HA10 Task 2 - Effects Debate

                      vg by catadecatal

The video above is what I'll be using as a source for my evidence.


Many people have always accused games as being a bad influence and that they make their audience more violent and aggressive.

This all started when a game called Carmageddon was released in 1997. The game was a 3D video game, it involved having to run over pedestrians to obtain bonus points to gain more time for the race, because of fact that game was so graphic it was banned from several countries like Germany and for a short time, in the United Kingdom.
Because of this games have been given the reputation that they make their audiences violent and aggressive like for example for people who play more violent games are apparently more likely to read a certain situation as and a threat and may react to this 'threat' violently as opposed to how a person who don't really play games would react to the given situation.

Although having their given reputation the production of have not stopped since. This is because there is not enough evidence to prove that games actually make their players become more violent and aggressive. Although some people might have behaviors triggered by the game it is mostly positive effects rather than negative effects. It is a given that some games are much more violent and graphic than other games but it is also up to the players to realize what is real and what is not that is coming from the game.

In the video above starting from 5.30 a professor named Craig Anderson from the IOWA State University decided to conduct and experiment on whether playing one kind of game or another for a brief period of time would have any effect on an individuals emotions as games started to develop more violent and aggressive scenes. Along with professor Craig Anderson he had some help from another professor from Ohio State University named Brad Bushman. Brad Bushman said that video games were from other kind of violent media because in games you can't really take your eyes off the screen because the player is directly tied to that particular violent character, Like in a first-person shooter game the player has the exact same visual perspective as the killer and the players are also rewarded for behaving in such an aggressive and violent way.

Because of this level of immersion researchers wanted to find whether it had any effect on the people playing it in the real world and if it would lead to any kind of acts of aggression. So to begin with they make their subjects play either a violent or non-violent games and straight after measure their levels of aggression using specially devised laboratory tests. The way they conducted the test was that the person would sit in front of a monitor with  mouse and then when a red block appears on the screen they are required to click it as fast as they can using their mouse.
but as they play with other people and whoever clicks the mouse the fastest wins and nothing happens to the winner but for the looser they get an obnoxious sound blasted through their headphones but the winner gets to decide the severity of this punishment. The severity of the punishment that the winner chooses is the measurement of their aggression. Apart from this type of punishment others have also used different types of methods like electric shock, eating hot sauce,

and having their hand dunked in ice water but the methods didn't really matter as violent video games increased levels of aggression between 4% to 9% either way. And what they're saying is that if someone played a violent game that would unlikely say unkind things will now have a higher possibility of acting aggressively but this does not necessarily mean that violent video games made their players more violent and aggressive.

Both professor Craig Anderson and Brad Bushman wanted to take the test a step further and see whether it made people react differently to real world violence. They measured each individuals heart rate and skin conductance which are measurements used as markers fear, stress and excitement. Half of the participants out the 30 played violent video games while the other half played a simple ball game. They were then shown violent real life events and what they were hoping to get as a result is that whether the participants who played the violent video game would be less disturbed by the violent clips they showed them.
The results showed that for the participants that played the non-violent game their stress levels rose by an average of 80% while the other half of the participants that played the violent video game had only rose by 12%. Professor Craig Anderson and professor Brad Bushman published their findings which then later seemed like it was proof of the negative effects of video games, their findings uncovered two different effects on the players by playing violent video games, first was the increase of aggressive thinking and the second was desensitization, meaning that they were much more accepting of real-world violence. This doesn't matter whether the player is a child, and adult or a teenager.
         
With League of Legends it's just like any other MOBAs out there where the objective is for the players to defeat the opposing team by killing them and gaining gold to buy items to make your character stronger and stronger.