Almost everyone in their childhood or adolescence has played a video game. Whether or not it was against a sibling or family member or you were just playing by yourself. It’s been 30+ years since the first video game was ever created. Since then, the gaming industry has grown a great deal. There are many different types of games such as Educational game, Sports game, First Person Shooters game (FRS), Combat game, Adventure game etc. because there are so many different genres of games, I want to find out how does the different types of games that a person plays affect them in real life. Video games have always seemed to be just something people who play them do for fun. But what if someone who plays video games starts to neglect their responsibilities to play the video game that has all their attention. In a study by Hart GM, et al about the effects of video games on male adolescents it “found that excessive use of video games resembles a dependence syndrome.” the study also showed that the adolescents who scored high on the Problem Video Game Playing (PVP) survey were least likely to participate in after school activities such as different sports, different clubs, or the school band compared to the adolescents who scored low on the PVP. In everything else that was tested no matter if the adolescent scored high or low on the PVP that there were not any major differences.
For example, the grades of an adolescent who scored low on the PVP could match with an adolescent who scored high on PVP. I personally would play video games a lot. I do not think that it affects everything in my life especially not schoolwork. But video games are very addictive and when I’m out doing things like homework or watching a football game in the back of my head, I would be wanting to play my game because it is fun to play. But because I have priorities and know how to manage my time wisely, I make sure that I get my work done before I get on the game. I would also like to add that in high school I played many sports and did many after school activities, but I feel like if I had a choice I would have not done as many after school activities and sports. For one I was always drained from school and then the activities I had after plus homework. So, during the school week I would only play like two or three hours of the game and then go to sleep so I wouldn’t be tired the next day. On the weekends after track practice or church I would be on the game literally all day long because it was all I wanted to do during the school week. Speaking of schools, you can learn something from playing prosocial and educational video games. They have some educational video games of the major video game consoles or handheld devices. But there are some video games ‘consoles’ that are only for education. For example, V-Smile which “provides a ‘dynamic learning platform’ for 3- to 7-year-olds, with games that address skill development in the areas of language, logic, and cognition.
The LeapFrog family of games and devices are designed for players from early childhood through high school (Funk).” There are also educational games for older people. In this article it talks about a game created by the United Nations called “Food Force” “that puts players in the middle of a series of food crises. After each vignette, there is a scene in which World Food Program workers explain how they would have dealt with the situation. (Funk).” To me personally I have played educational games on the LeapFrog and V-Smile. So, I can attest from what I remember from my childhood that these games were fun and also helped me learn. I’ve had many more educational games that were mainly on the computer. But there was this one game that I loved to play on the Nintendo DS called “Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day!” basically what it is, it’s different puzzles like the Stroop test, which is where you would have to say the color of the word and not what the word says, mathematical equations, Sudoku puzzles etc.. That game was really fun play and it definitely helped out with school and learning. We cannot talk about how video games affect you without talking about what violent video games or video games that have violence in them would affect someone who plays it. In this article it talks about two types of key findings priming aggression and imitation of violence. “A number of self-report studies have shown a direct positive relationship between the frequency of violent video game play and aggressive behavior, thoughts, and attitudes of children and adolescents.
However, this correlation became nonsignificant when the effects of other factors were taken out. (Unsworth, Gabrielle, and Tony Ward).” Which basically means that the researches that were made based off of a questionnaire taken by kids. Which is not good to have that be your only source of information when trying to find out if one thing, in this case video games, can create or enhance violent behavior. The reason why they say that the correlation became nonsignificant is because they have found that “adolescents who reported high frequencies of violent video game play also reported high levels of violent television watching. (Unsworth, Gabrielle, and Tony Ward).” There were three studies that the authors were talking about that backed each other up. A study by Anderson and Ford reported that playing either a violent video game or somewhat violent video game could have a short-term negative effect on the person who is playing it emotional state and because of that they would start to become dependent on playing that violent video game. The other study by Ballard and Weist found out that the more severe the level of violence was in the video game, the greater was the player’s hostility. And the final study by Mehrabian and Wixen concluded that an increase in hostile feelings of the subjects who were ‘imagining’ playing the video game. However Unsworth, Gabrielle, and Tony Ward also found studies that discovered that there were no differences between self- reported hostility and self-esteem and the amount of violent video games play, how there were inconsistencies in the research but they were not sure what it was they figured it could be the subjects age and/or reactions to violent content in video games may be dependent on the developmental stage of the individual player.
Basically, to sum it up they believe that the results have indicated that aggressive children were captivated by the violence in the different violent video games rather than aggression starting out or being rooted from the violence found in different video games especially violent ones. I would agree with the latter parts of these findings because even though it seems logical that violent, aggressive games would make susceptible children or players violent or aggressive it does not happen in real life. By that I mean when I play the games that are violent or aggressive such as Call of Duty which is a FPS game, Grand Theft Auto (GTA) which is an action- adventure game where you have to do missions that reward you for soliciting and killing prostitutes, car-jacking soccer moms, attacking elderly people, killing police officers, doing home invasion and robbery as primary rewarded activities, and Mortal Kombat which is where players fight their way through a variety of missions and adventures; the main goals are to stay alive while killing as many opponents as possible. I believe that you have know how to differentiate right from wrong and real life from the immersive gaming world. With all of that being said the gaming world with continue to evolve. Which also means that the research will evolve with it.
Meaning that there will be more studies to either corroborate some of the research that’s already there or it can create new reasons as to how the different types of video games that a person plays affect them in real life. These findings are promising, more research on the specific benefits or disadvantages of these heavily promoted games and systems is needed.
