?

Fiction boils down to a set of ideas being expressed. Violent ideas and attitudes can be reinforced the same way as misogyny, racism, homophobia, etc. can. I don't think the idea of something is the thing itself (though I'm willing to concede I may not be correct here).

I do get the distinction of ideas about a thing v. ideas that are supporting/spreading the thing.

...the question wasn't whether violent fiction is real violence. It was whether violent fiction contributes to real violence.

Actually, to me the question isn't about whether violent fiction contributes to real violence, its this comment.

I suddenly thought, I do agree with the idea that violent video games don't spread violence and I do agree with the idea that misogynistic fiction spreads misogyny. Why is that? Are these really opposed ideas?

I think howfar and others are on to something, but I also suspect its more complicated than what they have described and outlined thus far.
posted by herda05 at 1:44 PM on August 18, 2015

herda05, what do you think of the notion that violent behavior is less influenced by culture because it's less consciously controlled?
posted by OnceUponATime at 1:50 PM on August 18, 2015

i guess i should have qualified that although i thought it seemed obvious - i wish the creators that keep making face-shooter-rape-simulator 25k would get bored of that

It is a sign of my jadedness that my first thought was : "hunh, I'm unfamiliar with the FSRS series, much less v25k"?
posted by lalochezia at 1:52 PM on August 18, 2015 [3 favorites]

Fiction can also perpetrate violence and support it, no? One can write fiction that normalizes violence against homosexuals, transgender, etc.?

Well, of course. Violent fiction may quite possibly encourage violence. But that's not the point here.

The reason that murder is wrong is not that it nomalises murder. It's because it is actually murder.
posted by howfar at 2:09 PM on August 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

And yes, of course primarily constative utterance have consequences which may make them irresponsible or wicked. But I don't think it's really necessary to delve into the complexities of speech act theory to point out that expression is not all of a type.
posted by howfar at 2:12 PM on August 18, 2015

OnceUponATime, that's an interesting take. Not sure why yet, but I do feel that holding violent media does not perpetuate violence and misogynistic media does perpetuate misogyny are not opposite ideas and certainly are not cognitively dissonant to me.
posted by herda05 at 2:30 PM on August 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

I don't disagree, but the question wasn't whether violent fiction is real violence. It was whether violent fiction contributes to real violence.

And I don't think we'll ever get a definitive answer to that. Any study of the subject, no matter what its conclusion, will be flawed because there are just too many other variables involved.

Based on all of the studies and debates about this, my stance is that there is no general link between video game violence and real violence. But, not everyone reacts the same way. For people like me, I think it has no effect or even slightly lessens my violent tendencies. For others, they might be violent people with a propensity towards violent acts and violent video games are one avenue they use to express that violence. In other words, not everyone who plays video games is more likely to shoot up a school but everyone who is likely to shoot up a school is very likely to play violent video games. I don't think playing games makes them more violent. Then there probably is a group of people for whom playing violent video games increases their violent and aggressive tendencies.

It's the only way I can reconcile my personal experiences with these studies. At this point, any study that shows that violent video games cause violent would be like a study that showed that drinking more milk cause an increase in flatulence. Among the lactose intolerant, it certainly does and if you have enough lactose intolerant people in your sample group, you could totally end up with enough evidence to establish that link, but it's not really useful information for solving the problem. We're not going to just get rid of all lactose and violent video games aren't going to get any less violent*. Figuring why these games cause issues for some people and not others is the thing to focus.

*though I always hope for more and better, non-violent games or at least not violence focused games
posted by VTX at 2:34 PM on August 18, 2015

I don't disagree, but the question wasn't whether violent fiction is real violence. It was whether violent fiction contributes to real violence.

The question that was posed upthread was whether there is a cognitive dissonance between being relaxed about videogame violence and concerned about videogame misogyny. My answer is no, not really.
posted by howfar at 2:42 PM on August 18, 2015

Not killing other people is the most basic shared value of all civilizations. Every bit as old, and only very recently disputed, is the pervasive belief that women are inherently inferior.

Violent media exists in a cultural context where everybody *knows* what's depicted is ethically wrong, but it's a wrong we all sometimes contemplate because our private universes are filled with perceived injustice. Any assisted/collaborative fantasizing along those lines still occurs within the context that said activity is wrong - nobody asks why the cops are chasing you in Grand Theft Auto.

Media that is casually or deliberately misogynistic exists in a cultural context where not everybody believes it is wrong or cares whether it is wrong. Most media featuring Harley Quinn works toward sexualizing her as an object of desire. A huge percentage of the viewers or player base do not understand or believe that this attitude is harmful to both women categorically and themselves personally. They do not understand why other people might be upset about this.

Nobody proposes legalizing first-degree murder, yet plenty of GOP congressmen line up to legalize treating women's bodies as property.

Context matters.

And none of this is at all specific to games.
posted by Ryvar at 2:50 PM on August 18, 2015 [10 favorites]

I get the impression that most of the people complaining righteously about violence in video games are like the first movie goers who screamed in terror and ran as the projection of a train approached. They either don't actually play the video games in question or they are remarkably sensitive for someone who does.

If they knew what they were talking about, they would understand that it is the difference between blowing up a dollhouse with firecrackers and blowing up an actual building. You may not even want to do the former, but one is in no way an endorsement or training for the other.

Of course there is context. But it can be a little squirrelly. When GTA3 came out, I enjoyed running all over the simulated world and stealing cars. However, when an acquaintance referred to the ability to "punch hookers" as a feature of the game, it not only surprised me, it ruined the experience for me. All I could think of was that, and I couldn't play it anymore. I probably even punched a hooker or two, but never really thought of it in those terms until he mentioned it.

Does that make GTA bad, or the acquaintance, or is that just something I'm particularly sensitive to? I certainly could have continued to run around and steal virtual cars and shoot virtual people... that's what open-world games are supposed to do -- cater to very different play styles. But I have a very different opinion than some, in that I don't think GTA is worth censuring because of what it allows you to do -- I think my personal reaction is.. personal.

In the not-so-ambiguous category, there are games like Call of Duty. People who have no clue would call that game super-violent. People who aren't afraid of projected trains know that it's essentially a game of laser tag.
posted by smidgen at 3:21 PM on August 18, 2015

If they knew what they were talking about, they would understand that it is the difference between blowing up a dollhouse with firecrackers and blowing up an actual building. You may not even want to do the former, but one is in no way an endorsement or training for the other.

... Well, someone hasn't watched a lot of Mythbusters.
posted by mikurski at 4:01 PM on August 18, 2015

Does that make GTA bad, or the acquaintance, or is that just something I'm particularly sensitive to? I certainly could have continued to run around and steal virtual cars and shoot virtual people... that's what open-world games are supposed to do -- cater to very different play styles. But I have a very different opinion than some, in that I don't think GTA is worth censuring because of what it allows you to do -- I think my personal reaction is.. personal.

I'm just going to take this opportunity to remind the thread that it is possible to think that GTA is objectively bad and still oppose any kind of censorship of it entirely. I think that the majority of the Daily Mail actively harms society every day, and I feel sick thinking about the kind of scum that promote and profit from a viewpoint of selfishness and cruelty. I hate it from the depths of my soul. And I'm right: it is filth. But I would still defend its right of publication with all the courage and energy I could ever muster, even if it were the only thing that were going to be subject to censorship. Freedom, to mean anything, must include the freedom to be an utter fucking prick.

So let's avoid the censorship derail if we can. I don't think it comes into the things being discussed here.
posted by howfar at 4:12 PM on August 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

What in the world is at issue here if it isn't censorship? Does anyone care if we say video games are "bad" and just leave it at that, without doing anything about it?
posted by koeselitz at 4:14 PM on August 18, 2015

i don't want to censor the games themselves, but i do think everyone should be incredibly upfront about where they're receiving money/help from, be it mountain dew, the gun manufactures, or the united states military, and as part of the userbase i want us to start dissuading those companies from cashing those checks.
posted by nadawi at 4:18 PM on August 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

What in the world is at issue here if it isn't censorship? Does anyone care if we say video games are "bad" and just leave it at that, without doing anything about it?

We shape the world by the choices we make. These are shaped by the conversations we have. There are, for instance, lots of behaviours I don't engage in because of conversations I've had on Metafilter over the years. And I expect there will be many more. The idea that a society's moral views, even if they are a consensus, should be reflected directly in its laws seems...well..weird as fuck.

I think lots of things are bad, harmful and wrong without thinking they should be illegal. People lie to their families, gossip hurtfully about their friends and queue jump. We can discuss those things without imagining we're some sort of proto-legislative body determining the fate of knobheads.
posted by howfar at 4:26 PM on August 18, 2015 [6 favorites]

Real-life laser tag seems to me sufficiently divorced from actual glorification of the military, whereas some of those Call of Duty games slavishly buy into the tropes.

I just flat disagree with that. It's pixels on a screen. If you forget that, you will play the game very... poorly. Perhaps I should have used paintball as an example? There's certainly a militaristic component to paintball -- but again, it's what you bring to it. It also very much depends on whether you think "militaristic" is unconditionally a bad thing, doesn't it?

Like I said, squirrelly.

So let's avoid the censorship derail if we can.

I used the word "censuring".
posted by smidgen at 4:57 PM on August 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

it doesn't make a lot of sense, and in the absence of any actual evidence for either proposition the arguments to reconcile it in this thread have a slightly desperate air.

What is there to reconcile? Why should two completely different things working in completely different ways be surprising? It's quite possible for either, both or neither claim to be true, entirely independently of each other.

The fact is that we live in a misogynist society, which would be less misogynist if there were less misogyny. It seems a tautology to me that actually being misogynist normalises misogyny. Like actually being violent normalises violence or actually eating hummus normalises the consumption of hummus.

I used the word "censuring".

Did you mean only moral censure? I read it as meaning legal censure, sorry. I guess I just take it as read that it is worth criticising things that seem bad and potentially harmful to us. You obviously disagree. I personally think a robust moral position on art is useful, not in order to stifle art but in order to encourage it. We can believe different things, and tolerate that difference, without retreating into a sort of limp, non-judgemental relativism, can't we? I think that's what discourse is largely about - genuinely believing your position but respecting those who hold contrary views, and being willing to change your position as necessary.
posted by howfar at 5:10 PM on August 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

“If Pac-Man had affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive electronic music.”
― Marcus Brigstocke
posted by drnick at 7:37 PM on August 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

Whoa. Marcus Brigstocke knows my life!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:47 PM on August 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

The social justice project is to change the way people think, and a consequence of that in gaming is to take people's childhood and tell them the thing they thought was good, is actually bad.

This is, like, the kind of comment the phrase "not even wrong" was coined for
posted by ominous_paws at 12:12 AM on August 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

As brief break on the discussion of "violence in videogames" to turn back to the APA.

I really wish some professional medical associations were stripped of their cultural relevance. I often see media figures and politicians reference statements from the American Medical Association (AMA) as representing the studied and dispassionate opinions of the medical profession writ large. In fact, the AMA represents fewer than 25% of doctors in the US, and in all likelihood has caused more harm than good to the public health, especially of poor Americans. The AMA vehemently opposed the founding of medicaid and their lobbying in the 1950's, 60's and 70's is probably one of the biggest reasons we don't have a national health care plan. The AMA to this day is still officially opposed to Single Payer Heath Care, despite some surveys indicating 59 percent of doctors supporting a Single Payer Program.

APA strikes me a society guilty of repeatedly "just not getting it." From the old DSM's including homosexuality as a disorder, to current DSM still trying to be all things to all people, to the torture support - I'm not sure why the APA continues to show poor sensitivity to the implications of their actions. They just keep doing weird things.

Hell, even the American Academy of Pediatricians, a professional society which arguably has more business making recommendations about the health of children, is purposefully vague on the consequences of violent media. Their official recommendations basically boil down to "(1) there's no good reason to put an infant in front of a TV, (2) less media roughly correlates with more activity which is generally a good thing and (3) pay attention to what your kids are doing." Seems a hell of a lot more measured and well thought out than breathless and uncritical review of every possible bad consequence of violent media suggested by research of varying quality.
posted by midmarch snowman at 4:13 AM on August 19, 2015 [4 favorites]

I think the main reason why violence is more inherent in video games than other themes is that in any sort of situation where there are two agents that compete against each other, violence is a very useful metaphor to put on top of an abstract system to represent that struggle. Chess is on the abstract side of the spectrum for instance, but using a war combat metaphor helps make sense of the fact that a token that enters the space of another token removes it from the game. In the earlier days of video games technical limitations meant that games were fairly abstract with only a basic implied amount of violence, whereas now that games are becoming much more detailed simulations of life-like worlds, violence is much more visceral. It's possible to create games that are essentially the same as Call of Duty or any other violent game but use some other non-violent representation of the same mechanics, but it's hard to find another metaphor that fits as well in the same context.
posted by burnmp3s at 11:15 AM on August 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

I've seen a lot of comments about the link between some games and aggression, but not any discussion about the nature of antisocial-reinforcing games (call of duty comes to mind), where a single player is isolated in a room and playing, compared to social games (like super smash brothers). I suspect that, from my experience as an armchair hypothesizer, that the link between increased aggression and increased suggestibility to misogynistic themes/ideas is far more prominent in the former category, and diminished as soon as the player is put in a room with other gamers to interact with (in meat space).
posted by thebotanyofsouls at 11:22 AM on August 19, 2015

With the built-in voice chat, you're going to need to take another look at your definition of "isolated". And anti-social while we're at it. LOTs of people join units/clans/guilds in these games. I certainly did when I was playing CoD's main competitor, the Battlefield series (in BF3 and BF4).

I talked to the same group of people every time I played the game and we got to know each other. Some of us were close enough that we considered each other friends.

Of course, there are some anti-social people who play these games alone and keep it that way but I don't think that's as common and not really the way the games are meant to be played. I would argue that it's a case of anti-social person using gaming to reinforce that behavior. Much like a gambling addict who plays blackjack. It's not a good thing but it's not really the game's issue.
posted by VTX at 2:18 PM on August 19, 2015

also, some of us play games "anti-socially" because the groups we encounter to play with in person or online are filled with misogynists (i know, i know, #NotAllGamers, mefightclub is very nice, maybe i'm ust not looking in the right place, etc - sometimes we've butted up against the same problem for 25 years and are sick of trying and prefer to play alone, thanks).
posted by nadawi at 2:22 PM on August 19, 2015

I wouldn't get too hung up on the meatspace thing. I've played plenty of tabletop RPGs via Fantasy Grounds and never had an experience that was less than respectful.

Shit I wonder if anyone would be up for a mefite game of Savage Worlds....
posted by howfar at 3:09 PM on August 19, 2015

It's possible to create games that are essentially the same as Call of Duty or any other violent game but use some other non-violent representation of the same mechanics, but it's hard to find another metaphor that fits as well in the same context.

Yes. Also, violence is easy to code -- guns and hitboxes are pretty thoroughly solved problems. Nonviolent obstacles (because a game needs some sort of obstacle to progression, to stop it just being a movie) are puzzles, and puzzles have to be invented and implemented bespoke.
posted by rifflesby at 4:08 PM on August 19, 2015

Violence is easy, and non-violent environmental/logical obstacles are either bespoke or algorithmic & solved in the general very quickly. Once players solve said algorithm it's demoted to a delaying tactic/rote gating system, and one that rapidly grows tedious if you're not super careful about the implementation particulars. There's an argument to be made that Shadow of Mordor's Nemesis system boils down to this Done Right - principally through imbuing the obstacles themselves with persistent character traits in response to gameplay events.

Procedural puzzle generation (as in logic puzzle) is borderline impossible for the same reason social obstacle generation is flatly impossible: it requires machine-based cognitive modeling of the player (both) or hypothetical antagonists (social only) that would, if we had it, constitute Turing-level intelligence within very specific contexts. "Several decades off" is wildly optimistic, to put it mildly.

This is an interesting thought, but I don't think it's right. The dichotomy between procedural and bespoke content cuts across the division between violent and non-violent challenges. The most expensively made games are violent games, where combat encounters are handcrafted (maybe most of the handcrafting goes to art, though? not sure). To the extent that NPC violent antagonists have behaviors that are not completely scripted, they are "algorithmic," too, and players do solve the general problem, and many NPC combat encounters can't be distinguished from a delaying tactic or rote gating system. Yet players enjoy these games.

Similarly, I don't think the design of a non-violent puzzle is as hard as a Turing test. A computer could probably design interesting chess puzzles, for example. (Idea: in simulated games between chess engines, are there some branches where the play of slightly stronger engines sharply diverges from that of slightly weaker engines? That's a candidate for a puzzle. Or: are there some branches where the forward-looking score diverges sharply from the result? Etc.) Or take Spelunky, a game with procedural level generation: a lot of what makes a Spelunky run interesting is the shape of the level. The player is doing constrained optimization of getting to the exit vs. all the dangers and rewards on the way. Spelunky is a violent game, but some of what makes it interesting is this procedurally generated challenge (which is not inherently violent).

And generating not-necessarily-interesting -- but very difficult -- logic puzzles is actually very easy, computationally. Just spit out some random propositional logic formulas and ask if they're satisfiable, maybe check to make sure the answer isn't in the first few variable assignments. Ta da, it's NP-complete. (Actually, there is a genre of logic puzzler that is basically this, and so is the "logic games" section of the LSAT.)

So I think what we're talking about is really an interestingness gap, not a computational complexity gap. I don't think violent content is computationally easier. More: psychologically easier. (But the two may be fungible to some extent. Perhaps a non-violent scenario needs to be more complex in order to be as interesting as a violent scenario.)

Like burnmp3s says, a violent game like CoD could be reframed as a non-violent game without changing the complexity of the mechanics. Imagine a multiplayer deathmatch where you are trying to take the other team's photo for the yearbook. But this would be boring and dumb, even if mechanically it was a 1-1 copy of CoD. Similarly, non-violent puzzle games could be reframed as violent games, although it might be clunky or awkward. The molecules in Spacechem could be people for example. (That's kind of chilling, huh?) The blocks in Sokoban games could be people. (These are handmade examples, but I am trying to illustrate a general point: that violent game scenarios should be efficiently reducible to non-violent ones, and vice versa.)

In my mind, game violence is a theme or style of presentation, rather than like a logical structure. It just happens to be a theme that is very engaging to the audience.

I think of the Wason selection task, a well-studied experimental paradigm in psychology. In the experiment, subjects are given a simple logic puzzle. The puzzle may be presented in various ways. If it is presented as an abstract logic puzzle, subjects answer rather poorly. But if the puzzle is presented differently, most subjects will get it right. Giving the exact same logic puzzle, but explaining it in terms of the application of rules to people, results in very good performance.

This result has a prominent place in the history of evolutionary psychology, which we can mostly ignore. The point is, holding the logic of the puzzle constant, there are some subject matters that make the puzzle much more salient to subjects, dramatically improving their performance. Similarly, underneath every video game challenge, there is an abstract logical puzzle that we could describe in non-violent terms. But presenting the challenge thematically as a violent struggle (often) makes it more engaging to players -- more attentionally sticky, easier to understand, more "fun."

Violence is an easily understood metaphor for interpersonal conflict, and interpersonal conflict is an inherently interesting subject for us. Games could also be re-written to take out all the interpersonal conflict. Even more pervasively than violence, games tend to be presented as interactions between agents. But, again, this is presentation -- the agents could all be stripped out (possibly excepting player characters). A game with the same mechanical logic as Call of Duty could be made with no enemy characters at all, just an ever-shifting environment in which certain actions are rewarded and others penalized. Any game theory scenario can be characterized as an equivalent abstract logical system. It would just be a lot less interesting, a lot harder to grasp. Even when we are playing by ourselves, games tell us to pretend we are interacting with agents, because this framing is engaging to us -- almost regardless of the underlying logical structure.
posted by grobstein at 7:36 AM on August 20, 2015 [5 favorites]

NB I'm not trying to argue that violent video games are natural and therefore good, duh. 1) That's a bad argument, 2) whether violent subject matter is naturally engaging or engaging for some other reason is independent of the point I'm making.
posted by grobstein at 9:34 AM on August 20, 2015

I think you're both focusing on the wrong thing in the violent vs. non-violent gaming.

The thing you have to realize is that no one buys CoD for the single player game. The Battlefield series only included a single player game starting with Bad Company 2 (on PC at least) and that was really only to compete more directly against CoD. Until then, it was online multi-player only. The single player is there and it's often fun and cinematic. But it's really just an intro to the multi-player game. I only ever played through the CoD campaigns once and I didn't play BF4's single player campaign until after I had been playing the game for about six months.

The limitations of computers and programming are such that live human opponents are most engaging puzzle to solve. I agree that "give them guns and have them shoot at each other" is a pretty obvious dynamic. But the counter-point is not carefully designed game-play puzzles, it's putting two or more humans in direct opposition without resorting to violence that's the challenge. Until you can create an online multiplayer game where two players/teams oppose each other that is as compelling as an FPS, you're just wasting time.

I'll speculate that the dynamic at play here is that solving the computer-based puzzle is more game like in that the player must figure out the rules and logic of the game and then apply those rules to solve the puzzle. I suppose that's true in both cases (vs humans or computers) but the difference is that the rules and logic of the computer are going to be cold and alien or you're counting on some design queue (if you keep finding resources, you're probably going the right way, if you find a huge weapons/resources cashe in a place where it would be impossible to miss, you can expect a boss fight soon, etc.). We're MUCH more comfortable dealing with human behavior. When I'm shooting at an enemy in the single player game, I'm looking for simple patterns but I can't at all predict what those patterns will be. But against another human player, I can much more accurately predict how they'll respond. You still need to figure out the rules of the physical aspects of the game (how the guns shoot, how to use vehicles, the physics behind everything) but the behavior of your opponents will make some sense.

Lastly, a LOT of people play these games for the power fantasy aspect. They want to compete directly against another person and beat them so that they can feel powerful. It's why it's so common for players to attribute every successful kill to their own skill (and it's superiority to yours) and every death to lag, cheaters, hacks, an opponent using a weapon only n00bs use (seriously, grenade launchers are often called n00b-tubes), and the list goes on. I already know that I'm smarter and better than the computer. The only reason the computer ever wins is because it cheats (the program knows precisely where you are at all times and the computer only misses it's shots because it's been programmed to). I get some satisfaction out of beating it but it's never the going to give me the same rush that getting on a hot streak in the multiplayer game does.
posted by VTX at 6:05 AM on August 21, 2015

That rush reached its peak in Unreal Tournament.

VTX IS DOMINATING!
...
VTX IS GODLIKE!

But yeah, that's what makes online FPS so compelling.
posted by Justinian at 12:41 PM on August 22, 2015

For compelling non fps game-play here's the finals of Major League Gaming's first Rocket League Tournament.
posted by Tenuki at 2:48 AM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

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