The paper claims to have accounted for previous experience as a gamer which didn’t affect the findings. Many shooters reward aiming for the head so its not unreasonable to assume some of the subjects with previous experience played games that rewarded this behavior. Yet this didn’t show a significant correlation. This suggests to me a short term primeing affect and not necessarily a long term result. I’d be interested in seeing a similar experiment but where the time between playing the game and going to the shooting range was varied to see if this trend carries over into the future.

As a game developer, it’s annoying that some of the highest profile video games these days are the most violent ones (Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, etc.) When I was a kid, the first thing that popped into your head when someone said “video game” was Pac-man, Tetris, Q*Bert, etc. They were clearly games meant to be fun and whimsical, inspired by puzzles and games that came before computers.

Often these days, when I tell laypeople and outsiders I work in the video game industry, even older ones seem to have suffered amnesia about the video games that are actually games instead of high-tech simulations. They assume every project in development these days involves exploding heads. They’re worried that if their kid plays too much Wii Sports or Angry Birds or Farmville (simply because they’re “video games”) they may become unruly.

Violent video games may get a lot of attention but they’re still a small fraction of the industry. I would love to see a semantic distinction emerge between interactive entertainment products that are more like “simulations” and those that are more like classic “games” to help avoid the whole medium being hit with the stigma of being all about adolescent male power fantasies potentially influencing bad behavior.

Plenty of game developers don’t care about cutting edge graphics technology or realistic rendering techniques and just want to make a fun game with pleasing aesthetics and intuitive usability. Call of Duty isn’t really a game like Tetris was a game. It’s more of a simulation. You could say there are two sub-industries now within video games – the game industry and the simulation industry – on opposite ends of a continuum with plenty of gray area in between. Each cares about different things and has access to many of the same tools but uses them in very different ways. Arguments can be had about how influential the cartoon violence of a Mario game can be, but most of the hubbub about violence should be directed toward the “simulation” industry, and by all means, come talk to the “game” industry about the brain-training skill concerns.

“Interesing. I figured a plaga would erupt from a dead host regardless of how the host died.”

There is always a possibility of plaga erupting form any host, but it’s far more likely with head shots.

Interesing. I figured a plaga would erupt from a dead host regardless of how the host died.

I loved that game. I still shudder when I think of the Replicators.