Wirehead Studios

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/52042

Take that, Jack.

I exert so much energy yelling profanities at the screen that afterwards I don't have the ability to be aggressive.

Video games CAN make you violent, but only towards the TV/monitor/joypad/desk/etc.

*Ahem* NO MOTHER sporkING DUH!!!

Ok I realize that pretty much everything needs a study done if people are going to accept it as a reality but what's next? A study on how many people like AIR?

Video games are just like rollercoasters or swimming pools or bungee jumpage or chess in simply relieving tension by entertainment. Doesn't work equally well for everyone and every thing, but it's part of what keeps us happy little neighbours.

There might just be one flaw with the test that Pho links to: it may be that a more than average percentage of the test-selected players are actually addicted to their game (good chance of that, seeing that they're WoW players). Then it has little to do with gaming, and more with the pre-fix anxiety that any junkie would feel. Addicts are known to be particularly violent at times, but rarely after just having getting that long-awaited fix..

A new study (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air) has shown that nearly 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 1% argon, 0.04% carbon dioxide, 1% water vapor, and 0.002% of other gases is the ideal atmosphere for life on Earth.  While the author clearly agrees that any form of escapism relieves stress, he feels there is no definitive proof that the Earth's current atmosphere is breathable.

Violent games, eh? I'd rank WoW pretty low on that list. Yea, sure.. you kill monsters, and, at times, other players.. but still. There's no blood and players don't explode into a mess of gooey bits. I can think of a ton more games that are a lot more violent than WoW.

I'd also like to know what those players did for 2 hours, and on what type of servers. If they just created new characters and did n00b quests for 2 hours, then I don't think this was an effective test at all. Even if they went into those 'arenas' for PvP.

Now.. toss them on a PvP server and have them run around doing quests in 'unsafe' zones for a bit (Hillsbrad would be good). That can be quite frustrating at times. Would it lead to violent actions in the real world tho? I doubt it.. but still.

Or anything anywhere in the outlands...

Ah u mean like god damn i get camped in hillsbrad effect again? ;)
I still play WoW thought in a very much casual manner due to lack of time and i've lost my interesst in that game, besides imo blizzard destroyed wow by releasing the exp. Free epics for everybody!

I don't see why we need a scientific study to prove something as obvious as this. Unfortunately, nowaday's society requires more than just common sense to accept something as a fact. Nonetheless, I'm quite pleased to know that the "VGs are bad" trend is finally disappearing. Then again, WoW is a pretty bad choice for a study such as this, so the results aren't that satisfying. Hell, they could have used UT3. Now that would have been a serious test!

Since "common sense" has been shown to be wrong on many occasions, doing more research doesn't sound so bad to me. As long as it is good research, and not b0rked testing.

Lopson:  The point is, there's no consensus.  So many reports and studies are agenda and objective driven that the facts are always lost depending on who is reporting the news.  The reason I posted about this particular study was primarily to underscore the fact that such studies we've seen prior that attempt to link gaming and, say, Columbine or Virginia Tech, are indeed flawed, and that there is research out there that arrives at the opposite conclusion.

Consider these two points of view:

1)  A person's actions are governed by their environment, therefore the environment is always to blame.
2)  While outside factors may influence decision making, a person is ultimately responsible for their own actions.

Which one makes more sense to you?  I know Tabun will point out that there is always a grey area between the two and he is correct, but I'm being oversimplistic to illustrate a point.  Society has traditionally favored the second point of view.  If you commit a crime, you will be punished, therefore do not commit crime.  Fairly simple logic that.  Recent events and the rise of political correctness and the demise of the concept of personal responsibility (the Nanny State syndrome) has shifted thinking in many circles to the first point of view.  The only course of action you have if you accept that premise is to attempt to rationalize away bad behavior and find convenient scapegoats.  Let's blame guns, let's blame games, let's blame religion - let's blame anything except the one component of the equation capable of making decisions, which is of course the person who actually engages in the bad behavior.  Now why is that?  Perhaps they feel the average human incapable of decision making, I cannot say, but from what I've observed of politics and aristocracies in my time it's a fairly safe assumption that you and every other "peasant" are looked down upon in this fashion.

Mink: I rank WoW pretty damn low, full stop. :ninja:

Pho: Still, anything that pisses Jack Thompson off has got to be a good thing.

Tab: See, the only problem I have with scientific knowledge is that it rejects any other kind of knowledge besides itself. There's a lot of popular knowledge (and by popular, I'm referring to traditional medicine, you know, the kind of medicine that relies solely on leaves and other Natural items, and whatnot) that's really useful, but since most of that knowledge hasn't been scientifically approved, then it's simply ignored.

Pho: It's easier to blame something else than yourself.  Perhaps politicians and aristocrats think that way because they're used to get anything they want easily.

I certainly expect it of the aristocracy mindset.  What's troublesome is that the common man has adopted this philosophy because that's what people are being educated with now, and what's there to counter it?  Psychologists, politicians, news media, teachers, salesmen, science - all promote a self-centered ideology or at best attempt to excuse it.  Me, me, me, I want it now!  Isn't that how people act?  So what's left to counter this mindest, the church?  If you go looking for one that hasn't fallen by the wayside as well you'll walk to the ends of the earth trying.  It's drilled into people so much in this day that unless you're either ancient or gifted with a very rare sense of moral certainty there's no perspective because there's nothing to compare today's mentality to.

Unfortunately this is what happens when you take the worst aspects of capitalism and combine it with the worst aspects of socialism.  Consider what you would get if you combined the best aspects.  You'd have people who work hard, own what they earn, but are not afraid nor hesitant to help the less fortunate, and a government that stays out of the way for the most part but steps in and fixes problems when needed and ensures everyone continues to play fair.  Sounds nice and simple and benefits everyone, an ideal situation, right?  Instead you have a reality in which people don't work, expect everything handed to them on a silver platter and then complain when someone else actually makes a dollar on their own and decides to keep it instead of handing it over to them, combined with people who make billions of dollars and won't part with a penny to help those who actually do have nothing, topped off with a government that manipulates everyone and like a parasitic tick attached to its host, grows fatter and more bloated as it sucks the life out of the people it's supposed to serve.  As long as the population continues to grow more decadent and apathetic, save for the fringe groups who caterwaul and wail for their narrow, selfish interests, western society will continue to disintegrate.  Eventually it will be replaced with something else.  I suppose what it will be replaced with depends on whether an awakening comes, or if Rome will already be ablaze when people realize the barbarians are already inside the gates and have been for a long time.

I myself don't know what it will happen. The Western society is rotten to the core, and I fear for its future, since it will be my future.

Portugal is a great example of what you just described, Pho. Here, we have a Socialist goverment who follows the will of the strong and the mighty, who [the mighty] want nothing less than to make money and make others poor. The middle social class is an endangered species here, all thanks to this goverment. Instead of motivating the workers, they cut on their sallaries and ask them to work harder, "for the sake of our country"! The idiot who calls himself Prime-Minister is insulted everytime he appears in public, and yet all he can do is laugh at them right in their faces! What the Hell?! Then, they build these colossal, useless monuments, like libraries at the outskirts of a city (Seriously, why would you want to build a library in the outskirts of a city? Needless to say, noone goes there) or cultural centres in every single village (to keep their "artistic" friends occupied, that is to say to give them a place where they can steal funds to promote culture) just to entertain the crowd. And you know what? It works!!

Sporked-up place we live in, hey lads and gents?

That's about as Socialist as 1930's Germany. But then, who am I to talk? I live in the UK. Funny thing is, the Labour party were considered to be Socialist, once ...