Game research question

Branoic

Hi guys,

I'm trying to develop a theory I have about gaming into something I can research for a college assignment, but first I need to check if the basic idea behind the theory is completely off or not.

The research is about the fact that the average gamer age is now 37 and what that means for the perception of gaming in society as a whole. 37 means that a whole adult generation has grown up playing games, and many of them will potentially now have kids of their own who are around the 10 year old mark (if you assume the adults had them in late 20s early 30s).

The theory is that, in general:

1) Older parents, now in their 50s and 60s (ie those who didn't grow up with games) are aware of the press reports on studies that show that games cause violent behaviour, and accept these reports.

2) These older parents would have little concept or understanding of the sophistication games today and would have bought or allowed their children to play 18 rated games while at the same time not allowing them to view 18 rated films. They would be aware of the ratings on films but not on games, because after all they're just games, children's toys.

3) Younger parents who are gamers are more aware of the debate around video game violence (ie not just aware of Daily Mail style hype, but may actually be aware of the studies themselves both for and against), and by and large don't accept the causal link.

4) But at the same time, even though they may not accept the notion that violent video games make children more aggressive, they tend to not allow their children to play 18 rated games (until they're around 16 or 17 anyway) and are much more aware of the content of the games their children play.

In short - a large portion of gamer parents would not allow their 9 or 10 year olds to play games like GTA even though they did not believe the violence in the game would impact their child's behaviour.

Would this be true or not? If true, what other reasons would gamer parents have for not allowing their underage kids to play violent games?

Ostrom

Branoic wrote: »

Hi guys,

I'm trying to develop a theory I have about gaming into something I can research for a college assignment, but first I need to check if the basic idea behind the theory is completely off or not.

The research is about the fact that the average gamer age is now 37 and what that means for the perception of gaming in society as a whole. 37 means that a whole adult generation has grown up playing games, and many of them will potentially now have kids of their own who are around the 10 year old mark (if you assume the adults had them in late 20s early 30s).

The theory is that, in general:

1) Older parents, now in their 50s and 60s (ie those who didn't grow up with games) are aware of the press reports on studies that show that games cause violent behaviour, and accept these reports.

2) These older parents would have little concept or understanding of the sophistication games today and would have bought or allowed their children to play 18 rated games while at the same time not allowing them to view 18 rated films. They would be aware of the ratings on films but not on games, because after all they're just games, children's toys.

3) Younger parents who are gamers are more aware of the debate around video game violence (ie not just aware of Daily Mail style hype, but may actually be aware of the studies themselves both for and against), and by and large don't accept the causal link.

4) But at the same time, even though they may not accept the notion that violent video games make children more aggressive, they tend to not allow their children to play 18 rated games (until they're around 16 or 17 anyway) and are much more aware of the content of the games their children play.

In short - a large portion of gamer parents would not allow their 9 or 10 year olds to play games like GTA even though they did not believe the violence in the game would impact their child's behaviour.

Would this be true or not? If true, what other reasons would gamer parents have for not allowing their underage kids to play violent games?

I'm not sure the issue of causation is as critical as before - as you say, these assumptions are largely based on groundless media observations (i.e. presence of a relatively common pastime (gaming) amongst violent youth - despite absence of behavioral problems in majority of population - implies cause).

Much of this kind reasoning is easily explained away with more rigorous research design - causation can be reasonably well tested with methods such as cross-lagged panel studies, and there are a few papers which have tested this with violent movies (i.e. determining if aggression pre-existed viewing of violent content).

This study included a number of questions on media activity, one or two (if I remember) involved video games

This book aso gives a good overview of the current state of video games research from within the social sciences

Branoic

efla wrote: »

I'm not sure the issue of causation is as critical as before - as you say, these assumptions are largely based on groundless media observations (i.e. presence of a relatively common pastime (gaming) amongst violent youth - despite absence of behavioral problems in majority of population - implies cause).

Much of this kind reasoning is easily explained away with more rigorous research design - causation can be reasonably well tested with methods such as cross-lagged panel studies, and there are a few papers which have tested this with violent movies (i.e. determining if aggression pre-existed viewing of violent content).

This study included a number of questions on media activity, one or two (if I remember) involved video games

This book aso gives a good overview of the current state of video games research from within the social sciences

Thanks for that, particularly those links, looks like there's some good stuff there.

But at this point I'm not actually looking at the violence debate itself, I'm parking that whole issue. Instead, I'm more interested in people's perceptions of the issue, in particular the different attitudes of the "37" generation to the generation before them when it comes to purchasing for children etc.

Retr0gamer

The vast majority of the research including the british governments own Brydon report (sp?), show that there's no evidence of videogames causing violent behaviour in children. It's a small minority of studies in really bad journals that show this and it's usually from groups desperate for a bit of research money. Maybe a good research topic would be looking at how the media, especially the tabloids, skewing this information and only reporting on sensationalistic papers (like the quite frankly awful one about involuntary movements caused by games released recently) is affecting these people.

K.O.Kiki

Are we sure the average "gamer" is 37? Thought it would be lower still, maybe that's just the average age of dads & mums buying them for kids

Retr0gamer

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

Are we sure the average "gamer" is 37? Thought it would be lower still, maybe that's just the average age of dads & mums buying them for kids

The average gamer is most definitely not 37. It was found to be 32 in one study but this study did not include anyone under the age of 20. More ****ty statistics and research, I really don't know how these people get published. Play a game of CoD and you'll see there's a hell of a lot more annoying under 18's than over 18's. There was a UK study that said 23 which is a bit closer but I'd be inclined to say it would be a hell of a lot younger with a decent study.

Harps

Yep, I've always thought that was a bit ridiculous, I could barely name a single person I know in his late 30's who plays games yet pretty much every single 15-25 year old I know does

SeantheMan

Maybe people could post if they are

1) Older parents, now in their 50s and 60s (ie those who didn't grow up with games)

2)Younger parents who are gamers

and thus help. As I am neither, my opinion isn't really valid for your survey.