Gaming can make a better world (Ted talk)

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Pretty interesting talk I just watched on Ted, thought you guys might enjoy it.


"Games like World of Warcraft give players the means to save worlds, and incentive to learn the habits of heroes. What if we could harness this gamer power to solve real-world problems? Jane McGonigal says we can, and explains how."

http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal ... world.html

Nice video - I like to use games when I learn new programming languages. Helps spice things up. Definitely games can be used with kids (and adults) in a positive way. It just have to be done right.

Games can definitely be positive and educational. There's also much potential for evil. WoW being given as an example of a beneficial game seems highly suspicious to me.

All things around have the potential for harm or otherwise. A kid playing WoW depends on how he/she was raised: Good kids tend to take others into account and "play well" with others, brats, however, tend to make a mess of things. Using games for day to day skills would be best, but everything else is still the parents' responsibility (and a lot of parents tend to use games as a way to keep their kids occupied so they wont have to deal with them . . . ).

I don´t buy it. I´ve seen research where psychologists performed experiments that showed that after playing violent video games kids donated less money to a donation box than kids that played non-violent video games. Also a text on the site of the American Psychological Association says that violent video games decrease pro-social behaviour.

Considering theyre playing games rather than playing outside, thats a big duh (not an attack on you just to be clear). A bit of advice i learned in math classes . . . never listen to statistics like that. The population they tested was likely too small, or too biased, to give a proper explanation of things. They used this same methodology to do away with a lot of "violent material" back in the mid-90s (which is why a lot of crappy cartoon shows exist right now). They do an experiment with 1000 randomly chosen kids per state and i may take it seriously (but they'll have to be methodical, accurate, and unbiased in their testing).

There is this article by Craig A. Anderson (PhD in psychology from Stanford University ) ( http://medi506.pbworks.com/f/sdarticle-4.pdf ) called "An Update on the Effects of Playing Violent Video Games". The author uses meta-analytic statistical techniques to appraise the effects of playing violent video games on 5 behavioral variables. In his meta-analysis he combines 32 independent samples involving 5,240 research participants. He found that reduced pro-social behaviour among the other 4 variables were statistically significant. (Bear in mind that 86% of the video games are violent).

Past researchers found the link between media violence (movies, TV) and increased agression (in laboratory experiments, field experiments, cross-sectional correlation studies, and longitudinal studies). Although there are no large scale studies on video games (due to little government funding) I don´t know why the results would be any different . We will have to wait and see.

Regardless of whether or not the statistics you stated are correct, the fact remains that video games, like movies, are rated based on the appropriate age range to play the game. If violent video games instill aggression in minors, then rather than blame it on the games, blame it on the parents who allow their children to play games with a higher age rating than is proper. Every game case in America has an MSRB tag in plain view, and stores are forbidden by law to allow minors to purchase an M-rated or higher game. It's true that some T-rated games (next step down on the scale) can have a fair bit of violence, but once again its the parent's responsibility to ensure that their children know the difference between a videogame and reality.

On a similar note, I play first-person shooters all the time (although I tend to stick to war-related shooters like Battlefield and Halo because at least with these games there is a valid reason behind the violence), but I'm still fully aware of the consequences if I decide to go Master Chief on some random person on the street, for two reasons. One, I am mature enough mind-wise to understand that games and reality are different. Two, games do not take up my entire day; I spend more time outside, with friends, or studying then I do gaming. IMHO, anyone who does not meet these criteria should not be gaming.

If violent games make kids more violent, then we shouldn't let the kids play them... but that doesn't mean we should deny mature ADULTS the chance to blow off steam by blowing up aliens on a computer screen. The rating system was created for just that reason, and it should be the parent's responsibility, not the game company's, to control what children are exposed to nowadays.