New Media & Community - g42

The effect of gaming on users has been a controversial topic discussed both in the media and in academic writing. Positive effects of video games have been stated by some authors, such as by Lee and Peng and by Jenkins who both site the uses of video games in training, particularly by the military. Lee and Peng also delve into other positive outcomes of video game use, which include enhanced spatial skills, cognitive abilities and uses in therapy. However, a great number of writings on video games depict more negative outcomes often associated with gaming, like violence or aggression, addiction, or social isolation. Williams’ study investigates the effects of immersive video game play upon participants, testing their social and civic tendencies before and after exposure. Williams found that the effects of video game use were primarily negative, as both bridging and bonding social capital declined for users. These findings build upon this concept of social capital, particularly its bridging and bonding forms, that were discussed both by Putnam and by Ellison et al; Ellison et al’s paper that illuminated the relationship between Facebook and these types of social capital. However, Ellison found that Facebook facilitated the maintenance of existing social ties, which contrasts with Williams’ findings that game play led to great declines in extended friendship networks, presenting a contrast between the two mediums. Williams also discovered that game play also led to decreases in physical face-to-face interactions with friends, indicating another negative effect. However, William’s research has many limitations, which renders many biases in his research. Firstly, there was no control group in his study, so it is not possible to determine whether the findings truly resulted from the game play or whether they were an outcome of measurement. Also, players were asked to record playing time in time diaries, which often leads to biases because memory is imperfect, causing participants to misreport their game use. Also, the study was quite short, lasting only one month, which could have biased the results. Another limitation is the lack of diversity both in ethnicity (85% White) and gender (84% male), which is a source of bias, as these results cannot be generalized to the larger population. Participants were also solicited by online message boards, which creates another source of bias in that only those who had access to the internet and participated in such message boards were included in the study, which excludes a wide subset of the population. This could create a systematic bias against less wealthy people and those who do not frequent such sites.

Lee and Peng also investigate the relationship between game play and sociability. However, these authors present an alternate viewpoint, citing a number of studies that found that game play does not have a negative impact upon social interaction. These authors state that traditional views about video game players having little social interaction with their peers are not the reality. Lee and Peng cite a study by Colwell et al in which heavy video game users were more likely to meet up with their friends outside of school than non-game players. They also reference a study that found that game playing children actually developed higher sociability than non-game playing children, by Shimai et al. However, a limitation of Lee and Peng’s paper is that though they do cite many examples of empirical research to back up their claims, they do not cite the specifics of many of the studies, such as their method, sample or possible limitations, which does not give readers a full picture of the generalizability of these studies or if there are any sources of bias that might render these findings less valid. Lee and Peng also write about game addiction, referencing an example about the death of a Korean adult who died after 50 hours of continuous game playing. Their discussion relates to the article by Farrell that delves into the addictive potential of video games, illustrating with many examples the harmful effects that intensive video game playing can have.

Vorderer and Chan also explore the effects of video game playing on social interaction, yet these authors focus upon social interaction among users of games like massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs). Vorderer and Chan state that such expansive online games “capture the notion of the Internet as a location for virtual communities”, referencing Rheingold’s work, in that these games allow people to connect and communicate with each other as did the virtual communities of Rheingold’s time. They describe how MMOGs have features specifically for interaction among players, such as channels that allow for conversations, questions to be posed to the group, and even private chat between members similar to instant messaging. These features can be used to form relationships between users. Vorderer and Chan state that many of these interactions are “out-of-character relationships” in which players communicate as their real selves and often extend this communication to e-mail, phone or even face-to-face meetings. This is also similar to Rheingold’s description of virtual communities, in which users were able to get to know each other online through the virtual community and then choose whether or not to extend the relationship offline in other forms. However, there are a few limitations to Vorderer and Chan’s paper, especially in that they often make claims that are not supported by empirical evidence, instead merely relying on anecdotal evidence or their own sentiments. For example, they state that “the majority of players would choose to play against another person rather than a computer”, yet they do not provide any empirical data to support such assertions.

Both Klug and Schell and Jenkins discuss some of the reasons why people, especially adolescents, play video games. One of the main reasons mentioned by both papers is that people play games to escape from their mundane, everyday world to enter a special, other world that is different from their typical lives. Jenkins states that the pleasure of play often arises from escapism, which is similar to Klug and Schell’s assertion. However, Klug and Schell do not provide much empirical evidence for this assertion, relying mainly on anecdotal evidence to support this conclusion, eliciting the uses of video games by people they have interviewed. Similarly, Klug and Schell generalize and stereotype people frequently in their paper, citing stereotypes of a variety of people, like competitive people (Competitors) and even professions, such as engineers, who they say “lack certain social graces”. Also, in video game environments, users can experiment with many things that they cannot do in real life, allowing them to explore fantasies, which is another concept discussed by both papers; Jenkins states that adolescents often play videogames because they can have control over their world and manipulate reality. Jenkins also delves into the impact of media on adolescents, particularly the media’s relationship to and often blame for the actions of the Columbine shooters. They discuss the effects of violence in the media, particularly that in movies, TV shows, and in video games, which are often cited as some of the influencers of the shooters. Jenkins asserts that video games represent stylized portrayals of violence, which affect adolescents less than realistic portrayals of violence do, providing some defense to violent and aggressive video games. Jenkins also elaborates on the role that the internet plays for pariahs like the Columbine shooters; the internet allows such people to find an alternative social support network, and thus reach people who are more like them than those in their own geographic area, which is similar to the writings of Rheingold and Singer. However, Jenkins does not back up many of his assertions with empirical evidence either and does not reference many media studies or provide their specific findings, which is a limitation of this paper. It seems that many of his statements are his own viewpoint and are not supported by hard data or empirical studies.

Ohler and Nieding also explore violence in video games, yet these authors take more of a behavioral approach with relation to play. Their studies investigate what instigates the aggressive attacks that adolescents perform during video game play, finding that the number of aggressive actions adolescents carried out while playing a video game was more influenced by their strength of desire to win and the elaborateness of their strategies used rather than by the amount of violence in a game. They also found that users of computer games employ a broader range of strategies while in playful mode. However, their experiment that achieved these findings have many limitations, particularly in that it only studied 20 adolescents, which is a very small sample size. Also, only adolescent males were studied, which makes these findings unable to be generalized to both sexes and to the larger, age diverse real-world population.

Questions:

How are video games different from social networking sites in their ability to affect social capital?

Are there any hidden dangers behind communication between random users playing MMOGs?