Video Games: Brain Gain or Drain? Archives - WebTalkRadio.net

My interviewee this time is André Brock from the School of Library and Information Science at the University of Iowa. His recent article in Games and Culture called ‘‘When Keeping it Real Goes Wrong: Resident Evil 5, Racial Representation, and Gamers” was the topic of our conversation. Brock writes that, “videogames’ ability to depict cultural iconographies and characters have occasionally led to accusations of insensitivity. This article examines gamers’ reactions to a developer’s use of Africans as enemies in a survival horror videogame, Resident Evil 5. Their reactions offer insight into how videogames represent Whiteness and White privilege within the social structure of ‘‘play.’’ … Videogames construct exotic fantasy worlds and peoples as places for White male protagonists to conquer, explore, exploit, and solve. Like their precursors in science fiction, fantasy, and horror, videogame narratives, activities, and players often draw from Western values of White masculinity, White privilege as bounded by conceptions of ‘‘other,’’ and relationships organized by coercion and domination.”

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We revisit the question of video game play and subsequent violence in my interview with James Ivory. He writes that “much of my research focuses on the content and effects of new entertainment media such as video games. At Virginia Tech, I founded the VT G.A.M.E.R. Lab (Virginia Tech Gaming and Media Effects Research Laboratory), a small laboratory hosted by the Department of Communication.” In a chapter, which is appearing in an edited book on communication studies, Ivory points out that “among a sea of influences that can increase aggression, video game violence doesn’t rise to the surface”. He and his coauthor also talk about the role of video games in mass school shootings as a misguided speculation. We had a lively discussion about the stigmatization that such speculation has caused in gamers. In addition to his academic research, he also works to help develop software and provide occasional consulting services pertaining to media analysis, development, and marketing as a member of Arrowhead Interactive.

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This time I spoke with Pål Aarsand who has a PhD in Child Studies and works as a senior lecturer at the Department of Education, Uppsala University, Sweden. His research interest is in young people’s use of digital technology in their everyday lives. He has focused on game/play, identities, the parent-child relation and digital competences. We had a lively conversation about how families are coping with the new play world of video games. We touched on parenting issues as well as problem versus healthy use in children. In his article in the Journal of Children and Media, he notes that his data “reveal considerable diversity in how middle-class parents deal with game play, which is currently one of the most common child and youth leisure activities… It is argued that differences in middle-class families’ parenting styles are related to their view of the child and their stance on game technology. In addition, talk about parenting reveals parents’ construction of good and bad parenting, where they see themselves as belonging to the former category” as it relates to video game play.

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Luther Elliott, of the Institute for Special Populations Research, National Development and Research Institutes, New York, NY, and I talked about his work on how video game genre might be a predictor of problem use. In an article published in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, he and his coauthors explored this new way of viewing problem use. He says that their “study assessed how problem video game playing (PVP) varies with game type, or “genre,” among adult video gamers.” He reports that only 5% of his over 3000 respondents “reported moderate to extreme problems. PVP was concentrated among persons who reported playing first-person shooter, action adventure, role-playing, and gambling games most during the past year.” We discussed the problems around defining addiction in gaming and the popular misconceptions regarding the use of this word.

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Andrew Przybylski and I chatted this time about how ones sense of ideal self can be encouraged with the play of video games. Przybylski is with the Department of Psychology, University of Essex, United Kingdom. He and his coauthors recently published a study in Psychological Science, the highest ranked empirical journal in psychology, exploring these ideas. He points out in the abstract to his article that, “Video games constitute a popular form of entertainment that allows millions of people to adopt virtual identities. In our research, we explored the idea that the appeal of games is due in part to their ability to provide players with novel experiences that let them “try on” ideal aspects of their selves that might not find expression in everyday life. We found that video games were most intrinsically motivating and had the greatest influence on emotions when players’ experiences of themselves during play were congruent with players’ conceptions of their ideal selves. Additionally, we found that high levels of immersion in gaming environments, as well as large discrepancies between players’ actual-self and ideal-self characteristics, magnified the link between intrinsic motivation and the experience of ideal-self characteristics during play.” A more recent research interest of Przybylski regards the cult of Mac users.

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