eStudy Articles

Subject knowledge and terminology

Passive & Active Audiences – Passive audiences just play the game without
asking questions about the message. Active audiences question the message.

Hypodermic Needle Theory – Ideas are ‘injected’ into the minds of the passive
audience to influence their ideologies.

Opinion Leaders – The ideas and opinions of other people affect how audiences
respond to the text.

Use & Gratification Theory – Audiences seek out specific texts for different
reasons:
 Entertainment & Diversion (Escapism) – Some audiences consume texts to
escape the mundanity of daily life.
 Surveillance (Education) – Some texts are consumed because the audiences
want to know what is going on in the world.
 Social Interaction – Audiences may use the text so that they can use the
experience to share with others.
 Personal Identity – Audiences are able to compare their lives and experiences
with the people/characters in the text.
Video games & Suicide (2014)
 4 instances where people played CoD before committing suicide
 "There's absolutely no evidence that any video games have been associated
with suicide," says Dr Mark Griffiths of Nottingham Trent University who has
spent 25 years studying gambling and gaming addiction
 Depression - Teenagers who played video games for >5 hours every day
were more likely to report feelings of sadness, but that those who played for
<2 hours were less likely to report similar feelings than those who did not play
games at all. However, the methodology was heavily critiqued and it was most
likely a matter of ‘correlation does not equal causation
 CoD might not have been the culprit as it is a very popular game; it could
have been a movie
 Teenagers ignored PEGI rating – their fault?

Violence caused by video games

Graph is biased – only shows results from groups that are heavily weighted to agree
with the statement.

Reception Theory
 Oppositional – Paediatricians have a majority agreement that video games
have a casual relationship to aggression. The opinion of this group is likely to
affect that of parents as well as paediatricians are opinion leaders to them.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/08/08/338855459/playing-video-
games-can-help-or-hurt-depending-on-who-you-ask

Jay Hull - Dartmouth College

 Study found that teenagers who play violent video games are more likely to
take risks such as binge drinking, smoking cigarettes and reckless driving.
 Games which promote the idea of acting evil can have the potential to distort
a teenager’s moral compass/sense of right and wrong.
 Video games alter a teen’s sense of self.

‘Electronic Gaming and Psychosocial Adjustment’

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2014/07/29/peds.2013-4021
by Andrew K. Przybylski

Psychosocial – The connection between an individual’s thoughts/behaviour and their

social factors
Link between psychology and social behaviour

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/can-a-video-game-lead-to-murder-04-03-2005/

Devin Moore shot and killed 3 police officers in Alabama 2005. He had been playing
GTA obsessively for months prior to the incident.

- Moore was brought into the police station on suspicion of stealing a car.
- After being brought in, Moore snapped and shot the 1st officer by taking his
gun.
- The 2nd officer came to investigate the commotion and was gunned down by
Moore.
- On the way to the exit, Moore picked up a set of car keys and killed the 3 rd
officer. He escaped the building via police car.

David Walsh, child psychologist, explained the situation in terms of Moore’s

psychology; as Moore was only 18, the part of his brain that considers
consequences and thinks ahead (prefrontal cortex) wasn’t fully developed. This
means that his impulse control was diminished and in combination with other risk
factors (like troubled upbringing), resulted in Moore making the decision to kill the
police offers.
 The families of the victims attempted to sue Wal-Mart and Gamestop (in addition
to Moore himself) for selling him the games. They were not held responsible as
the game is played by millions of people worldwide who have never committed a
similar crime.

Doug Lowenstein, who represented the video game industry, disagreed with the
idea that the game was responsible saying ‘If people have a criminal mind, it's not
because they're getting their ideas from the video games. There's something
much more deeply wrong with the individual and it's not the game that's the
problem.’

Jack Thompson, who was for the idea of video game violence having a role in the
crime, said that Moore was ‘trained’ by the game. If he had never played the
game, Moore would not have carried out those particular actions.

No consequences for bad actions in video games (respawning).

Do certain video games change your opinion towards certain institutions?

(E.g. Police, Army etc.)

Police
Police are often antagonised because of their appearance in video games as well as
the news. When a cop is doing their job correctly, it isn’t talked about. But when
something goes wrong, and a cop kills someone without good reason, the situation is
generalised to either the majority of or the entire police force. These few ‘bad apples’
make up the public’s idea of a police officer and influence their opinions in such a
way that the people that are objectively ‘good guys’ are antagonised.

The problem with this is that with police specifically, they have so much authority and
power compared to normal people which makes the scope of a potential incident
much larger. For example, when a reporter is bad, they may omit certain facts from
their report and look at a situation from a biased view. When a litter picker is bad, the
streets aren’t very clean. But when a cop is bad, that could result in the deaths of
innocent people due to the amount of power they hold both socially and also
physically (if they have a gun).

It’s for this reason that cops stand out so much from the other bad apples; they are
capable of so much damage. It’s also for this reason why they make great villains for
video games.