[MUD-Dev] Playground Games

[Ling Lo]

Violence, computer games, primary school children and a primary school
teacher's observations.  I have no comment on this, just thought it was
interesting.  Also a reply to the article follows.

Playground Games
  <URL:http://www.edge-online.com/news_main.asp?news_id=3459>

Playground Games Reply
  <URL:http://www.edge-online.com/news_main.asp?news_id=3468>

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Column: Playground Games 

Keith Rydal, a primary school headmaster, brings us a teacher's view
of the effect of videogame violence on his children - could the effect
be more marked than suspected?
 
Having taught for over 30 years, I dread to think of the number of
hours that I have spent in playgrounds or classrooms watching children
play.  Actually, most of it has been quite enjoyable, and it has been
interesting over the years to watch crazes sweep through the school. I
am never quite sure where the crazes originate, but once started they
have to run their course. I remember the time when rubbers appeared in
all shapes and sizes, the more colourful, the more valuable. The idea
was to throw them and hit other rubbers on the ground, rather like
marbles. Vast collections were built up and then, one day, it was all
over and the collections vanished.  Now it seems not at all cool to
even have a rubber in school why buy one when you can borrow it? 
Marbles themselves still appear on occasion and conkers always put in
an annual extravanganza. Hoops surprised me lately by making a strong
comeback for a month, but jacks have not returned for almost 3 years
now. Of course skipping is always there, and football still dominates
unless seriously regulated. Our school has just invested in some
diabolos and I am surprised at the excitement of 12-year-old boys
flinging the tops into the air and catching them on extended strings,
in a game that would no doubt be recognised by their great
grandparents.

Does this all sound very innocent? Does it reflect your childhood
games on the playgrounds of your primary schools? Perhaps so. But over
the last few years a trend has also made its regular appearance far
more than it ever used to. This is the arrival of invented, creative,
imaginative games between small groups or pairs of children. They play
extended games with intricate plots, assuming roles and maintaining
them with unwritten laws that outsiders cannot fathom. This also
sounds good, doesnt it? All the education experts would praise the
value of imaginative games and children acting out roles without being
trained. So would I if the games were not consistently and repeatedly
based on the violence witnessed by the children through the media and
through their computer games. It has taken me some time to be sure
that there is a link between these two activities, but the more I talk
with the children involved, and the more I read , hear and observe the
computer games that are being marketed for the youth of today, the
more concerned I become.

The fantasy world that exists in the computers to which most children
have access is wonderfully entertaining. Ultimate power over life and
death and be gained at the push of a button, severe injuries and pain
can be inflicted and borne without any feeling. Horrendous acts of
violence can be perpetrated with a dazzling armoury of weapons without
any criticism.  Wet playtimes in my school are always a giveaway on
this as children exchange stories of their latest successes on the
latest game to hit the screen. We have built up a large number of
computers in the school and our laptops are now linked to the filtered
Internet service through wireless technology. This means that at
lunchtime and playtime, when it is raining, the children can log on to
the Net or play a game that they have brought in to school on CD even
though this has now been banned! I was watching a crowd of older boys
around a PC the other day playing one of the games that had been
downloaded. Why was this game so enjoyable? What was so fascinating
and interesting about it? Well, its the violence, isnt it? Its really
good! What is so good about people hurting each other in this way?  I
dunno, its just violent, and thats good. Actual quotes from the group
I talked to. Similar conversations have been heard and held over the
last few months and it is an inescapable conclusion that the more
violent the games or fare seen through the media, the more young
people seem to enjoy it. I am not talking about teenagers here my
experience is with 8-12 year olds. However, I am sure that the same
holds good for the older age range, judging by the stories my
colleagues tell.

My son-in-law is an ardent computer game player, although to his
credit he prefers the sporting games when he can run up incredible
scores on ski-boarding or motocross (and of course never get hurt by
the accidents that continue to happen). When visiting one day I picked
up a copy of a magazine he had lying around dealing with
Playstation2. Here were the themes that were hitting the screens of
many young people at the moment. I read about:

  Blades a hack and slash action game that pits you against an evil
  religious sect;

  Red  a real time battle simulation set in World War 2; 

  Z.O.E.  this beat-em up game has manga written all over it;

  Oni you play a female cop in this martial arts action game;

  Dropship an exhilarating air-to-air and air-to-ground combat game.

  Headlines hit me hard: 

  Crime does pay;

  UBI Soft Move Into Counter Terrorism; 

  Timesplitters a good-old fashioned first-person blastathon with next
  generation quality.

The language of the articles interested me in that I presume this is
the language that my pupils will be absorbing daily:

Youve got to be a brave person to piss off a triad family either that
or just plain stupid! Remember take out the zombies with the bad
cowboy hats on first. When all else fails, let rip with the biggest,
most destructive weapon you can find! Toe to toe slugfest with laser
charged weapons the only test of a true man. The swordfights soon
erupt into a chaotic massacre, with villains and limbs flying to the
corners of the screen.

Looking round my playground again the week after reading the magazine,
I watched the imaginative groups more intently. Weapons appeared in
hands, arms and legs whirled, pain was inflicted and borne, insults
thrown, limbs flew across the ground well, figuratively speaking, that
is Here were the games that I had read about being carried out in real
life to all intents and purposes. It got me thinking, how big a step
is it from this playing to trying it out for real? After all, nobody
gets hurt do they? Life and death dont really exist and anyway, if you
get killed you can always have another life, cant you? So, when the
play starts degenerating, when the one who is killed refuses to accept
the rules, when the flying arms and legs actually make contact, when
the insults are taken as real and revenge is sought, how do we as
teachers explain our concerns and our opinions? We too are fighting a
losing battle against the brilliant minds and inventors that design
the games that entertain our pupils. Violence is growing steadily in
my playground, week on week, term by term, and with the diet that our
children feed on voraciously, it is not only their language that is in
danger, but their future moral values and their peaceful lives.

Hang on, Ive just spotted a group in the far corner of the playground,
huddled together, casting furtive glances over their shoulders and
pretending not to look guilty. Another sordid fantasy battle going on? 
How many dead this time? Ah theyre playing spin the bottle and whoever
it ends up pointing at has to kiss the spinner! Its years since that
appeared on the playground, and that wont work with a computer. Carry
on, children!

Keith Rydal is a Head Teacher in a North London Primary School. He has
been teaching for more than 30 years.
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---<cut>---
Column: Playground Games reply

Dr. Mark Griffiths of Nottingham Trent University responds to Keith
Rydal's 'Playground Games' column. Can science confirm observational
data?

As a psychologist, first-hand perspectives and anecdotes about
childhood behaviour are always of great interest to me. Mr Rydal's
article based on over 30 years of teaching raised a lot of concerns
about the impact of videogames on the behaviour of children, and
attempted to show observational links between the rise of the
videogame and the increased propensity for violence in the
playground. Over the past decade, I have never been afraid to voice my
concerns about the social and psychological impact of videogames, yet
I have always tried to assess their impact based on empirical (rather
than anecdotal) evidence. Over the past few years, there appear to
have been an increasing number of cases claiming that videogames have
been a contributory factor in violent criminal activity, the most
high-profile case being the Colorado school killings where two
teenagers murdered 12 other schoolchildren. Mr Rydal's accounts tap
into this line of speculation, and given the amount of news coverage
given to such cases the viewer would be left in little doubt that
videogames turn players into violent criminals but what evidence is
there that violent videogames actually stimulate violence and other
criminal behaviour?

I would hypothesise that playing violent videogames would have one of
two major effects based on a pair of theories: social learning theory
and catharsis theory. Social learning theory hypothesises that playing
aggressive videogames stimulates aggressive behaviour ie, children
will imitate or in other ways learn what they see on screen. In direct
contradiction to this, catharsis theory hypothesises that playing
aggressive videogames has a relaxing effect by channelling latent
aggression and therefore has a positive effect on a child's behaviour.
There have been many different kinds of study on the effects of
videogames, following one of three main methods, but few consistent
results:

Self-Report Methods: The presence of increased aggression has been
measured by self-report questionnaires in a number of studies. Many of
the results are contradictory, some showing that violent videogames
have a calming effect whereas others claiming violent videogames
increase aggression and/or hostility. The problem with all these
studies is that correlational evidence is unconvincing because
correlations may result from (i) backward causation (ie, aggressive
children may be drawn to playing violent videogames), or (ii)
mediating factors that may themselves be related both to videogame
playing and to aggressive behaviour (eg, low educational attainment,
low socio-economic status, etc).

Experimental Studies: There have been a number of experimental studies
looking at the relationship between aggression and videogame playing,
although a number of these studies use videogames as an experimental
paradigm to investigate other theoretical concerns. Only experimental
studies can hope to provide persuasive evidence regarding causality,
however the laboratory studies to date have tended to examine fantasy
aggression rather than real aggression. This is somewhat irrelevant,
and the increased aggression in the fantasy and roleplay measures, far
from confirming the hypothesis that games cause aggression, is
entirely consistent with the catharsis hypothesis ie, it might be
precisely the fantasy aggression that releases the energy that would
otherwise be expressed as aggressive behaviour.

Observational Studies: A number of studies have examined the
differences in children's behaviour after playing an aggressive
videogame by observing the children's free play. These studies, all of
which have been carried out on young children (4- to 8-years of age),
do seem to suggest that the playing of violent videogames has the
effect of increasing a child's aggressive behaviour in the short
term. It is possible that this particular methodology (ie, the
observational analysis of children's free play) may itself be
contributing to the effect. For instance, the novelty of the playroom
with new toys (including those associated with aggression) may have a
larger effect than the child's own setting. Alternatively, this may be
a genuine effect which mirrors research showing that young children
imitate what they see on television as a common way of reacting and
learning (behaviour which diminishes as they get older).

All the studies that have examined the effects of videogames on
aggression have only involved measures of possible short-term
aggressive consequences. The majority of the studies on very young
children as opposed to those in their teens upwards tend to show that
children do become more aggressive after either playing or watching a
violent videogame, but all these studies were based on the observation
of a child's free play after playing a violent videogame. Such
evidence suggests that at a theoretical level, there is more empirical
evidence supporting social learning theory than catharsis theory
particularly in younger children. However, there is much speculation
as to whether the procedures to measure aggression levels are
methodologically valid and reliable. There is also the very important
question of developmental effects ie, do videogames have the same
effect regardless of age?  Reviewing the research evidence, it could
well be the case that violent videogames have a more pronounced effect
in young children but less of an effect, if any, once they have
reached their teenage years. There is no evidence that violent
videogames have any effect in adult behaviour.  Another important
factor is that playing individually and with others may affect the
results the findings of some researchers suggest that competitiveness
may well increase aggression.

Mr Rydal might be surprised to hear that the literature suggests that
in the right context videogames can have positive health benefits to a
large range of different sub-groups (eg, reducing pain in children
undergoing chemotherapy) and can increase hand-eye co-ordination, help
raise self-esteem as well as, in some cases, be of educational
benefit. Taking all factors and variables into account and by
considering the prevalence of play, the evidence of serious adverse
effects is rare (although I would be the first to say that videogames
are potentially addictive). An overview of the available literature
appears to indicate that adverse effects are likely to affect only a
very small subgroup of players and that very frequent players are the
most at risk from developing problems.  Those that it does affect will
experience subtle, relatively minor, and temporary effects which
resolve spontaneously with decreased frequency of play. Research into
the effects of long-term exposure to videogames on subsequent
aggressive behaviour is noticeably lacking and at present remains
speculative. Some systematic observational longitudinal research
carried out by Mr Rydal has the potential to make a huge impact in
this area!

Dr. Mark Griffiths is head of the Psychology Division at Nottingham
Trent University.

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Enjoy.
--
  |   Ling Lo
_O_O_

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