Running Head: Computer Games

Computer Games - 1

Running Head: Computer Games

Effects of Computer/Video Games, and Beyond

Kwan Min Lee*

AnnenbergSchool for Communication

University of Southern California

Los Angeles, CA90089-0281

1-213-740-3935

Wei Peng

Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies, and Media

MichiganStateUniversity

East Lansing, MI48824

NamkeePark

Gaylord College of Journalism and MassCommunication
University of Oklahoma
395 W. Lindsey St., Room 3015
Norman, OK 73019

* Corresponding Author

In 1958, William A. Higinbotham, an engineer at the Brookhaven National Laboratory,created the world’s first computer game,a rudimentary two-player tennis game,to entertain visitors to his lab(Poole, 2000, p. 15). Since then,the computer/videogame (from now on computer game) industryhas become one of the most aggressively growing business sectors in the United States and in the world. In 2001, U.S.sales of computer games and related hardware increased 43 percent to $9.4 billion, surpassing movie box-office revenue of $8.3 billion in the same year (Takahasi, 2002). Global sales in the game industry were over $25 billion as early as 2002 and are expected to exceed $46 billion by 2009 (PriceWaterhouseCoopers, 2006). In the United States, it is estimated that 67 percent of American heads of households play computer games (Entertainment Software Association [ESA], 2007). Already in 2000, game playing was regarded as the most entertaining media activity, relegating television watching to the second place (Interactive Digital Software Association [IDSA], 2000). Obviously, games are emerging as one of the most dominant forms of entertainment. This trend will go further, thanks to the increasing penetration of high speech Internet connection and the declining prices of computers, video-game consoles, and mobile entertainment devices.

The growing popularity of computer games and some tragic incidents such as the ColumbineHigh School massacre have sparked various academic studies on social and psychological effects of playing computer games. In the current chapter, we try to provide an extensive review of the computer game literature with a special focus on studies published during the last decade. The current review will cover a wide range of research traditions (from effect studies to uses and gratifications studies) and game genres (from entertainment to serious games). More specifically, we will provide a comprehensive review of the following four research traditions in the game literature—negative effects of violent games; game addiction; positive effects of serious games; uses and gratifications of computer games in general. After the review, we will bring forward some unanswered questions in the current literature and lay out some agendafor future research.

Negative Effects of Violent Games

As a logical extension of the previousresearch in media violence, the study of negative effects of violence in computer games has been remarkably accumulated in the last two decades. The debate with respect to the effects of violent games on game users’ aggression, however, has been hardly resolved. One stream of research argues that violent games cause or at least correlate with game users’ aggression, especially for kids and adolescents, whereas the other line of research insists no significant association between violent games and aggression. This section reviews the two opposing views on the relationship between playing violent games and aggression.

Significant Effects of Computer Game Violence on Aggression

Among various theoretical efforts to explain the ways in which violent computer games affect people’s aggression, the General Aggression Model (GAM: Anderson & Bushman, 2002) is to date the most comprehensive theoretical framework. Integrating several earlier models of human aggression such as social learning theory and social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1973), cognitive neoassociationist model (Berkowitz, 1984), social information processing model (Dodge & Crick, 1990), affective aggression model (Geen, 1990), script theory (Huesmann, 1986), and excitation transfer model (Zillmann, 1983), the GAM claims that aggression is principally geared by the activation and application of aggression-related knowledge structures stored in memory (e.g., scripts or schemas). According to this model, in the case of short term effects, playing a violent game primes aggressive conditions such as aggressive scripts and perceptual schemata, which in turn increase arousal and create an aggressive affective state (Bushman & Anderson, 2002). In the case of long term effects, the model explains that hostile knowledge structures can be developed by repeated exposure to violent games, which ultimately create an aggressive personality (Bushman & Anderson, 2002; see Anderson, Gentile, and Buckley [2007]Chapter 3, for a fuller explanation of the model).

Employing the GAM, a vast amount of research has examined violent games’ effects on aggression. The research has mainly focused on the negative effects of violent games on aggressive affects, behaviors, thoughts, physical arousal, and pro-social activities. Based on three experiments, one correlational study, and one meta-analysis, Anderson et al. (2004) found that playing violent computer games led to increases in aggressive behavior, aggressive affect, aggressive cognition, physiological arousal, and decreases in pro-social behavior. Similar findings abound. Carnagey and Anderson (2005) discovered that rewarding violent behaviors in computer games increased hostile emotion, aggressive thinking, and aggressive behaviors. In a similar fashion, Gentile, Lynch, Linder, and Walsh (2004) investigated and supported the significant effects of violent games on adolescents’ hostility, aggressive behavior, and school performance. Anderson and Murphy (2003) especially examined the impacts of exposure to violent computer games on young women, and found that even brief exposure to a violent game increased aggressive behavior. In addition, they suggested that the effects of violent games on aggression might be greater when game characters played by game users are of the same gender. Bartholow and Anderson (2002) investigated sex differences in the effects of violent games on aggressive behavior and found greater effects for men than for women. A similar result was found in a German context. Krahé and Möller (2004) uncovered that there were significant gender differences in usage and attraction to violent games, which ultimately influenced the acceptance of norms condoning physical aggression.

Some studies have focused on the desensitization effect of violent games. Desensitization, which refers to the attenuation or elimination of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses to a stimulus (Rule & Ferguson, 1986), is a strong mechanism that helps reduce psychological and/or physiological reactivity to real violence. In an experiment that measured heart rate (HR) and galvanic skin response (GSR), Carnagey, Anderson, and Bushman (2007) found that participants who played a violent game had lower HR and GSR while viewing filmed real violence compared to participants who played a non-violent game, indicating a physiological desensitization to violence. Funk, Baldacci, Pasold, and Baumgardner (2004) claimed with a more moderate tone that exposure to computer game violence was associated with lower empathy and stronger pro-violence attitudes, yet they could not identify strong relationships between exposure to real-life violence and measures of desensitization. Deselms and Altman (2003) found the desensitization effect only for men with a sample of college students.

There have been a series of attempts to synthesize the existing literature, although they discovered somewhat contrasting findings (e.g., Anderson & Bushman, 2001; Griffiths, 2000; Sherry, 2001). Anderson (2004) updated the effects of playing violent computer games with a meta-analysis based on 46 studies, and argued that more studies of violent games corroborate significant, though not large, effects of computer game violence on aggression. According to the study, the effect sizes of exposure to violent games on aggressive behavior, cognition, affect, pro-social behavior, and physical arousal were, both in experimental and correlational studies, about 0.20 in absolute value, confirming his and others’ previous studies.

The Opposing View

The claim of the significant effects of violent games on aggression does not come without criticisms. These criticisms are mainly centered on methodological issues. Some studies (e.g., Freedman, 2002; Olson, 2004) listed the following as the main problems of the existing studies on computer game violence. First, the definitions of aggression are not clear-cut. For instance, in the worst case, the terms, “aggression” and “violence” are used interchangeably, making it almost impossible to distinguish independent and dependent variables from each other. Second, there are few standardized, reliable, and valid measures of aggression and exposure to violent games. Many studies that examined the negative effect of violent games have been conducted in isolation. In other words, studies employed either different types of games or different amount of game exposure time for experiments. Moreover, in many experimental studies participants played the game in a single-player mode in isolation contrary to reality in which users routinely play games with their friends or other associates (Olson, 2004). As a consequence of the lack of appropriate measures and realistic study settings, a general synthesis of existing studies is hard to achieve. Third, the causal relationship between violent games and aggression in real life is not as straightforward as experimental conditions. It means that 1) it is not easy to take into account all possible mediating variables such as gender, age, personality, and so forth, and 2) a relationship of the opposite direction—aggressive people seek out violent computer games, or a two-way relationship—reinforcing or reciprocal, is also plausible. Fourth, many studies have been conducted with small, non-random, or non-representative samples. Accordingly, the statistical effect size from these studies is relatively too small for physical aggression, and moderate at best for aggressive thinking (Office of the Surgeon General, 2001). Finally, as Anderson (2004) lamented, there is still a paucity of longitudinal studies which couldconfirm the effect of violent games on a long-term basis. Given that the study of computer games is relatively an emerging field compared to the established research tradition of TV violence, deficiency of serious longitudinal studies is understandable. Yet, without longitudinal studies, it is hard to not only prove the effect of violent games but also triangulate the existing findings (Williams & Skoric, 2005). In addition to these methodological problems, some argue that, regardless of increase in the number and availability of violent computer games, violence crime has been decreasing in reality (Olson, 2004) and thus the claim that violent games cause aggression is simply misleading.

Not surprisingly, the above arguments are strongly backed up by the game industry such as Entertainment Software Association (ESA) although these claims are derived originally from academics. Recently, some empirical studies support these claims on the null effect of violent games on aggression. For example, Williams and Skoric (2005) conducted a one-month longitudinal study of a violent “massively multi-player online role-playing game” (MMORPG), and found no strong effect associated with aggression caused by the game. Baldaro et al. (2004) evaluated the short-term effect of playing a violent computer game on physiological and psychological indicators with a sample of 22 male participants. They discovered that participants who played a violent computer game exhibited higher anxiety and increased systolic blood pressure yet no greater hostility compared to participants who played a non-violent computer game. In addition, a study conducted by Huesmann and Taylor (2006) failed to document a meaningful long-term effect, even though they were able to demonstrate short-term increases in aggression.

Possible Reconciliation

Recognizing the conflicting views on the effects of violent computer games, one study suggests an integrated model with respect to the direction of the relationship between violent games and aggression. Slater, Henry, Swaim, and Anderson (2003) claimed that game users’ aggressive tendencies may lead the users to seek out violent games and exposure to violent games and in turn may reinforce and exacerbate such aggressive tendencies. This so-called “downward spiral model” thus emphasizes a reciprocal relationship between violent games and game users’ aggressive tendencies, at the same time focusing on the cumulative characteristic of the association between the two variables. Given that the downward spiral model is based on the assumption that aggressive users seek out violent games in order to satisfy their felt needs, it is theoretically rooted in the uses and gratifications approach (Palmgreen, 1984) and selective exposure theory (Zillmann & Bryant, 1985). Again, however, for the model to be proven as an alternative (or complementary) explanation to the existing literature, more studies are needed.

Game Addiction

Another important negative effect of computer games that has been increasingly discussed in recent years is game addiction. It has been claimed that game addiction may lead to not only social problems such as social isolation or escape from real life but also heath problems including seizures or even death. The issue has been fiercely discussed to the extent whether or not the American Medical Association (AMA) has to classify game addiction as a key mental illness. In fact, some medical problems or physical disorders due to game overuse have been reported, including epileptic seizures (e.g., Funatsuka, Fujita, Shirakawa, Oguni, & Osawa, 2001), musculoskeletal disorders, or increased metabolic rate (e.g., Brady & Matthews, 2006). In South Korea, where hundreds of private hospitals and psychiatric clinics are helping game addicts with special treatments, it was also reported that 10 people died in 2005 from game addiction-related causes such as disruptive blood circulation (Faiola, 2006). Moreover, the number of game addicts is far from being negligible. In a commercial survey conducted with 1,178 U.S. children and teenagers (ages 8 to 18) in January 2007 by Harris Interactive, it was reported that 8.5% of game users could be classified as addicts (Harris Interactive, 2007). As a response to the increasing trend of game addiction, the AMA,at an annual committee meeting in June 2007, determinedthat its psychiatric group would examine the issue over the next five years and decide the inclusion of game addiction as an illness. If game addiction is added as a mental illness, it is possible for game addicts to have medications or treatments for healing excessive gaming. Of course, some opposed the AMA’s consideration of the inclusion, arguing that game addiction or overuse is simply an individual (bad) habit, rather than a medical problem (Los Angeles Times, 2007). Nevertheless, the fact that game addiction is publicly discussed as a possible medical problem demonstrates that it brings a number of detrimental outcomes whether they are individual or societal problems.

In parallel with the increased interest in game addiction, there have been a few attempts to explain why people are addicted to games. Based on a survey with 1,993 Korean game users, Choi and Kim (2004) suggested a theoretical model for game addiction by integrating the concepts of customer loyalty, flow, personal interaction, and social interaction. According to the model, people are likely to continue to play games when they have optimal experiences while playing games. Optimal experiences, according to the model, can be achieved by effective interaction with the game system and/or pleasant social interaction with other users. Similarly, Wan and Chiou (2006) applied the flow theory and the humanistic needs model as a way to explain psychological motives of game addiction. The results of their study, however, indicated that the flow state was not a key psychological mechanism of game users’ addiction. Also, the study discovered that game addicts’ compulsive game use was not derived from the pursuit of satisfaction of their need-gratification but from the relief of dissatisfaction.

Game addiction or overuse is particularly associated with MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) since such games are highly social and provide interactive real time applications (AMA, 2007) similar to the factors associated with Internet addiction (Olson, 2004). For instance, MMORPG users spend many more hours devoted to the games compared to other users who play other types of games, and find the aspects of the game world more pleasant and satisfying than those of the real world (Ng & Wiemer-Hastings, 2005). The problem of the heavy use of MMORPGs would be that such users are likely to be socially marginalized while experiencing high levels of emotional loneliness and maladaptations to real life social interactions (AMA, 2007). In addition to the increasing use of MMORPGs, the recent launch of Nintendo’s Wii and enhanced competition among game console companies are also likely to fuel the addictive nature of games as a way to lock-in users to their console.

Meanwhile, a recent study based on a survey of 7,069 game users (Grüsser, Thalemann, Griffiths, 2007) investigated the relationship between game addiction and aggression. It found that excessive gaming explained only 1.8% variance of aggression. In addition, with respect to gender difference, Griffiths and Hunt (1998) in a survey with 387 adolescents (12-16 years old) found that males were more likely to be classified as game addicts than females. They also discovered that the earlier children began playing games, the more likely they became addicts.

To sum up, the study of game addiction is still in an early stage despite the heated discussion about its effects on game users’ abnormal behaviors and social disorders. As the AMA (2007) properly pointed out, more research is needed to verify game addiction as a mental illness.

Positive Effects of Serious Games

Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) games are designed to entertain. However, the features of games that afford entertainment can also be utilized for other purposes, such as education. Educational theories inform us that teaching is more effective if students are intrinsically motivated in the learning process, receive continuous feedback, and apply new ideas in a variety of relevant context. This is exactly what game features can offer. Game playing is usually fun and challenging, which motivates students to actively participate. Games also provide a simulated environment where students can apply what they have just learned in different contexts. Therefore, games have great potential to be an effective educational tool. In fact, games with purposes beyond entertainment are called “serious games,” including but not limited to games for learning, games for health, and games for policy and social change. Serious games are designed intentionally to achieve these positive effects. In this section, we review the effects of serious games that are used to teach knowledge, attitude, and behavior. Some COTS games are originally designed to entertain, but some unintended positive effects are also found associated with these games. In addition, some COTS games are reapplied by educators for purposes other than entertainment. We will also discuss the positive effects of these COTS games.