scholarly journals Violent acts ((Online)Games)

10.34778/3d ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Wulf ◽  
Daniel Possler ◽  
Johannes Breuer
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Video Recording ◽  
First Person ◽  
Cohen’S Kappa ◽  
Cohen's Kappa ◽  
Violent Content ◽  
Content Analyses ◽  
Violent Acts ◽  
First Person Shooter

The depiction of violence is the focus of many content analyses of video games. Typically, the occurrence and nature of acts of violence or aggression are coded to quantify the amount of violent content in a particular game.   Field of application/theoretical foundation: Quantifying the amount of violence in video games can inform media effects research that looks at the relationship between the exposure to violent video game content and aggression. This allows for more precise measures and hypotheses than simply coding a game as violent or nonviolent which is often done in experimental research in this area. What is commonly coded in content analyses of violent content in video games is the number and nature of aggressive or violent actions. Specific attributes of these acts, such as their realism, graphicness or (narrative) justification (Tamborini et al., 2013) are only considered in a few studies (e.g., Lachlan et al., 2005). While the focus in most studies is on acts of physical aggression/violence in interactions with/between game characters, there are also studies that have investigated verbal aggression between players (Holz Ivory et al., 2017).   References/combination with other methods of data collection: Content analysis of violence in video games can be complemented by survey data asking players about the games they play and their rating of the degree of violence they contain and/or age rating from institutions like ESRB or PEGI (see Busching et al., 2015).   Example studies Coding material Measure Operationalization Unit(s) of analysis Source(s) (reported reliability of coding) Video recording of playing session Number and duration of violent interactions (attacking and being attacked) (a) combat: “periods of playing time in which a player [i.e., the character controlled by the player] fires his gun” (p. 1021) (b) “under attack–the player is attacked by an opponent before or after using his own weapon” (p. 1022)  Distinct phases/events in up to 12 minutes of solo play of the first-person shooter game Tactical Ops: Assault on Terror Weber et al., 2009 (Cohen’s kappa = 0.81) Video recording of the whole game Depictions of injury (present/not present) “An injured or dead character lying on the ground or remnants of blood from a known violent act” (p. 403) 1-second intervals of the game recordings Thompson, Tepichin, & Haninger, 2006 (Cohen’s kappa = 0.93) Video recording of the whole game Depictions of violent acts (present/not present) “Intentional acts in which the aggressor causes or attempts to cause physical injury or death to another character” (p. 403) 1-second intervals of the game recordings Thompson, Tepichin, & Haninger, 2006 (Cohen’s kappa = 0.93) Video recording of the first 10 minutes of gameplay Depicted harm/pain (none, mild, moderate, extreme) in aggressive exchanges between in-game characters “physical injury or incapacitation of the victim” (p. 64) “an aggressive exchange that occurs between a perpetrator (P) engaging in a particular type of act (A) against a target (T)” (p. 63) Smith, Lachlan, & Tamborini, 2003 (coefficient according to “Potter and Levine-Donnerstein's (1 999) reliability formula for multiple coders”, p. 65: 0.87)   References Busching, R., Gentile, D. A., Krahé, B., Möller, I., Khoo, A., Walsh, D. A., & Anderson, C. A. (2015). Testing the reliability and validity of different measures of violent video game use in the United States, Singapore, and Germany. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 4(2), 97–111. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000004 Holz Ivory, A., Ivory, J. D., & Wu, W. (2017). Harsh Words and Deeds: Systematic Content Analyses of Offensive User Behavior in the Virtual Environments of Online First-Person Shooter Games. Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, 10(2), 19. Lachlan, K. A., Smith, S. L., & Tamborini, R. (2005). Models for aggressive behavior: The attributes of violent characters in popular video games. Communication Studies, 56(4), 313–329. https://doi.org/10.1080/10510970500319377 Smith, S. L., Lachlan, K. A., & Tamborini, R. (2003). Popular video games: Quantifying the presentation of violence and its context. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 47(1), 58–76. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15506878jobem4701_4 Tamborini, R., Weber, R., Bowman, N. D., Eden, A., & Skalski, P. (2013). “Violence is a many-splintered thing”: The importance of realism, justification, and graphicness in understanding perceptions of and preferences for violent films and video games. Projections, 7(1), 100–118. https://doi.org/10.3167/proj.2013.070108 Thompson, K. M., Tepichin, K., & Haninger, K. (2006). Content and ratings of mature-rated video games. Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, 160(4), 402–410. https://doi.org/10.1001/archpedi.160.4.402 Weber, R., Behr, K.-M., Tamborini, R., Ritterfeld, U., & Mathiak, K. (2009). What Do We Really Know About First-Person-Shooter Games? An Event-Related, High-Resolution Content Analysis. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 14(4), 1016–1037. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2009.01479.x

scholarly journals Harsh Words and Deeds: Systematic Content Analyses of Offensive* User Behavior in the Virtual Environments of Online First-Person Shooter Games

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrienne Holz Ivory ◽  
James D. Ivory ◽  
Winston Wu ◽  
Anthony M. Limperos ◽  
Nathaniel Andrew ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Environments ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Online Games ◽  
User Generated Content ◽  
First Person ◽  
Online Game ◽  
Full Spectrum ◽  
Content Analyses ◽  
First Person Shooter

While the virtual environments of online games can foster healthy relationships and strong communities, some online games are also marred by antisocial and offensive behavior. Such behavior, even when relatively rare, influences the interactions and relationships of users in online communities. Thus, understanding the prevalence and nature of antisocial and offensive behaviors in online games is an important step toward understanding the full spectrum of healthy and unhealthy interactions and relationships in virtual environments. Extensive research has explored video game content produced by game developers, such as violence, profanity, and sexualized portrayals, but much less research has systematically examined potentially problematic content produced by players in online games. While potential effects of antisocial and offensive online game content are not well understood, a first step toward exploring this concern is systematic documentation of offensive user-generated content in online games. To that end, two large-scale content analyses measured a range of offensive user-generated content, including utterances, text, and images, from a total of more than 2,500 users in popular first-person shooter video games. Findings indicated that some content, such as profanity, was frequent among users who spoke during games. More offensive and potentially harmful content, such as racial slurs, was proportionally very rare, but frequent enough to be encountered often by regular players. Results of this initial investigation should be interpreted tentatively, do not suggest that relationships in online shooter games lack healthy elements, and should not be generalized to other online game communities until further research is conducted.* Note: This paper contains strong language which may be offensive to some readers.

scholarly journals Always Already Monsters—BioShock’s (2007) ‘Splicers’ as Computational Others

Nordlit ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaroslav Švelch
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Social Bonds ◽  
Computational Algorithms ◽  
First Person ◽  
First Person Shooter ◽  
Game Representation ◽  
Embedded Narrative

The article explores the manufacturing of monsters in video games, using the case of the influential 2007 first-person shooter BioShock, and ‘splicers’—its most numerous, zombie-like enemies. I combine two methodological perspectives on the ‘manufacturing’ of splicers by analyzing [a] the title’s developer commentary and other official paratexts to trace the design of splicers, and [b] the game’s embedded narrative to reconstruct the diegetic backstory of splicers. I argue that video game enemies, including splicers, are ‘computational others’, who may appear human on the level of representation, but whose behavior is machinic, and driven by computational algorithms. To justify the paradoxical relationship between their human-like representation and machinic behavior, BioShock includes an elaborate narrative that explains how the citizens of the underwater city of Rapture were dehumanized and transformed into hostile splicers. The narrative of dehumanization, explored following Haslam’s dehumanization theory (2006), includes [a] transforming splicers into atomized creatures by depriving them of political power and social bonds, [b] creating fungible and interchangeable enemies through splicers’ masks and bodily disintegration, [c] justifying splicers’ blindness to context and their simplistic behavior by portraying them as mentally unstable addicts. The article concludes that all video game enemies are inherently monstrous, and that critique of video game representation should focus on how games fail to make monsters human, rather than how games render humans monstrous or dehumanized.

scholarly journals Games of Drones: The Uneasy Future of the Soldier-Hero in Call of Duty: Black Ops II

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 360-376 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carrie Elizabeth Andersen
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
First Person ◽  
Combat Experience ◽  
Logical Conclusion ◽  
The Future ◽  
First Person Shooter ◽  
The U.S

In this article, I argue that the first-person shooter video game, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, reflects the U.S. military‟s transition as it reimagines the soldier‟s role in war. In the age of drone technology, this role shifts from a position of strength to one of relative weakness. Although video games that feature future combat often “function as virtual enactments and endorsements for developing military technologies,” Black Ops II offers a surprisingly complex vision of the future of drones and U.S. soldiers (Smicker 2009: 107). To explore how the game reflects a contemporary vision of the U.S. military, I weave together a close textual reading of two levels in Black Ops II with actual accounts from drone pilots and politicians that illuminate the nature of drone combat. Although there are moments in Black Ops II in which avatars combat enemies with first-hand firepower, the experience of heroic diegetic violence is superseded by a combat experience defined by powerlessness, boredom, and ambiguous pleasure. The shift of the soldier from imposing hero to a banal figure experiences its logical conclusion in Unmanned, an independent video game that foregrounds the mundane, nonviolent nature of drone piloting. Instead of training soldiers to withstand emotionally devastating experiences of death and violence first-hand (or to physically enact such violence), games like Black Ops II and Unmanned train actual and potential soldiers to tolerate monotony and disempowerment.

Harsh Words and Deeds: Systematic Content Analyses of Offensive User Behavior in the Virtual Environments of Online First-Person Shooter Games

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrienne Holz Ivory ◽  
James D. Ivory ◽  
Winston Wu ◽  
Anthony M. Limperos ◽  
Nathaniel Andrew ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Video Game ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
User Behavior ◽  
Online Games ◽  
Systematic Investigation ◽  
User Generated Content ◽  
First Person ◽  
Online Game ◽  
Content Analyses ◽  
First Person Shooter

Extensive research has examined the prevalence and potential effects of potentially harmful video game content produced by game developers, such as violence, profanity, and sexualized portrayals, but much less research has systematically examined the large range of potentially problematic content produced by players in increasingly popular online games. This player-generated content may actually be of more social concern than content programmed in the games, as it is largely undocumented and unaddressed by industry ratings and consumer advisory groups. While potential effects of such antisocial and offensive online game content are not well understood, a first step toward exploring this concern is systematic documentation of offensive user-generated content in online games. To that end, a pair of large-scale systematic content analyses documented a range of offensive user-generated content, including utterances, text, and images, from a total of more than 2,500 users in popular first-person shooter video games. Findings indicated that some content, such as profanity, were frequent among users who spoke during games. More offensive and potentially harmful content such as racial slurs was proportionally very rare but frequent enough to be encountered often by regular game players. Implications for further research and practice are discussed. Results should be interpreted tentatively based on this relatively unprecedented systematic investigation, should not be interpreted as evidence that online shooter games are harmful or lack healthy elements, and should not be extrapolated to other online game genres and communities until further research is conducted.

Frustration and Violence in Mobile Video Games

2020 ◽  
Vol 79 (2) ◽  
pp. 63-70
Author(s):  
Petr Květon ◽  
Martin Jelínek
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Implicit Association Test ◽  
Self Determination Theory ◽  
Psychological Needs ◽  
Basic Psychological Needs ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Mobile Video ◽  
Violent Content ◽  
Before And After

Abstract. This study tests two competing hypotheses, one based on the general aggression model (GAM), the other on the self-determination theory (SDT). GAM suggests that the crucial factor in video games leading to increased aggressiveness is their violent content; SDT contends that gaming is associated with aggression because of the frustration of basic psychological needs. We used a 2×2 between-subject experimental design with a sample of 128 undergraduates. We assigned each participant randomly to one experimental condition defined by a particular video game, using four mobile video games differing in the degree of violence and in the level of their frustration-invoking gameplay. Aggressiveness was measured using the implicit association test (IAT), administered before and after the playing of a video game. We found no evidence of an association between implicit aggressiveness and violent content or frustrating gameplay.

scholarly journals On the Publishing Methods of Our Time: Mobilizing Knowledge in Game Studies

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Wilcox
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Game Studies ◽  
First Person ◽  
Academic Interest ◽  
Middle State ◽  
The University

There is a considerable amount of academic and non-academic interest in the production and reception of video games. At the same time game scholars encounter questions such as, “are video game academics irrelevant?” In this article I connect questions of relevancy in game studies with the need to develop forms of publishing capable of asserting that relevancy more broadly. As the co-founder and editor-in-chief of First Person Scholar (FPS), a middle-state publication based in the Games Institute at the University of Waterloo, I detail how FPS has attempted to reach beyond the traditional scope of game studies to engage a wider audience and assert a new degree of relevancy for the game scholar.

Sideways into Truth

2010 ◽  
pp. 109-124
Author(s):  
Erin Hoffman
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Death Anxiety ◽  
Soren Kierkegaard ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Ethical Concerns ◽  
Violent Content ◽  
Ernest Becker ◽  
Interactive Medium

We often discuss the interactive medium as being possibly the ultimate in “meta” studies, touching virtually every discipline, and yet we rarely discuss it in serious terms of that other most comprehensive of humanities: philosophy. Correspondingly, philosophy and the traditional humanities have historically distanced themselves from games, relegating them to some curious and inconsequential sub-study of cultural anthropology if they are studied at all. Yet it is the very human foundational compulsion to contemplate death—as will be shown through the works of philosophers Søren Kierkegaard and Ernest Becker—that drives much of the violent content that makes the video game medium a lightning rod for cultural scrutiny and controversy. The chapter explores two video games—the controversial Super Columbine Massacre RPG!—through the lens of existential death-anxiety to show how video games represent contemplation of fundamental ethical concerns in the human experience.

scholarly journals White Man’s Virtual World: A Systematic Content Analysis of Gender and Race in Massively Multiplayer Online Games

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Franklin Waddell ◽  
James D. Ivory ◽  
Rommelyn Conde ◽  
Courtney Long ◽  
Rachel McDonnell
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Online Game ◽  
Gender And Race ◽  
Massively Multiplayer Online Game ◽  
Content Analyses ◽  
Character Portrayals ◽  
Massively Multiplayer

Based on previous research indicating that character portrayals in video games and other media can influence users’ perceptions of social reality, systematic content analyses have examined demographic trends in the way video game characters are portrayed. Although these studies have extensively documented character portrayals in traditional console and computer video games, there is a lack of content analyses examining character portrayals in the very popular massively multiplayer online game (MMO) genre. Such studies are needed because many characters in MMOs are customized avatars created by users, which may lead to different trends in character demographics. This content analysis examined representations of gender and race among 417 unique characters appearing 1,356 times in 20 hours of recorded content from four popular commercial MMOs, which was generated by five recruited users. Characters tended to be disproportionately male and white, with females and racial minorities appearing much less often. Implications for potential effects on users’ perceptions of social reality are discussed.

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