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Sex, Lies and Video Games
Media outlets regularly blame video games for many different things, but rarely is there any real evidence to back up the stories.
By Emma Boyes, February 2nd, 2011
If we were to believe the media, video games are to blame for all society’s ills, including violent crime, aggression, obesity, mental health issues, and much more besides. Too often, frightening headlines about games are printed or broadcast in the mass media, but when the truth comes to light, an apology or a correction to the original story isn’t given – or is given in a much quieter way.
It’s worth remembering that rock ‘n’ roll was also blamed in a similar way for much of the bad things going on in the world as it gained popularity, including teen pregnancy, violence, and even decreasing the listener’s IQ. Today we consider these claims to be all rather laughable.
This is just a small selection of the headlines and news reported about games over the last few years – there are many other examples out there. Some are outrageous lies, some are true, and some contain elements of truth along with a few factual inaccuracies. Don’t believe everything you read about video games!
“Mass Effect is a Sodomy Simulator” (FOX News, Townhall.com)
Developers BioWare probably expected their epic science fiction role-playing game to be called many things, but it’s unlikely that they could have guessed it would be branded a “sodomy simulator.” The story seemed to have originated at the website townhall.com (the article has since been removed), where conservative blogger Kevin McCullough claimed that the game allowed players “to engage in the most realistic sex scenes ever conceived” and that it could be “customised to sodomize whatever, whoever, however the player wishes.” “Virtual orgasmic rape,” he wrote, “is just the push of a button away.”
Fox News threw their hat into the ring with a debate with psychologist and author Cooper Lawrence and Spike TV’s Geoff Keighley. Lawrence, who admitted to not having played the game, nonetheless made a number of incorrect claims, for instance that it’s a man choosing who to have sex with – in Mass Effect you can play as either a man or a woman. The sex scene that had them both so hot and bothered can be viewed here. It’s hardly pornographic, showing the couple caressing for a few seconds and the briefest glimpse of the side of a breast before the camera fades out. In Mass Effect, players can form intimate relationships with a selection of characters, which they can choose to pursue, and if successful, lead to a very brief (non interactive) love scene toward the end of the game, similar to something you’d expect to see in any number of popular TV shows.
Both McCullough and Lawrence eventually apologized for their misleading coverage after widespread outcry from the gaming community. Many gamers gave Lawrence’s book one star out of five on Amazon, with defending comments about how they hadn’t actually read it, but they’d heard from someone else that it was really bad.
“Columbine School Killers Avid Violent Video Game Fans” (widely reported)
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were indeed video game fans, and particularly seemed to spend a great deal of time playing first-person shooter Doom. Harris also created WADs (files that contain sprites, levels and/or game data) for the game; along with a mod (his own set of levels) he called Tier. However, there is no evidence to show that either of the boys ever made a level based on their school layout or used the game to “practice.” If there ever were such levels, no one has ever found them.
The Final Report and Findings of the Safe School Initiative by the US Secret Service and Department of Education (which can be read in full here) found that only 12 percent of students involved in high school shootings played violent video games, 24 percent read violent books and 27 percent watched violent films. In reality, the report concluded that there is no useful profile of school shooters, aside from the fact that, so far, they have all been male.
Video games are certainly not, as disbarred attorney Jack Thompson once claimed “a common denominator in all shootings.” Many high school students enjoy playing video games (gamers now make up 72 percent of the total U.S. population, according to NPD) and do not go on to commit acts of terrible violence.
“Video Games Cause Depression” (AFP, widely reported)
This headline came from a study that found that it was more likely that television contributed to depression, although the results could be interpreted in different ways. For example people who are depressed spend more hours at home, with watching TV and playing games a result of their depression rather than the cause. The study in question was published in the Archives of General Psychiatry and began in 1995 and compared 4,142 healthy teenagers seven years later, to find that 308 had developed depression. The findings seemed to lean toward TV being a culprit in their depression, for as people’s hours of daily TV watching grew, so did their risk of becoming depressed. The higher the hours of general media exposure a day, including video games, radio, and movies, the higher the chances of their depressed became.
In other studies, some games have even been found to have positive effects on mood, for example PopCap found that playing casual games helped those suffering from depression and anxiety, with those who played Bejeweled 2 reporting a 54 percent reduction in stress levels, and Peggle was shown to improve a player’s mood by 573 percent. It concluded its findings by calling for more research into the area and speculated that casual games could possibly be used in the future to help those with mood-related disorders.
“Game Blamed for Hammer Murder” (BBC)
“Teenager Gets Life for ‘Manhunt Murder’” (Daily Mail)
These headlines (here and here) refer to the brutal 2004 murder of 14-year-old Stefan Pakeerah by 17-year-old Warren Leblanc, who lured the youngster to a park in Leicester, UK, before using a knife and a claw hammer to kill the boy. Despite the publicity and sensational headlines linking Rockstar’s stealth game Manhunt to the killing, this was not mentioned in court, and the defence lawyer Roderick Price QC even came out and publicly stated that, “The reason he killed Stefan is rooted not in video games but in fear.” Leblanc’s defence in court was that he owed a notorious gang £75. These facts are even reported in articles, but news gatherers still saw fit to tack on sensational and misleading headlines.
The BBC also reported that the game had been blamed for the murder, quoting “friends” who had claimed Leblanc was “obsessed” with the game. The victim’s parents were also quoted as saying they believed the game to be the cause. In a final twist, it emerged that the victim had been the one who owned a copy of the game, not the assailant (as reported here).
“Virginia Tech Massacre gunman was avid Counter-Strike player” (Fox News, also originally in article in Washington Post)
It was originally reported that Seung-Hui Cho, the 23-year-old undergraduate who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech regularly enjoyed playing Counter-Strike in a report in the Washington Post. Disbarred attorney and anti-video games crusader Jack Thompson also claimed this in a Fox News interview, stating “These are real people that are in the ground now, because of this game.”
The mention of Counter-Strike mysteriously vanished from the Washington Post article shortly after it was published, and details of items found during a search warrant of Cho’s room did not include the game, or in fact any games, consoles or gaming gadgets, although he did own a computer. His suite mate said he had never seen him play video games. It’s possible that the reports had come from high school friends of Cho’s, who said that he played the game in high school, but stopped when he started University.
“Medal of Honor lets you play as Taliban and Kill American Soldiers” (AOL News, Fox News)
The latest game in the long running first-person shooter series, Medal of Honor, was the center of controversy upon release last year when it emerged that, in the multiplayer sections, gamers could choose to play as the Taliban. Publisher Electronic Arts defended this decision, with PR rep Amanda Taggart telling AOL News, “Most of us have been doing this since we were seven. If someone’s the cop, someone’s got to be the robber, someone’s got to be the pirate and someone’s got to be the alien. In Medal of Honor someone’s got to be the Taliban.” However, two days later, seemingly caving to criticism, the name “Taliban” was removed from the game, and now gamers play as “Opposing Force” instead.
“Online Games as Addictive as Heroin?” (Daily Mail)
Whether or not games (online gaming in particular) can be addictive is another issue, which has been reported rather one-sidedly in the media. This article in the Daily Mail discusses the sad case of an unnamed 33-year-old woman in Kent, who had neglected her children and let her dogs starve to death “because I have been playing the computer game all the time.” She had been suffering from depression after her husband died. Expert opinion is divided as to whether gaming can even actually be addictive. Clearly there is no chemical addiction involved, as there is with cigarette smoking or alcohol and drug abuse. Inclusion of video game addiction as a psychological disorder was proposed but rejected for the latest version (2012) of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
Others consider video game addiction to be very real, particularly in the case of massively multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft and EverQuest, where the games have no “ending” and require players to put in an extraordinary amount of time to rise to the highest levels. Professor Mark Griffiths of Nottingham Trent University reported in a study that 12 percent of online gamers showed some signs of addiction, for example craving, withdrawal symptoms, and loss of control. Numerous private clinics are now also offering specialist programmes for those with game or Internet addiction. One possible theory is that those who have problems with video game addiction have other underlying problems and may have “addictive personalities,” but once again, more research needs to be done before any firm conclusions at all can be reached.
“Violent Video Games Cause Real Life Violence” (widely reported)
Many mainstream media outlets have repeatedly reported that there’s been scientifically proven evidence that violent games cause violent behavior, but the truth is nowhere near as clear cut. There have been several studies undertaken to try and establish (or rule out) a link between the two, but the results have been inconclusive.
In 2001, C.A. Anderson and B.J. Bushman published Effects of violent video games on aggressive behavior, aggressive cognition, aggressive affect, physiological arousal and prosocial behaviour, which found that exposure to violent games increased all of the above excluding prosocial behaviour, which was lowered. The pair used meta analysis, laboratory and field studies to come to this conclusion. However, these findings have been unable to be replicated and many other high-profile studies have found no conclusive link. Some of the more recent studies have actually found that playing violent video games may in fact reduce aggression, leading to a new line of thought that play-violence may provide an outlet for anger and possibly even prevent real-life violence.
Furthermore, since violent crime has actually been decreasing steadily (stats here) since the early 1990s (although in the last two years have seen a slight rise), if video games caused violent behaviour, we would expect to see a correlated massive rise as video games gained huge popularity over the past two decades.
“New Game Lets Players Kill Civilians in Terror Attacks” (Daily Mail)
The game in question this time is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which was released in November 2009. In one of the early levels, called No Russian, gamers play as an undercover CIA agent called Joseph Allen, who has infiltrated a group of Russian terrorists. The terrorist group enter an airport and massacre the civilians within. You don’t need to kill anyone yourself, and the level can be skipped completely, if you prefer. In Russia, the level has been removed, and in Japan and Germany if you do decide to shoot civilians, it’s an instant game over and you’re forced to restart.
Many gaming and tech journalists defended the decision to include the level (which allegedly was almost pulled at the last minute) stating that video games should be able to address weighty issues and be held to the same standards as movies and books (movies in particular regularly show acts of terrorism perpetuated against innocent civilians). Others said they felt uncomfortable with the level, cynically calling it a marketing gimmick that had been deliberately included to stir up controversy, and therefore publicity, for the title, and that it added nothing to the game.
What They Play - Sex, Lies and Video Games
Sex, Lies and Video Games
Media outlets regularly blame video games for many different things, but rarely is there any real evidence to back up the stories.
By Emma Boyes, February 2nd, 2011
If we were to believe the media, video games are to blame for all society’s ills, including violent crime, aggression, obesity, mental health issues, and much more besides. Too often, frightening headlines about games are printed or broadcast in the mass media, but when the truth comes to light, an apology or a correction to the original story isn’t given – or is given in a much quieter way.
It’s worth remembering that rock ‘n’ roll was also blamed in a similar way for much of the bad things going on in the world as it gained popularity, including teen pregnancy, violence, and even decreasing the listener’s IQ. Today we consider these claims to be all rather laughable.
This is just a small selection of the headlines and news reported about games over the last few years – there are many other examples out there. Some are outrageous lies, some are true, and some contain elements of truth along with a few factual inaccuracies. Don’t believe everything you read about video games!
“Mass Effect is a Sodomy Simulator” (FOX News, Townhall.com)
Developers BioWare probably expected their epic science fiction role-playing game to be called many things, but it’s unlikely that they could have guessed it would be branded a “sodomy simulator.” The story seemed to have originated at the website townhall.com (the article has since been removed), where conservative blogger Kevin McCullough claimed that the game allowed players “to engage in the most realistic sex scenes ever conceived” and that it could be “customised to sodomize whatever, whoever, however the player wishes.” “Virtual orgasmic rape,” he wrote, “is just the push of a button away.”
Fox News threw their hat into the ring with a debate with psychologist and author Cooper Lawrence and Spike TV’s Geoff Keighley. Lawrence, who admitted to not having played the game, nonetheless made a number of incorrect claims, for instance that it’s a man choosing who to have sex with – in Mass Effect you can play as either a man or a woman. The sex scene that had them both so hot and bothered can be viewed here. It’s hardly pornographic, showing the couple caressing for a few seconds and the briefest glimpse of the side of a breast before the camera fades out. In Mass Effect, players can form intimate relationships with a selection of characters, which they can choose to pursue, and if successful, lead to a very brief (non interactive) love scene toward the end of the game, similar to something you’d expect to see in any number of popular TV shows.
Both McCullough and Lawrence eventually apologized for their misleading coverage after widespread outcry from the gaming community. Many gamers gave Lawrence’s book one star out of five on Amazon, with defending comments about how they hadn’t actually read it, but they’d heard from someone else that it was really bad.
“Columbine School Killers Avid Violent Video Game Fans” (widely reported)
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were indeed video game fans, and particularly seemed to spend a great deal of time playing first-person shooter Doom. Harris also created WADs (files that contain sprites, levels and/or game data) for the game; along with a mod (his own set of levels) he called Tier. However, there is no evidence to show that either of the boys ever made a level based on their school layout or used the game to “practice.” If there ever were such levels, no one has ever found them.
The Final Report and Findings of the Safe School Initiative by the US Secret Service and Department of Education (which can be read in full here) found that only 12 percent of students involved in high school shootings played violent video games, 24 percent read violent books and 27 percent watched violent films. In reality, the report concluded that there is no useful profile of school shooters, aside from the fact that, so far, they have all been male.
Video games are certainly not, as disbarred attorney Jack Thompson once claimed “a common denominator in all shootings.” Many high school students enjoy playing video games (gamers now make up 72 percent of the total U.S. population, according to NPD) and do not go on to commit acts of terrible violence.
“Video Games Cause Depression” (AFP, widely reported)
This headline came from a study that found that it was more likely that television contributed to depression, although the results could be interpreted in different ways. For example people who are depressed spend more hours at home, with watching TV and playing games a result of their depression rather than the cause. The study in question was published in the Archives of General Psychiatry and began in 1995 and compared 4,142 healthy teenagers seven years later, to find that 308 had developed depression. The findings seemed to lean toward TV being a culprit in their depression, for as people’s hours of daily TV watching grew, so did their risk of becoming depressed. The higher the hours of general media exposure a day, including video games, radio, and movies, the higher the chances of their depressed became.
In other studies, some games have even been found to have positive effects on mood, for example PopCap found that playing casual games helped those suffering from depression and anxiety, with those who played Bejeweled 2 reporting a 54 percent reduction in stress levels, and Peggle was shown to improve a player’s mood by 573 percent. It concluded its findings by calling for more research into the area and speculated that casual games could possibly be used in the future to help those with mood-related disorders.
“Game Blamed for Hammer Murder” (BBC)
“Teenager Gets Life for ‘Manhunt Murder’” (Daily Mail)
These headlines (here and here) refer to the brutal 2004 murder of 14-year-old Stefan Pakeerah by 17-year-old Warren Leblanc, who lured the youngster to a park in Leicester, UK, before using a knife and a claw hammer to kill the boy. Despite the publicity and sensational headlines linking Rockstar’s stealth game Manhunt to the killing, this was not mentioned in court, and the defence lawyer Roderick Price QC even came out and publicly stated that, “The reason he killed Stefan is rooted not in video games but in fear.” Leblanc’s defence in court was that he owed a notorious gang £75. These facts are even reported in articles, but news gatherers still saw fit to tack on sensational and misleading headlines.
The BBC also reported that the game had been blamed for the murder, quoting “friends” who had claimed Leblanc was “obsessed” with the game. The victim’s parents were also quoted as saying they believed the game to be the cause. In a final twist, it emerged that the victim had been the one who owned a copy of the game, not the assailant (as reported here).
“Virginia Tech Massacre gunman was avid Counter-Strike player” (Fox News, also originally in article in Washington Post)
It was originally reported that Seung-Hui Cho, the 23-year-old undergraduate who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech regularly enjoyed playing Counter-Strike in a report in the Washington Post. Disbarred attorney and anti-video games crusader Jack Thompson also claimed this in a Fox News interview, stating “These are real people that are in the ground now, because of this game.”
The mention of Counter-Strike mysteriously vanished from the Washington Post article shortly after it was published, and details of items found during a search warrant of Cho’s room did not include the game, or in fact any games, consoles or gaming gadgets, although he did own a computer. His suite mate said he had never seen him play video games. It’s possible that the reports had come from high school friends of Cho’s, who said that he played the game in high school, but stopped when he started University.
“Medal of Honor lets you play as Taliban and Kill American Soldiers” (AOL News, Fox News)
The latest game in the long running first-person shooter series, Medal of Honor, was the center of controversy upon release last year when it emerged that, in the multiplayer sections, gamers could choose to play as the Taliban. Publisher Electronic Arts defended this decision, with PR rep Amanda Taggart telling AOL News, “Most of us have been doing this since we were seven. If someone’s the cop, someone’s got to be the robber, someone’s got to be the pirate and someone’s got to be the alien. In Medal of Honor someone’s got to be the Taliban.” However, two days later, seemingly caving to criticism, the name “Taliban” was removed from the game, and now gamers play as “Opposing Force” instead.
“Online Games as Addictive as Heroin?” (Daily Mail)
Whether or not games (online gaming in particular) can be addictive is another issue, which has been reported rather one-sidedly in the media. This article in the Daily Mail discusses the sad case of an unnamed 33-year-old woman in Kent, who had neglected her children and let her dogs starve to death “because I have been playing the computer game all the time.” She had been suffering from depression after her husband died. Expert opinion is divided as to whether gaming can even actually be addictive. Clearly there is no chemical addiction involved, as there is with cigarette smoking or alcohol and drug abuse. Inclusion of video game addiction as a psychological disorder was proposed but rejected for the latest version (2012) of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
Others consider video game addiction to be very real, particularly in the case of massively multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft and EverQuest, where the games have no “ending” and require players to put in an extraordinary amount of time to rise to the highest levels. Professor Mark Griffiths of Nottingham Trent University reported in a study that 12 percent of online gamers showed some signs of addiction, for example craving, withdrawal symptoms, and loss of control. Numerous private clinics are now also offering specialist programmes for those with game or Internet addiction. One possible theory is that those who have problems with video game addiction have other underlying problems and may have “addictive personalities,” but once again, more research needs to be done before any firm conclusions at all can be reached.
“Violent Video Games Cause Real Life Violence” (widely reported)
Many mainstream media outlets have repeatedly reported that there’s been scientifically proven evidence that violent games cause violent behavior, but the truth is nowhere near as clear cut. There have been several studies undertaken to try and establish (or rule out) a link between the two, but the results have been inconclusive.
In 2001, C.A. Anderson and B.J. Bushman published Effects of violent video games on aggressive behavior, aggressive cognition, aggressive affect, physiological arousal and prosocial behaviour, which found that exposure to violent games increased all of the above excluding prosocial behaviour, which was lowered. The pair used meta analysis, laboratory and field studies to come to this conclusion. However, these findings have been unable to be replicated and many other high-profile studies have found no conclusive link. Some of the more recent studies have actually found that playing violent video games may in fact reduce aggression, leading to a new line of thought that play-violence may provide an outlet for anger and possibly even prevent real-life violence.
Furthermore, since violent crime has actually been decreasing steadily (stats here) since the early 1990s (although in the last two years have seen a slight rise), if video games caused violent behaviour, we would expect to see a correlated massive rise as video games gained huge popularity over the past two decades.
“New Game Lets Players Kill Civilians in Terror Attacks” (Daily Mail)
The game in question this time is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which was released in November 2009. In one of the early levels, called No Russian, gamers play as an undercover CIA agent called Joseph Allen, who has infiltrated a group of Russian terrorists. The terrorist group enter an airport and massacre the civilians within. You don’t need to kill anyone yourself, and the level can be skipped completely, if you prefer. In Russia, the level has been removed, and in Japan and Germany if you do decide to shoot civilians, it’s an instant game over and you’re forced to restart.
Many gaming and tech journalists defended the decision to include the level (which allegedly was almost pulled at the last minute) stating that video games should be able to address weighty issues and be held to the same standards as movies and books (movies in particular regularly show acts of terrorism perpetuated against innocent civilians). Others said they felt uncomfortable with the level, cynically calling it a marketing gimmick that had been deliberately included to stir up controversy, and therefore publicity, for the title, and that it added nothing to the game.
What They Play - Sex, Lies and Video Games
