The design and business of gaming from the perspective of an experienced developer

Yes, the Media Affects People

Today, esteemed youtube personality TotalBiscuit opined about societal effects of video games and other media.

I am consistently bothered by this throw-away phrase “media affects people” as if its some kind of argument winner, an inarguable statement of fact. In reality it’s lazy, it’s too vague, it’s pseudo-intellectual at its worst.

Speaking of lazy, I should note that research on the effects that media has on individuals and society as a whole in various forms has been going on for — oh, DECADES now.  It’s seriously a dedicated branch of study, and even the tiniest google search would have found it for him.  If he wasn’t too lazy to throw bombs without actually wondering if maybe this criticism isn’t coming from somewhere.

I was thinking of responding in length, but it turns out that I am ALSO lazy. Fortunately, this reddit poster gave a long, factual analysis of the known research, much of which would have mirrored several of the most important studies that I would have pointed out.   Some of these I haven’t read yet (surprisingly – I do try to keep up), but the one regarding the increase in aggressiveness in vulnerable personality types seems of particular interest to me

That being said, renown scholar and gentleman TotalBiscuit left a lot more room in the discussion by wondering where research was regarding other media.  As mentioned previously, there are some truly infamous ones, some of which you are likely to learn about in any psych 101 or communications 101 class :

Of course, all of this is common sense – we reflect the opinions and attitudes we see very, very quickly.  Advertising is big business largely because the media is incredibly effective at changing people’s minds – and for that matter, so is YouTube gaming content.  Few doubt that the recent portrayals of gay people on television, led by high profile events such as Ellen Degeneres’ coming out, is a huge factor in the astonishing collapse of all opposition to gay rights in America.

And even some renown YouTube personalities believe, for example, believe that, say, an episode of SVU can change people’s opinions on gamers and is worth getting angry about.   This isn’t unfounded – I can’t find the link right now, frustrating, but research has shown that, for example, rural whites who get most of their information about black people from watching fictional television tend to have a much darker outlook on African Americans than those who encounter them regularly in their daily lives.

Yes, media affects people.  The exact details of how are still being researched – and likely will be endlessly in the future.  The level of responsibility we expect media creators to own is still up for debate, but so far, little has been found that is so alarming that legislation removing first amendment protections merits consideration.  But it is well in the world of enough that activists should feel comfortable asking a company like Blizzard to change some avatars in hopes of of incurring positive change.

39 Comments

  1. Dave Rickey

    I’d like to point out that my Psych 101 professor used the Bobo Doll experiment as an example of *bad* science in psychology. Apparently it and most of the derivative studies are considered discredited in clinical psychology, useful only as examples of bad methodology and interpretation. What was seen as the cornerstone of the “climate of violence” theory of aggressive behavior is now seen as a misinterpreted example of what developmental psych calls “behavior modelling”.

    Apparently the Communications types didn’t get the memo.

    –Dave

    • Unbound

      I would agree with Dave that the Bobo Doll experiment had a variety of criticism, and probably should be caveated as such.

      However, there have been follow-up studies using similar setups that have found the same results in adults as well as children, so, conceptually, it is still relevant. Also, the Bobo Doll experiment is credited with helping to shift psychology from behavioral only to a social-cognitive approach to learning.

      So while there were issues with the specifics of the study, it also wasn’t debunked.

  2. Dom

    I have noticed something. When the issue of torture is discussed, the arguments of those who support torture are…strange. The ticking clock scenario is nearly always debated at some point despite being an action movie trope with little grounding in reality.

    The bleeding hearth at the CIA and other intelligence agencies experimented with torture and deemed it was an unreliable method of information gathering that can create awful PR and martyrs. In regards to the ticking bomb scenario, if we believe the pre 9/11 intelligence agencies (independent data are quite rare, for some odd reasons), in real life, it doesn’t happen like in the movies.

    That creates the weird situation where we have the discussion about allowing torture where the so called pragmatics basically argue that we are in an action movie and the related tropes apply to RL.

    Don’t get me wrong, I don’t claim that action movies cause people to torture others themselves, those movies sell the idea that torture is a necessary evil to beat the horde of diabolical terrorists. That not the actions that are altered, the values are.

  3. DZ

    TotalBiscuit complains about lazy and pseudo-intellectual position, then proceeds to write lazy and pseudo-intellectual screed about thing.

    Surprise factor: zero.

  4. Vhaegrant

    One of my favourite infographics when it comes to illustrating poor research:- http://www.compoundchem.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Spotting-Bad-Science-v2.png

    Oh… and also the smell of bacon http://www.compoundchem.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Aroma-Chemistry-Bacon.png

    In fact a lot of good information on thhe site 😉

    Most policy is looking to base recommendations on Systematic Reviews instead of individual studies (unless a study returns a significant finding and can be replicated). Unfortunately it can be hard to get access to all the research as it may not even see the light of day 🙁

  5. Matt

    If media affects people then those anti-videogame-violence crusaders were right all along.

    • Arthur

      There are a lot of degrees between “media has no impact on the way you think under all circumstances” and “media trains you to murder people”.

      • Matt

        If seeing sexism makes you more likely to be sexist, then seeing violence makes you more likely to be violent. You could caveat by stipulating the media must be portraying the behavior favorably, but you could probably count on one hand the number of video games that contain unfavorable portrayals of violence.

        You really can’t have it both ways here. If media affects people, then videogame violence is a serious problem that we were all wrong about.

        • Trevel

          You might have a point, but only if I concede that violence is exactly the same thing as sexism.

          Which I do not.

          Sexism is about a way of thinking, patterns of thought. Violence is an action, something done. You cannot make violent assumptions the same way that you can make sexist assumptions.

          Plus, there are very few debates over whether or not something is violent, and a lot of debates over whether something is sexist. Certainly there are some grey areas with violence, but not nearly as many as sexism — and people who engage in the debate over violence tend to agree that they are grey areas, while sexism tends to be more black and white, in argument. (Which is part of the problem of the discussion of sexism, IMHO. It’s not a binary issue.)

          So, these are different things. They interact in different ways. Therefore they are different.

        • Arthur

          Again you are operating in this all or nothing world. This isn’t “having it both ways” but the common adult reality that many thing exist in a continuum.
          Video games don’t directly cause violence, but I Most people aren’t arguing that is video games directly cause sexist acts. They create an environment where such things are considered more acceptable.

        • Damion Schubert

          First off, more studies have been done on violence in the media and in games than sex, so we know more about it. And what we know is that the dangers are relatively minute with good parenting, aside from a handful of individuals who fit a very clear psychological profile. Even that study has been questioned in terms of causation vs. correlation.

          Secondly, there is a vast difference between something that affects your free will and actions, and something that affects your attitudes. Your attitudes are affected by media ALL THE FRICKIN’ TIME. The idea that your ideas about women, black people, or gays might be included in this are not particularly revolutionary.

          • Matt

            Whether the use of violence is an acceptable method for solving problems sounds precisely like an attitude, and an attitude which we all must admit games overwhelmingly support. Can’t have it both ways.

          • John Henderson

            Only if you think outright prohibition is the only way to solve any perceived problem the existence of provocative media creates. It’s possible to acknowledge that media “affects” people without suggesting it has the power to zap any mind that consumes it into jelly, rendering a person incapable of choosing how to turn cognition (what you think) and affectation (how you feel) into behavior. THAT is tri-component theory of attitude.

            So yes, you can have it both ways.

          • Trevel

            Try this, then: The repeated occurrence of something desensitizes us to it. Violent media desensitizes people to violence, at least in short term. It would seem reasonable that sexist media desensitizes people to sexism (or, if you prefer, normalizes it.)

            The difference is, desensitizing someone to violence isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s necessary for soldiers and police and butchers, for example: there are times when not being shocked by violence is important. (Although extreme desensitization can result in things like the soldiers who laugh about killing civilians — but the desensitization training soldiers receive is far beyond the sphere of video games.) At the same time, we have a strong counter-message in our culture that violence shouldn’t be used as a solution to personal problems, and a police force that enforces that.

            On the other hand, small amounts of sexism can cause bigger problems; if we normalize the objectification of women (by only or predominantly including women as objects in the majority of games or other media) then we continue the message that women aren’t people; as recently as 100 years ago, that was pretty much accepted as truth in the US, and while there has been progress, there’s still quite an imbalance.

            They are not the same thing. Normalizing sexism is harmful; normalizing violence is less so, at least to the degree which video games do. .

    • Trevel

      I wonder if this probable parody is why people react so strongly to FemFreq’s videos — the idea that if video games have anything in them that is sexist or racist then WE NEED TO STOP MAKING VIDEO GAMES!!!!!!111one! or something along those lines.

      I can say that video games contain sexist tropes AND that we should keep making them (and not even STOP using the sexist tropes, IMHO; moderate use, sure. More use of other tropes, definitely. Stop? Nah.) without experiencing any cognitive dissonance. Sexism is bad, but it’s not evil. (Except when it is)

      • Karl

        Anita Sarkeesian wants video games to survive. A lot of the anti-violence crusaders come from a long tradition arguing that games (card games, board games, etc.) in general are a waste of time and a morally corrupting influence on people.

        • Trevel

          Yup. The few people in the “Games should stop” brigade really have nothing to do with those in the “maybe we can make more games with women in” group.

    • Consumatopia

      Media images that portray smoking as cool probably increase the prevalence of smoking (or at least tobacco industry ad budgets back in the day assumed that this was so), but it doesn’t follow that there is any chance at all that I, personally, am going to start smoking after I watch a movie in which protagonist is a smoker.

    • John Henderson

      “Affect” does not always mean “profoundly affect.” Individuals shouldn’t be expected to react to stimuli in the exact same way. Any experimenter will tell you that.

  6. Karl

    I think it’s pretty well established that violent media can have a negative effect on people with certain personality types who are already predisposed to violent behavior. I love playing games like Dragon Age: Origins, but I try to be mindful of how I’m mentally contextualizing the gameplay and what effect it might have on me. Stuff like sexualized violence, torture, and cruelty to animals is probably more harmful than lots of blood or fatality animations.

    Combat is also not really essential to making a game fun, it’s just difficult to come up with other mechanics when you’re trying to deliver a product that you know will make money (Valve had enough money to fund Portal 2 by itself). All you really need is narrative, complexity, and a sense of progression. I’m not saying we should get rid of combat in games, just that there’s a bit of a problem when almost all games are combat-oriented in some way.

    • Karl

      But I think it’s probably not true that media affects you to a point of substantially depriving you of personal volition. It’s pretty hard to use “media programming” to change someone’s basic attitudes.

      • Damion Schubert

        The evidence that gaming creates psychopaths is just not there, except in that one case with people who were already borderline. Most of the violence links tend to be short-term, and most kids know the difference between reality and play.

        However, the evidence that all media tends to affect ATTITUDES towards other people, particularly other people you don’t have common day-to-day interactions with, is pretty strong. And it’s not just one viewing. If you see one black man on your tv screen as a criminal, it may not affect you much, unless you know no black men in real life as a foil. However, if 90% of the black men on your tv screen are criminals (either from the news, or as the villains in tv crime shows – as was not too far from the case in the 1970s), then the sum of all of those depictions are likely to subconsciously affect your attitude towards black people.

        For similar reasons, it’s not problematic if one game has women who look like Maxim models who exist solely for sexual decoration. It is problematic if many do. And it’s rare that one game, book or movie is going to create sexist attitudes, but much less rare that one genre or category of entertainment might.

        • John Henderson

          I prefer to think of media in the Denis Leary sense — give the psychos something to watch, or to play. Someone playing a game at home is much less likely to do much harmful, except what harm can be done through the Internet.

          The Bobo Doll experiment wasn’t done well, and neither was Harry Harlow’s “monkey mother” experiment, but the conclusions can be useful mental exercises for those interested in the subject of the role of media on society.

          And TotalBiscuit is excellent when he’s taking apart games for the care by which they’re made and whether they have adequate Options menus. He’s not so excellent when he’s talking about just about anything else.

        • Karl

          I agree. I don’t think violence is caused by some type of disease that’s communicated through violent media. Certain games (like the God of War series) can be too over the top, but that’s more likely to traumatize players than to make them violent.

  7. Adam

    Ah, no mention of corruption then? All right. Good “gamergate” article, another classic.

    While we wait for the studies to tell us that you are right, I guess we must tell the people that they are wrong, shut down any dissenting opinions, and blacklist any developers and journalists who aren’t on board with our narrative.

    Gamergate would have been a fart in the wind if the press wasn’t so corrupt, they could have robbed gamergate of all of its power with some transparent ethics policies, and less trolling of gamergate. THEY shut down the discussion, because they didn’t want the discussion.

    Your points on sexism are pretty moot. The longer this goes on, the more gamergate comes to see any and all “progressive” views as propaganda, unless they come from Christina Sommers, we love our Base Mom.

    Man, if this is somebody’s idea of progression, I’d hate to see their idea of world peace.

    • Damion Schubert

      Funny, this article doesn’t mention GamerGate at all, aside from the tag which I only included because TB is so closely associated with the cause.

      Also, GamerGate isn’t about ethics in journalism, and anyone who says otherwise is either willfully ignorant, or intellectually dishonest to the point of hysteria. I’ve done numerous articles on this blog about exactly that. But this article isn’t about ethics in the media. Why are you bringing this up?

    • Biggie

      One of GG’s biggest targets, Polygon, has had a full ethics policy published on its site since 2012.

      Shutting down harassment and witch-hunting isn’t censorship.

      Your views are simply not supported by any shred of evidence.

  8. Punished Gamer

    The Bobo Doll Experiment and the very similar Power Rangers Experiment.
    All in the Family’s racist character Archie Bunker reinforced the prejudices of those who shared his beliefs.
    Only White Male Children Have Their Self-Esteem Raised by Watching American Television

    You have become your parents.

    Why don’t we ban nudity and violence from TV and video games altogether? Why not?

    • John Henderson

      Because it’s better to teach a kid to swim than try to ban it from water forever.

    • Damion Schubert

      Why should we? Just because the media has an effect doesn’t mean that we should lock ourselves into a vault and not encounter anything – that would be a grim and horrible existence. However, it does mean that we should attempt to understand what’s going on and, if we’re making art which can be expressed in one of multiple ways, encourage content creators to take the better path if it won’t compromise their vision.

  9. LorenzoCanuck

    I really dislike this passive-aggressive manner you put on whenever you criticize TB. If you think he’s wrong, just call him out on it. No need for the backhanded damn-with-faint-praise kind of stuff.

    • Damion Schubert

      Sorry if my sarcasm was not altogether clear. TB is being an idiot here. Is that more apparent?

      • LorenzoCanuck

        Oh I got your sarcasm pretty clearly. I just think its excessively smarmy. Personal taste though.

        • John Henderson

          If you thought that was too smarmy, do you watch TB videos regularly? Dude uses smarm as punctuation.

  10. Adam Ryland

    Never minding how much the bobo doll nonsense has been discredited, no one bothered to actually argue against TB’s point. I guess everyone is to busy playing gotcha that they couldn’t bother reading bother past the first 3 sentences.

    TB admits media can influence people, but also acknowledge variables. Not all media is the same, and something like news or advertising, designed to form opinions, is different from fantastic all fiction designed to entertain. His argument isn’t media has no power. Its do games have a real life tangible effect on violence or sexism. Do they have to designed that way or is it benign.

    The problem is, and always has been lack of proof. You can’t prove games,books,movies etc etc etc make people violent or sexist with factual data on the ground. You can’t point to rise in crime, rape, murder,etc etc. Even sexism, nebulous as it is, occursvfar less now, at the height of gaming popularity than any time previously.

    The best you can do is make appeals for a subconscious narrative, that it affects attitude, not action. At that point I just roll my eyes, because now its clear this isn’t about finding a truth. More so that’s its refusing to admit one self is wrong.

    Research has shown for years, that real experiences weigh far more on people minds and view than popular media. Family, friends, neighbors, hell stories told face to face instead of through a screen weigh more on peoples minds. Its hard for me to give the argument that breast size in a videogame or female fighters showing their midriff is going to affect people more than the constant interaction people have with their mothers, siblings,relatives, etc etc every single day.

    • Chaos-Engineer

      The problem is, and always has been lack of proof. You can’t prove games,books,movies etc etc etc make people violent or sexist with factual data on the ground

      Is anyone claiming that games “make people sexist”? The claim I’ve heard that some games reinforce harmful stereotypes. They do this on two levels: Inside the game, the characters can be written to fit stereotypes. Outside the game, the product can be marketed based on stereotypes about the audience. In other words, “AAA video games are generally adolescent power fantasies with white male protagonists. If you are a gamer, then you have an obligation* to like that sort of story. If you’re unable to like that sort of story, or if you’re starting to get bored with it, then you can’t be a gamer.”

      It’s possible that personal experience can trump stereotypes, but there’s no guarantee that this will happen. It’s common enough for people to say things like, “Well, Joe at the office doesn’t fit the stereotype, but that’s just because he’s one of the ‘good ones’. I wish the rest of ‘those people’ would act more like Joe!”

      So I think the burden of proof goes the other way: In the absence of evidence to the contrary, we have to assume that if you make use of a harmful stereotype, then you’re reinforcing that stereotype in the minds of your audience. That’s not to say that you should never make use of anything that could be construed as a harmful stereotype – but it’s a good idea to stop for a minute and think about what you’re doing and whether that’s really the sort of story you want to tell.

      All that said, I’d say that the issue of violence is a bit different. It’s easy enough to have violent thoughts while resisting the temptation to turn them into violent actions. But if someone has accepted harmful stereotypes, then it’s very difficult for them to avoid making bad decisions based on those stereotypes.

      (*Re: “have an obligation to like that sort of story”. A couple of years ago that would have seemed like ridiculous hyperbole to me, but that was before I encountered the gamergate phenomenon. Apparently there are a large number of people who think that asking for other kinds of stories is a Crime Against Gaming.)

  11. Dan

    Of course media has influence on public opinion. People like Goebbels understood this quite well. This is the real danger of it, people who understand this concept and then want to control and censor media in order to create the ‘correct’ public perceptions. Obviously I’m not comparing someone like Goebbels to Anita or McIntosh in what they wanted to accomplish, but I do believe the motivation is the same. That motivation being “if we control the kinds of content people are exposed to then we control how people will think”.

    Among progressives I see a strong leaning towards this approach. They believe they hold the morally superior message, therefore it is ok for them to attack and even in some cases try to change or shutdown media they disagree with. I may for example vehemently disagree with ‘Birth of A Nation’ film but I do not disagree with it’s right to exist.

    Obviously because of the first amendment, as you mentioned, there are not direct ways to shut people down. The forced resignation of the Mozzila CEO, Brendan Eich, though shows us that activist can sometimes wield more power than just vocally disagreeing with something. Activism being used to backdoor bully in censorship of conflicting ideas is obviously an issue that has been around since the USA became a country. It is an issue that an educated public should always remain vigilant against.

    Side note: why the jab at rural whites? I think it is unfair to categorize them as being predominately racist.

    Second side note: I don’t think I agree with much with you on political stuff, but I do like reading the blog. Keep up the good work.

    • Consumatopia

      The media affects us whether or not it’s doing so intentionally. Just because a creator isn’t aware of their own biases doesn’t mean they don’t influence viewers. Market-driven stereotypes and propaganda are still stereotypes and propaganda. It’s better for both creators and audiences to be aware of how media affects us. Creators can ask themselves whether playing into stereotypes actually enhances their artistic vision. And the audience, while still being manipulated, is at least aware of being manipulated.

      And as far as “controlling” media goes, the media isn’t like the weather, something that just happens with no one controlling it. It takes a lot of money to produce media, and whoever controls that money controls the media. Hey, that’s capitalism for you, but critics, activists, and the audience are part of capitalism too.

      “They believe they hold the morally superior message, therefore it is ok for them to attack and even in some cases try to change or shutdown media they disagree with.”

      Progressives sure aren’t the one ones doing that.

      • Dan

        I see it on both sides. Just think the progressives due to their inclination for laws and regs and government programs also being very inclined to the idea of controlling messages through media.

        Mind you I don’t think this of average liberals, just the more extreme groups.

© 2024 Zen Of Design

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑