I Hate Social Scientists

Feb ´05
15 10:14 am
  • Posted by: Bryan-Mitchell Young
  • Category: rants

My research involves ethnography and my PhD minor is Anthropology. As such, I’ve sent a lot of time in classes talking about the role of the researcher and how the researcher brings biases and assumptions to the study. Apparently, this type of self searching and introspection doesn’t seem as evident for many people doing social science “experiments” especially our friends who seem convinced that videogames are bad. Even if the evidence doesn’t support their hypothesis, it doesn’t seem to stop them from finding a reason why even not finding anything wrong is a problem. The most recent case in point comes from a Washington Post article Students See Video Games As Harmless, Study Finds (registration required, but the story has since been picked up by other papers). Now, certainly, I can’t be too hasty in condemning the research because after all, this is being filtered through the newspaper writer’s writing and, therefore, might not accurately represent the findings or beliefs of the researcher. Additionally, I have my own agenda. I think I have made that clear. All that being said, the article paints a picture that is not very rosy.

The article talks about a research study conducted by University of Maryland professor Melanie Killen in which:

Researchers showed them images from a pair of over-the-top video games, one an “extreme” golf outing with strippers as caddies, the other a blood-and-entrails affair. Then, they were asked if what they had seen could be harmful.

First of all, they weren’t really from videogames.

Killen and fellow researchers at the University of Maryland’s Human Development Department interviewed more than 100 college students, whose average age was 19, for 45 minutes each. They showed them images from a series of imaginary video games, each one modeled on a familiar genre in the gaming industry.

Unfortunately, this little detail isn’t mentioned until halfway through the article. Even so, “most subjects understood that the two over-the-top games depicted negative themes and harmful stereotypes.”

One would think, great, this study proves that games know that there are negative stereotypes in games. Wrong. The very next sentence makes this abundantly clear, “But they failed to see how that content could harm them.” The article ends with: “It’s not like they were in denial about stereotypes,” Killen said. “But they for some reason think it’s not going to affect them.” So there it is, the assumption that exposure to stereotypes, even if you know that they are negative stereotypes is harmful. Gamers can’t win. Period. And it isn’t like any other form of media has stereotypes or anything…

Of course, the article in and of itself is horrible and it is entirely possible that the biases that seem to come from Killen’s research are from Daniel de Vise the article’s author. In just one article, in addition to the findings of Killen and her team, de Vise manages to bring up Columbine, make a drive-by swipe at Grand Theft Auto, talk about how “photorealistic” the graphics have become, and quote Craig A. Anderson who has spent much of his academic career rehashing the same arguments that media and videogames in particular are evil and make you go crazy and kill people. Wow! All that is missing is a quote from Grossman and Thompson (either Jack or Robert)!

About Bryan-Mitchell Young

On Art and Violence

Now that the semester is winding down I’ve got a bit of time to blog (and write my last couple dissertation chapters and then revise all of them and write the intro and conclusion chapters…). A couple things have happened (and are in the process of happening) that have the gaming world buzzing: Roger Ebert wrote about videogames again and the Supreme Court is taking up the case of California’s law forbidding the sale of videogames to minors.

Regarding Ebert, he ends by asking, “Why are gamers so intensely concerned, anyway, that games be defined as art?” which echoes my own call for all of us to stop caring about “art.” Tons and tons of people have tried to convince him he’s wrong — so many in fact that I don’t even want to bother hunting down links to some of the stories that do it. I’m not interested in arguing with him because I don’t really care if he thinks games are art or not.

However, it is very disconcerting that he seems to think that he can judge games by looking at screenshots. Would he write a review of a film based on the text on the back of the dvd box? That’s pretty ignorant to think that he can judge games in that manner.

Unfortunately, this is just the top of the iceberg because look at the picture at the top of his post. Now I have no idea if he picked that picture or not. I would say that he probably didn’t but he did pick the rest of the pictures in the post so perhaps he did. Regardless, the picture didn’t just appear by itself. Someone chose that picture. What is in that picture? A kid. So someone whether it was Ebert of just some random web guy, wanted to pick a picture of a gamer and they picked a kid — once again perpetuating the stereotype that games are for kids and in this instance also seemingly indicating that games are in and of themselves childish. Wow. That’s pretty sad.

OK, now onto the Supreme Court…

I’m pretty confident that the Supreme Court will say this law is unconstitutional not only because lower courts have consistently ruled that laws regulating videogame sales are unconstitutional but also because of the recent Supreme Court decision declaring a law banning animal cruelty videos unconstitutional.

Today the Diane Rehm Show had a segment on the Supreme Court taking on the Videogame law regulating videogame sales and had Leland Yee, the California politician behind the bill, Craig Anderson, the guy who has never met a form of media that didn’t cause aggression, and a couple other people I don’t remember. Now, I’ve previously criticized Anderson’s vague use of the term “aggression” so I was pleasantly surprised that Diane Rehm’s first question to him was “what is the difference between agression and violence?” Anderson initially tried to avoid answering the question but then Rehm re-asked the question and Anderson admitted that while violence is generally understood as an extreme form of aggression, it is very rare for aggression to actually turn into violence. I think that it really key because in that statement Anderson (who also in this CNN video says that videogame-caused “aggression” isn’t really any worse than film or television-causes “aggression” ) says that videogames don’t really make kids violent.

If the most well known person who thinks videogames cause aggression doesn’t think they make you violent then that makes the case that they are so bad that we need laws against selling them much harder to prove.

Personally, I look forward to the SCOTUS shutting down these kinds of laws once and for all.

…well that and Jack Thompson getting involved and saying some crazy things…

Movies can be scary too…

Allow me a non-videogame-related rant here… It is still about moral panics surrounding children and media though so it could easily have been about videogames instead of movies.

I caught a story on the local NPR station last night about someone threatening a lawsuit against Redbox because they sell “R-rated” movies. I searched for something about the story and apparently it got picked up by a few local news outlets including the Indianapolis Fox Affiliate and the Louisville ABC Affiliate. According to stories the whole thing is being stirred up by Vanderburgh Country Prosecutor Stan Levco.

Of course there’s two little details that neither of the two stories linked to above or any of the other stories I saw seemed to mention: First, The MPAA rating system “is a voluntary system” and the ratings are not legally enforced. The only possible grounds for a lawsuit that there would be would be under obscenity or pornography laws. Levco almost certainly knows this. So why is he causing a stir? That leads to the second missing detail: Levco is running for re-election.

So this is just a ploy to get into the headlines so that Levco can say he is “fighting for families” and concerned about “family values” without having to do anything. The minute I heard this story I immediately wondered if the guy was up for re-election because that’s the only time public officials try to start legal proceedings related to media. I guess Levco couldn’t find any easy videogame targets.

Heaven forbid that any of the media outlets that aired this story would take two minutes to wonder why Levco was doing this or anything… That’s some good reportering there…

2 Comments Showing 50 most recent
  1. Jennifer Musial

    There is certainly a soc/sci & humanities divide in my program. While we get along nicely, we do approach our research from different angles. In fact, there is a core group of us in the program that are trying to get a redesigned feminist method/ologies course going that would compliment both types of research. But I hear ya, sometimes social scientists aren’t so good at critical analysis of their “statitistics” or “surveys” 🙂

  2. Miguel Angel Riego

    Wow… stopkill.com.
    Since when do lawyers measure their worth in TV appearances? And sewing against videogame companies now seems like a fad… Aren’t there easier ways to get your child off of a monitor, like actually talking with them or introducing them to some other hobby? I’m not denying that some videogames might be too distasteful (as a very personal opinion), like Man Hunt, but hey, aren’t there worse kinds of media out there. War TV broadcasts anyone?