Games can be beneficial or harmful, but literacy always wins

December 4th, 2013, 22:44 Posted By: wraggster

‘Whenever there’s a mass shooting, you can count on the mainstream media to point to the perpetrator’s interest in violent videogames as a potential cause’

Recently, industry icon Warren Spector wrote a piece for GamesIndustry International about media effects. In it, he looked at the current state of the never-ending debate about whether games cause violent behaviour, and, more generally, whether games have measurable adverse effects on players. Over the course of decades, this debate has taken many forms. Countless games have been singled out as harmful. Whenever there’s a mass shooting, you can count on the mainstream media to point to the perpetrator’s interest in violent videogames as a potential cause. But study after study has shown that games do not cause violent behaviour.Spector, however, was not writing in defence of games; he was making a deeper and more important point. He pointed to a couple of recent studies that demonstrate games can have positive effects on players. Yet Spector did not uphold these studies as evidence to undermine those who seek to hold games accountable for all of society’s problems. He argued instead that while it is great that games have been shown to have positive effects in terms of the way they can improve our cognitive capability, the fact that games have this capacity means developers have a responsibility to understand the complexities of the effects games can have on players.I think this is a reasonable position, and I agree with Spector that we need more science and a better understanding of the effects of our medium (and of every other medium) with regard to how people’s brains develop under different levels of exposure. At the same time, however, I think Spector misses most of the argument.

http://www.edge-online.com/features/...y-always-wins/

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