Violent video games linked to verbal aggression and hostility but not physical aggression::Violent video games are linked to higher levels of verbal aggression and hostility but not physical aggression, with narcissistic traits also correlating with aggressive behaviors, according to a study published in Frontiers in Psychology. The research emphasizes that personality traits and game choice independently contribute to aggressive tendencies, but neither is proven as a causal factor. …
Replace “violent video” with “competitive” and you’ll find the same result.
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Pretty much every sports game does not involve violence and people still rage like there’s no tomorrow. I’m pretty sure people will throw slurs at you over a game of yahtzee or something, as long as it’s online and there’s a ladder/ranks
Would rocket league count as having violence?
Sports aren’t “violent”, so why would rocket league be? Demolitions would be a tackle in football or a check in hockey.
That’s part of this whole debate that I’d love to see much more focus on. Why are so many video games built around violence? Like, violence in video games may not be bad, but what makes it so popular?
Obviously, there’s some folks who love blood splatter effects and some (horror) games cater to that. But then you’ve got RPGs where people report having their immersion broken from how much genocide their hero has to commit. Or even child-friendly/cutesy games sometimes struggling to make it make sense (Pokémon don’t die, they just faint, and they totally want to fight, yep).
It just feels like the demand for violence is significantly lower than the supply and I’ve never seen comprehensive research into why that is.
Its the simplest expression of “make value equal 0 for win condition”.
You can make a program that displays 1 x 0 = 0 whenever you hit the mouse button. In theory, that is as much as a game as Street Fighter or Fortnite.
I think we have some inherent limitations when creating win conditions for games, as animals we have an inherent propensity for violence. Not that we are violent as a group, but that we have such instincts as a result of or evolution. Breaking out of that box requires a much higher degree of creative effort than “kill the bad guy”, and it may struggle as a product even still thanks to the way our brains are wired.
That’s part of this whole debate that I’d love to see much more focus on. Why are so many video games built around violence? Like, violence in video games may not be bad, but what makes it so popular?
It’s interesting that almost every single game involves violence and death in some way.
I suspect that it’s just a universally understood concept that every living creature gets.
Death bad, alive good.
Violence is just part of our predator DNA.
I don’t have time to confirm it right now but I think this has the video where I first heard this brought up: https://youtu.be/cYnylXvk65s?si=Y5qQmMC09nb4YvAq
Yeah, I’ve also seen it argued on a much smaller scale, that fun in video games is often done on a risk-reward basis. You bring yourself in danger to get a reward. And well, there’s other ways than violence to portray that, like spikes in a jump’n’run or a stupid wall in a racing game. There’s also other ways to induce fun, like puzzle mechanics. But yeah, ultimately you’re left with a small fraction of genres that really work or have been explored…
Part of it is the very mechanics of gaming, they’re all built on a core of goals, rules, challenge, and interaction. When telling a story, the four basic forms of conflict are man against man, man against nature, man against self, and man against society. Violence is an easy vehicle for three of those conflicts, and especially lends itself to active gameplay loops. Mind you, I’m referring to violence as acting to cause injury, because there are a lot of games that are built around fighting with zero gore or death.
The other thing is that violence is just very popular. If you stop to really consider it, how much entertainment is free of violence? How many shows and movies are completely nonviolent? How many books don’t have a single fight? There are genres that typically avoid violence, but even then you’ll still find members of the genre that contain physical conflict. Plenty of romance and dramas that are steeped in fighting and death.
At any rate, not that my perspective’s any more valuable than anyone else’s but I really haven’t seen a demand for violence that’s lower that the supply.
I said to replace “violent video” not just violent. Any competitive game leads to increased verbal aggression and hostility. Just look at people who play sports, same type of behavior. It’s not exclusive to video games.
maybe the point is more that many violent video games aren’t competitive.
Is it the violence or is it the extreme competitiveness and pre existing toxicity that links verbal aggression. You can find people throwing slurs and insults at others in competitive roblox or minecraft game modes.
Put anyone under pressure or in a stressful situation and it’s a potential, it’s just the nature of the hobby. It can happen in any hobby with certain conditions. It’s human nature basically.
How is it human nature when not every human acts like this?
I’m not one privy to throwing out slurs or being verbally abusive in stressful situations. And neither are most of my friends.
It’s human nature to eat, some people fast. It’s never black/white like you’re thinking.
Shades here again, even calling your best friend a bastard out of friendship would be viewed as verbally abusive to outsiders. And if you think you or your friends have never done that…. You’re only lying to yourself or aren’t looking at it as abuse, but it really is.
I think you and I have a very different definition of verbally abusive
So you admit to insulting your friends during competitions? Why would it being with your friends change anything…?
…this isn’t even a good argument to use against me, because I, quite literally, never say mean things to or about my friends because of pressure or competitions or whatever. Hell, I don’t think I ever even talked mean about someone behind their back, even if they may deserve it for doing something bad. I probably am more deliberate and gentle with my words than I ought to sometimes.
And my point was responding to your hypothetical, calling your friend mean things as a joke and the other person understands that doesn’t count as abuse… because it’s not meant to be taken seriously. And was not meant seriously in the moment either. You literally said “…out of friendship”.
…not something I ever do, either. Seriously. I don’t even get how being verbally abusive is human nature.
That’s great that you think that, you think the study cares?
It’s also not mean, it’s in jest, but that’s not the point of this study. It’s the words used.
Go read the paper and tell us if they looked into that.
They must’ve sampled League of Legends players for this study. It’s not called League of Cancer and League of Salt for nothing you know…
Also what’s left of overwatch players, it’s just an abusive relationship at this point.
It’s “Overwatch 2: Aggressively Exploitative Monetization” now.
There are dozens of us! Dozens!
Seriously though, OW was my favorite fps in a long time, and I dislike what Blizzard has done for it
The really annoying part of this is the author says:
“The crucial finding is that the number of violent video games you’re exposed to has an influence on your verbal aggression and hostility,”
Only to go on and say:
“It’s very important to stress that our findings are not causal,”
More than that, the study doesn’t even measure their “exposure” to violent games, it requests their three favorite games and then checks their PEGI rating.
Whew. Okay, so reading the actual research article here, and, this article is kind of trash. First off, the study group was recruited from ads posted on Reddit and Discord, notably from r/samplesize, r/narcissism and r/truegaming and Cluster B Circus, r/NPD Official and NPD Recovery 2.0 respectively. One is a place for polls, one is a gaming subreddit, and the rest are all communities for people with narcissism. So they’re skewing their sample population explicitly towards how people with narcissism that play violent games respond. Which, I think was the original intent of the study, and they bolted on the additional conclusions for a spicier publication, since the only way these numbers are meaningful is with a control group of people with NPD (narcissistic personality disorder) that do not play violent games, and even then, it only provides a correlation between people with NPD who play violent video games and increased verbal aggression (one of which was arguing if people disagree with you).
I’m beginning to feel regret for putting way too much effort into a comment, because this is a long ass article, but further in, the study states that respondents had “healthy” levels of narcissism, which goes unremarked despite their primary sample sourcing being targeted at narcissism instead of a population of gamers. I’m calling it a wrap here, but essentially this is a remarkably unreliable study to write that headline off of.
Playing competitive games is also apparently linked to fucking my mom.
Dad isn’t complaining, so I’m happy for her, get you some!
I mean… I swore a whole lot more playing real sports than I do playing esports.
at the end of the day it has nothing to do with video games. its competition, remember in the late 80s people would fight each other if they lost a game of cards or game of marbles.
I mean they should do the same study on soccer fans. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had similar results.
It’s almost like competition addiction is an issue that has never really been studied let alone recognized while it’s glaring everyone in the face since the first game was invented. But sure. Let’s have another reality tv competition show /gym shredding routine/football game and query where this random aggression comes from like it only exists when video games are in play .
Fuck you!!!
Edit: geez, people. Check out the article. Now my comment. It was a joke. Smh
Somebody never played on a Wii.
They even called half of the controller a nunchuck, which is exactly how they would be used after a heated session of Smash.
Let’s see how long it takes for this one to get discredited too.
