Violence in Pac-Man or Academia Meets Congress Regarding ESRB

[BKPartisan]

I came across this story on Slashdot about a Harvard researcher's work with violence ratings of videogames. A writer for About.com expressed concern about the integrity of the research, and now the thing has blown up into a full blown debate. This seems more serious than, say, a Jack Thompson issue since one of the researchers, ironically named Dr. Kimberly Thompson, has testified before congress with regard to the ESRB and video game ratings. That, and she is probably not completely insane.

Apparently, the evaluation method rated the original Pac-Man as 62% violent. There is a lot of information here, so I am not even sure what to think about either side. I haven't read all of the info on the Aaron Stanton's About.com site, and cannot listen to the congressional hearing transcript since I am at work with no sound. From what I understand so far given the joystiq article and some perusing of Stanton's stuff, the study rates old arcade games like Centipede and Pac-Man as way higher than games like Zelda. I think that Stanton has a good point about the flaws in percentages being based temporally, but I also think that Dr. Thompson means well and thinks that it is absurd to rate a game like Pac-Man as more violent than a sword-fighting game like Zelda, or a game like Zelda over Grand Theft Auto. Anyway, she doesn't sound like an idiot and claims to be an advocate of self-regulation. I have a feeling that I would agree with the personal views of both Dr. Thompson and Mr. Stanton and that there is a large misunderstanding between the two of them, but I am concerned about how this research was presented to congress. I thought you guys and gals might be interested:

About.com criticism:
http://nintendo.about.com/library/thompsonresponse/blrespondthompson.htm
Joystiq interview w/ Dr. Thompson
http://www.joystiq.com/2006/08/23/violent-pac-man-researcher-responds/
Congressional hearing:
http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/Hearings/06142006hearing1921/hearing.htm

snips:

From Joystiq
"With respect to all of our studies, I will also emphasize that we performed separate studies of different categories of game ratings (E, T, and M), because they are played by young people of very different developmental levels and comparisons between them would be inappropriate. We have never and would never use the percentage of violent game play to make a ridiculous claim that a game like The Legend of Zelda is more "violent" than a game like Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, for example, although critics of our work like to throw out such statistics and attribute such claims to us. In contrast to what you may believe, we are aware of the developmental differences in children of different ages, and we have been very careful to consider this in our research."

"I think that it is important to keep in mind is that games rated E are played by children as young as 2 and 3 years old, and the developmental psychology literature indicates that young children do not have the developmental capacity to distinguish reality from fantasy until approximately age 6 or 7 (of course this varies). I'm sure that as a young child you probably were not frightened of ghosts trying to kill you, but the concept is one that does frighten many young children. In the context of coding the arcade games, we faced the challenge of applying our definition of violence (which we clearly and transparently include in our papers or on the Kids Risk web site)."

From About.com
"Dr. Thompson points out that the E-rated study that found Pac-Man to be 62% violent was only one of several studies, and should be viewed as one in a body of larger work. I only partially agree with this. While there are other studies that use more advanced methods and focus on T and M rated games, the results of the E-rated study were directly cited in a U.S. Congressional hearing. Research studies are accepted and published on a case-by-case basis and are designed to be read and considered individually. While I agree that the entire body of work should be considered, any research that makes it into Congressional testimony deserves as much public scrutiny as the public eye can give it. Also, of the studies that Dr. Thompson cites in her testimony this is the only one that both focuses on games designed for children, and has highly visible and - in my opinion - undeniable flaws.


Addressing Dr. Thompson's response:

Dr. Thompson's Joystiq response is well articulated, but shows a failure to understand the criticisms of this particular study. While statistics from the 62% violent Pac-Man, the 92% violent Centipede, and the 67% violent Dig Dug were not included in the final results, their existence at all are like warning flares, bright red flags that indicate the method of evaluating violence should be reexamined. The method of coding used by the study was capable of grossly mislabeling the violence level of Pac-Man and the other arcade games in the study, and yet we are asked to rely on that same method as an objective measure of all the other examined games. The reason games like Pac-Man and Dig Dug are focused on for heavy public attention is because these are the games that people know, so they can estimate for themselves whether or not the results of the study match their own interpretation of violence. Presented with these numbers, most realize that the system of measure does not reflect a real-world definition of what is or is not "violence"."

 

[BustaUppa]

thread about it here: http://www.cheapassgamer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=104817

Still funny as heck though!