Games Affecting the Mind Positively

There isn't a lot of information on games that can change the way someone thinks but the two most notable sources suggest that games are beginning to get that way.

source one is a study from Massachusetts General hospital that suggested violent games like Grand Theft Auto can help children manage stress and be more social especially boys whose social activities can centre around video games.

It later goes on to show that whilst the amount of 18+ video games is on the rise, youth crime is lowering. The study Cites ‘Grand Theft Auto IV’ as the most popular game amongst the boys and 2^nd most popular after ‘the Sims’ for girls.

The study shows that violent video games can in fact affect the players’ mental well being in a positive way. The same goes for Professor Rosenthal of the Duke University whose research has gone into helping those whose problems revolve around neural problems, such as addictions. Professor Rosenthal has used the basis of Pavlov’s bell within a game to aid drug users in overcoming their addictions. Wikipedia states Pavlov’s theory as follows, “...When a bell was rung in subsequent time with food being presented to the dog in consecutive sequences, the dog will initially salivate when the food is presented. The dog will later come to associate the ringing of the bell with the presentation of the food and salivate upon the ringing of the bell.” (Wikipedia, 2012) Methods of ‘conditioning’ followed from this theory and it is this method that Professor Rosenthal utilised in his game. The game works by placing the addict in a virtual environment where cravings are apparent, whenever the user turns down their cravings a pleasing tone is rung, then in the real world the addict can ring a free number on their mobile when cravings hit and the tone is played. Through conditioning the drug users feel more comfortable about not giving into their cravings. Professor Rosenthal results found that at least one person overcame their drug abuse with this method, the rehabilitated addict stating “The program has done wonders for me…Although I have fallen since I came out of the program, I am clean and have been clean for a good while.” (Abc News, 2007)

This in itself shows that video games can change the way people act in society help people on a mental level.

Abc News (2007) Virtual Reality Game Helps Drug Addicts Recover.

Available from: http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/OnCall/story?id=3819621&page=1#.T5vrI8RYslY  [Accessed 11th may 2012]

News Staff (2007) Violent Video Games Help Kids Manage Stress.

Available From: http://www.science20.com/news_articles/violent_video_games_help_kids_manage_stress-2511 [Accessed 11th may 2012]

Wikipedia (2012) Ivan Pavlov.

Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Pavlov  [Accessed 11th may 2012]

Morality in Games

Morality systems in games can be lacklustre at times, certain games give the player weight to their actions but some can be questionable, such as fable 2 which allowed the player to eat Tofu to build up his morality metre on the side of good enough to compensate for the act of murder.

Regardless of certain blunders in mechanics, both good and bad choices tend to have certain rewards for their paths. Evil play styles tend to have the game character give a more demonic appearance and utilising more extravagant moves, an example of this is the Sith in various Star Wars games, which have the player slowly transforming into a more evil looking appearance and using moves such as force lightning.

For morality to work and to have a lasting impact on the player, the choices have to be of the quality that make the player stop and really think about the coming decision and how it will affect the coming experience.

Rowan Kaiser wrote this in an article about game morality on Joystiq.com:

“In order for a moral choice to have weight, it needs to have two components. First, meaningful choices have to cause the player to lose something in order to gain power. Something has to change, or be expected to change, within the game in order for the decision to matter.” (Kaiser, 2012)

Many people will side with a darker route purely for the aesthetic look of their avatar. 

if video games can begin to give weight to the choices then players can have more involvement with the game, making a generally hard decision would entice the player more than hollow choices. It could also be used to affect society, by this i mean that challenging the way a player thinks could change the way that they treat people in real life. in the same way that films have messages and morales that have us siding with unlikely heroes or sympathising with villains, video games could have the player walk away at the end of the day seeing life slightly differently. Whether it changes the way they think about the environment, the economy or just their manners, Video games could begin to change the world.

This brings up a real world morality dilemma that if games get to this point, is it the duty of the developer to include a message that actively changes the world for the better and will developers be persecuted for the content, more so than they are now?

Kaiser, Rowan (2012) Dark Side ‘Cause It Looks Cool: The Failings of Moral Choice In Games.

Available from: http://www.joystiq.com/2012/02/10/dark-side-cause-it-looks-cool-the-failings-of-moral-choice-in/  [Accessed 11th may 2012]

The Positive Effects of Gaming

Not many news articles focus on the positive aspects video games can have on society.
It is my belief that Video Games can be used to help society by using powerful messages and mechanics that challenge the way we think and act within the world.

This has already begun to happen in various aspects, more so on the physical side of things.
An American games company named Blue Marble have dedicated their time to using Kinect to make games that help in the physical rehabilitation of paraplegics. Their focus group and testing showed that the players felt that playing the games gave them more control over their bodies and they felt confident that in time they would regain some physical ability as a result of the game. One of the participants also said that playing the game as a group encouraged competition, making the players push themselves further to better the other players.


Another example of this is the work of J W Burke and the University of Ulster and their study of how a video game can affect the rehabilitation of stroke victims. Their results show that at the very least the games encouraged the users to interact with their arms in ways that they would usually be discouraged from, they also allowed them to know their body’s limitations. This meant that the players could understand what they could and could not do in real life, empowering them in certain ways.


Clearly video games can have positive effects on society in a physical sense and with video games developing into more sophisticated areas this means that the physical rehabilitation side of gaming can only develop alongside it, helping various other ailments.  

Research Into Video Games Being Blamed For Real World Violence

I'm going to focus on one game and the controversies that surround it. The Grand Theft Auto series is nowhere short of media attention, the games content features mass amounts of violence and this makes it an easy target for the media and individuals to take advantage of.

Image from: http://gallery.moshax.com/data/media/44/gta_san_andreas_gameplay.jpg

In 2003 two teenage boys aged 14 and 16, were taken into custody for shooting at cars from there home with a rifle the family kept in their house. The pair pleaded guilty and explained that they were inspired by GTA 3, it should be noted that they were under the age of the games rating. (Calvert, 2003)

Similarly to this situation, six Teenage boys aged 12 to 15 were arrested for going on a small robbery spree, again proclaiming that Grand Theft Auto was the reason for this. (Cochran, 2008)

A final example of Grand Theft Auto being blamed for crime was in 2008 when the game was completely banned from Thai stores because it was considered the reason behind an 18-year-old man murdering a taxi driver (AFP, 2008). 

AFP (2008) Thailand Bans Grand Theft Auto After Taxi Driver Killing.

Available from: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5i_GdR3NRdfBh-ZIwSv_1vKBE3EUg

[Accessed 11th may 2012]

Calvert, Justin (2003) Families Sue Over GTAIII – Inspired Shooting.

Available from: http://uk.gamespot.com/news/families-sue-over-gtaiii-inspired-shooting-6077161 [Accessed 11th may 2012]

Cochrane, Lee (2008) Teen Say: Video Games Made Them Do It.

Available from: http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=5262689&page=1#.T5vyE8RYslY [Accessed 11th may 2012]

BA6

The aim of this project is to look at persuasive games and whether a game can change the world.
Within this bracket i will be exploring the extent to which games can change the way a person interacts with society. Whether this means in a physical sense or in social one.

On the physical side of things i will look at how games can aid in someones physical rehabilitation, if the condition is a genetic one or the result of an accident.

I will also look at the proposed negative effects video games can have on someones mental well being and how this can result in violent crimes. on the other side of this, i will look at the possibility of games affecting the way someone interacts with society in a positive way.