When Gaming Gets Personal

If there is no new Content then you get forums that are filled with BS and crazy posters posting.....things

The question that interests me is: What behaviours does Illyriad encourage compared to other similar games (whose names sound a bit like Peony)?

Tink XX.  I laughed.  "even emit a single plume of smoke".  Maybe we can get the devs to provide the smoke for us?

Overall, as many of you have noticed, the emphasis in studies has been on aggression and violence and the question of if violent video games leads to or even causes acts of aggression and violence in the offline world.  I tend to think that if there is any causal mechanism it is subtle and weak at best.  Violent video games will, I think eventually be shown to contribute in some minor way to aggressive behaviors, but will be one of a whole grand mix of influences, among which might be things like personality, family problems, abject poverty, etc.... 

But what is, I think, a more subtle and interesting question with broader implications, is how online gaming affects personality, an area of study relatively new.  The studies that I have read indicate that when you measure the Big 5 personality traits before and after long sessions of role playing games players personalities are altered.....meaning that they perceive themselves differently.  The effect is most noticeable among adolescents who have been playing role playing games for around eighteen months.  Older adults show the same movements, but only after several years.   Here's my take on WHY this might be so.

When a child is nine or ten years old he or she has the strongest sense of right and wrong they will ever have in their lives.  At that point they internalized many of the values of their culture and function on a more clearly defined moral compass than they will ever have.  But of course, the compass is not yet their own and they measure right and wrong not by intention, but more by consequences.  For instance, if you tell a child that a kid accidentally broke five china plates while doing the dishes and another kid purposely broke three, the child will generally feel that the first kid acted worse than the second because he caused more damage.  Most people who are older than ten will say the opposite as most people give more weight to intentions as when they measure right and wrong.  And as the child enters puberty he or she begins to connect intentions to acts and to add more weight to them, meaning, of course, that the measurement of right or wrong becomes more fuzzy.

In addition the child begins to pull away from his or her family and to form a vision of what king of person he or she wants to be.  This "ideal self" reflects the cultural values and experiences around the child and thus, the child, in searching for his or her self identity strives to reach the "ideal self" received from the culture around them. 

Now it that is true and the child enters into a competitive atmosphere where being a conqueror is ideal, then he or she will generally attempt to be the conqueror.  I'm going to stick my neck out here and suggest that if you measured the actual age of the most aggressive players, verses the most peaceful, you'd find the average age of aggressive players was younger than the more peaceful ones.  This is, I think, not because it's bad to be an aggressive player, but because the measure of winning in most games promotes an aggressive style and the younger you are the more likely it is you will both be aggressive AND have the time to become "successful" by the gaming communities standards.

In addition, whereas older players are more experienced with how their actions effect others and often exhibit more self-control, self-awareness, and satisfaction with who they are, and have less a need to "win" at the competition, a person developing his or her self-identity with a vision of the ideal self as a "winner" will put more time and effort into it, AND, probably be a bit less concerned about his or her impact on other players. 

Now my theory is that, this "ideal self" is most reinforced by the length of time spend in gaming, the intensity of the experience, and the 'success' the player has in the game.  The more success the person has the more likely will be to carry that image of themselves into the offline world and to engage in activities and attitudes which reinforce their ideal self.  All of which is, I think, suggested by current studies.  (As an interesting aside remember when you first read JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy?  Didn't you feel you wanted to be more noble after reading it?  Did you not, as I did, think of how wonderful it would be to carry a sword, slay Orcs [sorry Orcs of Illy], and be Gandalf or Bilbo Baggins?  The imagination is a powerful thing, and works in literature as well as online gaming.)

Finally, notice that this does not mean the person will be more violent.  Whatever the highest self displayed by the online community the young player will naturally try to implement.  If the highest self the community puts forth is a good self for society then gaming will have a net positive effect.  If it's a negative "highest self" then the offline world will suffer.

At least that's my theory for now.

Anjre.  Thanks for the link.  The general decline in violence since the 1970's anyway, has been noticed by a quite a number of people.  It is, therefore difficult to say that just because violent crime declined even as violent video games proliferated, that the proliferation of violent games contributed to the decline, slowed the decline, or had no effect at all.  A negative correlation is no more proof of something than a positive, but only suggestive.  But I do VERY much like that you are doing some investigations as it truly stimulates the conversation I think.

Rill, as usual you hit the nail on the head. It's all about being aware and taking action when and if things are going in the 'wrong' direction BEFORE somebody else begins to tell us how much, when, where and what we can play.  Player responsibility is the only way to be free.  And that means being aware of things.

Phoenixfire,   You said: "The main reason that the correlation exists is that if you are violent in the first place you are more likely to play a game that allows you to be violent without consequences. While if you aren't violent you are more likely to play a game that reflects your non-violentness."

I think you are right to a great degree, hence the effect of violent games may be small, if at all.  However, the bigger picture might be that the 'violent or non-violentness" is probably a sliding scale rather than a switch.  If so then most people are probably in the middle somewhere (if the 'bell curve' is applicable anyway) and thus, the influence of 'practicing violence' may effect those closest to the middle of any aggression scale.  My argument would be though, that all violence has consequences, even to the one practicing it in an imaginary forum.  But that's a statement about the power of imagination more than the effects of online gaming.

AJ

Yeah, such violent game... The cities don't even emit a single plume of smoke when you siege them. The only indication that a battle took place is an icon for crafted gear appearing on the map. Siege camps look like a family picnic tent with a catapult in tow for some (I'm sure completely practical) reason. And don't even get me started on elf pirates!

You know.....View points like the IRC"s and the UN"s have been disproved many times and playing FPS won"t turn you into a Monster....you have just show me the most BS i have seen on a Website(i fellowed the link),Thank you for making me laugh today! :)