Goldstein’s article on Violent Videogames

In Goldstein’s article, Goldstein argues that discussions of videogames have been clouded by ambiguous definitions, poorly designed research and confusion of correlation with causality. The following points were what I found interesting/stood out from the article:

-      "The context of violent stories vary along dimensions of realism, involvement, excitement and how violence/conflict begin and end, whether they are presented in an erotic or a humorous context."

-       Variations of violence are seldom studied, lowering the suitable results which can be used for critical analysis.

-       “Meanings of Violence in Video Games” introduces a couple interesting ideas. First Goldstein talks about the Third-Person Effects in Media Research, which is the idea that media affects others, but not oneself. Additionally in this section he proposes the idea that the exaggerated use of violence in video games, film and other media is a product of the American society. I.e. in one the studies it showed non-Americans watched sessions of American television and after surveys it has been shown that they perceived the world as a scarier and meaner world. (…Maybe that’s why we’ve seen an increasing amount of drama shows about war/alien take over - i.e. the cheesy Falling Skies (2011) - to install a sense of patrioticism to those watching the show!)

-       Studying the effects of violent video games usually comprise of 3 research approaches: “correlational studies, experiments, and meta –analysis.”

-       First he goes into correlational studies and addresses right away that there is little causal information that can be pulled from these studies. Any study he mentioned, Goldstein would reinforce the view that “no significant relationship could be concluded”.

-       The more detailed and informative section is when Goldstein talks about the experiments. In one of those studies, a study conducted by Craig Anderson and Karen Dill where they tried to find two video games – Wolfenstein 3D and Myst - similar in everything but violence. Even though the experiment found some interesting things, it was criticized by Goldstein because the games, which were supposed to be similar other than violence, were not.

-       He also takes us through multiple experiments and for each of them presents their failing. Even in the meta-analysis, which is when you take the data from many studies and try to find conclusion with all of the data clumped together.

-       At the end of the article Goldstein concluded that, “the research is too inconsistent and insubstantial to allow any conclusion to be drawn.”

Overall the article is an overload of information and/on experiments about video games and violence, but it makes no conclusions. Goldstein has placed each of these studies in scrutiny of their weaknesses and strengths and according to him it has become clear that we really don't have the one solid piece of evidence that links violent games and violent behavior.