The last panel at PAX 2008 was the highly anticipated discussion on Sex and Violence in Videogames between former Nintendo executive Perrin Kaplin, Grand Theft Childhood co-author Dr. Cheryl K. Olson and What They Like Inc., president John Davison. Moderated by Newsweek tech writer N'Gai Croal, the trio attempted to dissect the mainstream media misnomer that "videogames are toys" with both informative and hilarious results.

Mad World, with its inky wellspring of monochrome gore, will likely give those opposed to virtual violence another round of ammunition, replacing Manhunt 2 as the industry whipping boy of choice. An unfair comparison, at least according to seasoned game journo Beth Dillon, who cites the controversy magnet's realistic take on violence as much more disturbing than Mad World's "contrasting and beautiful" approach.

There's no question that Mad World will stand out like a bludgeoned thumb among the Wii's more family-friendly library, but Dillon writes that where Platinum Games' upcoming action opus separates itself from Manhunt 2 is in its sense of style. The bigger issue, as she she sees it, is the effect motion-sensitive controls have on players playing violent games -- regardless if they're realistic or more over-the-top -- something we fully expect to have society's ills pinned on the game industry's already swollen posterior for years to come.

Well, this is disheartening. According to a survey recently release by parental advisory site What They Play, parents would rather their kids drink alcohol and watch pornography than have them play certain types of games. Yes, you read that right. Parents would rather come home to their kids drunk and aroused by porno than seeing them off somebody in Grand Theft Auto.*

Also, big changes in attitudes since April: Parents are slightly less concerned about their kids seeing a severed head and slightly more concerned about use of the F-bomb. Both are still less concerning than two men kissing. Hooray, America!

(*Side note: If parents come home to find their kids drunk and aroused by offing someone in Grand Theft Auto, we think they have every right to be concerned.)

The oft-proclaimed "Master of Horror" never was much of a gamer -- he'll be the first to admit that. That's probably for the best; it would be hard to consistently produce the pants-soiling stories he's known for if he spent his days wasting away in front of his computer, looking for a PUG for the Hellfire Citadel. However, that doesn't mean he'll sit idly by as the gaming industry gets remorselessly hassled by The Man.

In a recent column for Entertainment Weekly, Stephen King decried HB 1423, a pending bill in the Massachusetts state legislature, which would outright ban the sale of "violent video games" to minors -- effectively circumventing the ESRB ratings system altogether. King, who knows a thing or two about violence, dissects the bill as eloquently as you'd expect, saying that politicians use pop culture as a "whipping boy," to illicit a passionate response from fans of the beleaguered medium, and to ignore "the elephants in the living room." Wait, you mean the popularity of violent video games isn't the biggest crisis facing the country? Get out of town!

The link between playing violent games and short-term increases in amorphous measures of "aggression" has been well-established by science. Or has it? Develop takes note of a new study being presented today that shows gamers tended to feel more relaxed after some good, old-fashioned online gaming.

The Middlesex University researchers studied 292 World of Warcraft players, asking them to fill out personality and aggression surveys before and after a two-hour play session. The results showed "higher levels of relaxation before and after playing the game," researcher Jane Barnett said, though she added that the results "did very much depend on personality type."

Barnett said she hopes the study will lead to a questionnaire that can identify "the type of gamer who is likely to transfer their online aggression into everyday life." Probably the same type of gamer who'd transfer their love of Pac-Man to a career in competitive eating, if we had to guess.

Good journalism is almost always based on real shoe-leather reporting -- working the phones, hitting the streets and talking to people to find out what's really going on out there. Or, alternatively, you could just offer to pay people for a story that fits your preconceived notions of what would be "juicy."

That seems to be the idea behind this StarNow posting which bluntly asks, "Did computer games make you turn to a life of crime?" According to the posting, a national British paper will pay "hundreds of pounds" for the right tale of game-inspired crime. The site doesn't mention which newspaper is searching for the stories, and the free listing could well be a prank (we are dangerously close to April 1), but the whole thing seems entirely plausible to us -- checkbook journalism is pretty common among the English tabloids, as are sensationalist takes on our favorite hobby.

While other similar postings on StarNow insist submitted stories be "true" or "real," the video game violence offer simply promises that "if it's something we like, we'll call you straight back." We're almost tempted to encourage our British readers to write in with the most ludicrously false stories they can come up with, but that plans runs the risk of having a ridiculous fiction actually running as the truth in a major British newspaper. Decisions, decisions ...

[Thanks Randy]

We've all had a week to "FALCON PUNCH!" our way through the Wii's latest mega-anticipated title, scrambling for an innumerable amount of Smash Balls and mastering our technique with the subtly complex Jigglypuff, but in our excitement, we can't forget that group who is unable to join the Super Smash Bros. Brawl parade -- we speak, of course, of the twelve-and-under crowd, who are excluded from the party due to the game's Teen rating from the ESRB.

A blogger for San Jose's Mercury News recently called the mildly restrictive rating into question, claiming that the "crude humor" and "cartoon violence" present in the game is comparable to any number of children's TV shows. While we're usually not ones to disagree with North America's most esteemed game graders, we can't help but see where he's coming from.

What do you think about the rating -- is it completely unmerited, or does the game really run the risk of inspiring youngsters to attack one another with trophies and hammers?

It's not hard to find studies and media reports both for and against the damning effects of video game violence on children, but a new book coming out in April seems to be attempting to forge a new, more reasonable middle ground in the debate. Grand Theft Childhood is based on a June 2007 study in which the book's authors studied over 1,200 middle-schoolers in two states . Rather than trying to measure levels of "aggression" or map brain activity, the study asked the students to fill out surveys on their gameplay habits. The results found that while a large majority of students played violent games, most played "to get their anger out."

The authors say their research is different because they went in with no preconceived notions. "When we began our research, we didn't fully grasp how politicized and emotional this topic was," said Dr. Cheryl K. Olsen in an interview with The Game Couch. "It may take a new generation of researchers and advocates, open to both pros and cons of video games (and who've played video games themselves!), to start truly productive discussions." Let's hope they hurry. We can't take many more screaming matches.

We're just speaking for us personally on this one, but video games haven't desensitized us to violence in the least bit. In fact, you could say that video games have made us more sensitive to it in that even the hint of a disemboweling can send us into spasms of delight, ecstatic in the knowledge that our gaming-honed thirst for blood will (temporarily) be slaked.

Our feelings have now been backed up by some Finnish research, which found that players became "angry and anxious after killing an opposing character in James Bond 007: NightFire." Interestingly, the players also felt a sense of relief at being killed, which we guess is a comment on NightFire as much as anything else. What about you: Does in-game murder still have an effect on you?

Intuitively, winning at a video game should be more fun than losing, right? Thankfully, science is around to show us exactly how our intuition is totally wrong. According to a study in the February issue of science journal Emotion, "the wounding and death of the player's own character may increase some aspect of positive emotion."


The study also found that students that scored higher on a common test for "psychoticism" experienced less anxiety when shooting opponents. So the next time you enjoy fragging an opponent in Halo 3, remember ... there is a good chance you are psychotic!

[Via GameCritics. Photo Credit]

Time for another, perhaps sensationalized violent video game report from a local TV station. Omaha's KETV ran a story (which currently appears on the front page of CNN.com) on how video games "normalize" killing, according to doctors.

We had trouble finding studies from all the universities they cited and certainly none of them are recent publications (the above Indiana University brains scans come from a 2006 report), so why report on this now? Enter Dr. Greg Snyder, a psychologist at Omaha's Children's Hospital.

After citing three university studies that only go so far as to conclude games can desensitize children to violence, the report then inserts the following quote from Snyder: "The more normal it is, the more likely it is they're going to activate or engage in those behaviors when provoked or even unprovoked." Though we're not trying to discredit his opinion, the evidence presented in the report does not lean towards that conclusion (although, given the report's structure, that's what the reader is led to believe).

After contacting a doctor for one side of the argument, does KETV find an equally reputable contrasting viewpoint? No -- or at least, there's no indication that gaming researchers or industry officials such as the ESRB or ESA were reached for contact. Said the report, "the video game industry notes that the research also finds that teenagers have similar responses to violence in movies or TV" (no studies or quotes are cited). Instead, those that provide the counterpoint quotes include two teenagers playing Gears of War and a manager of general operations for Gamers in Omaha -- not two sources likely to be held in the same regard as a psychologist.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is uncomfortable with the number of knives in violent video games, and hopes developers will begin to reconsider content in response to fatal stabbings that occurred late last year, The Sun reports this week.

Brown is advocating a new zero-tolerance policy for individuals found carrying blades with an intent to do harm. This action comes in response to knife-related fatalities in the UK, specifically three tragedies that occurred over the last weeks in December. Along with this zero-tolerance message, Brown expressed concern over the number of video game characters who wield knives, and asks the industry to address its "responsibility to society."

It's worth noting that though Brown wishes for the industry to reconsider the level of violence in games, he does not wish to introduce censorship or interfere on a State level.

On this fifth annual "International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers," we remind you to tip -- but not to kill -- your service providers. According to The Toronto Sun, Anastasia Kuzyk of the Sex Workers' Alliance of Toronto believes that games like Grand Theft Auto feed into the "subculture of allowing the violence to continue," and that violence "against sex workers should not be normalized, but it is." Although she doesn't mention GTA by name in the quote, it's the only well-known game we can think of that lets you "run down prostitutes and kill them and beat them up and take their money."

Kuzyk has cause for concern, as 171 female sex workers (no stats on men given) were killed between '91 and '04 in Toronto. This is also not the first time in recent memory that GTA has received flak from sex worker advocates, though there's no word yet on whether GTA IV will allow for the ironically health-enhancing activity of picking up a prostitute like in other installments in the series. So, Happy International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers everyone! Boy, that's a mouthful.

[Via GamePolitics]

Health care? Taxes? Immigration? Why do presidential candidates insist on wasting our time talking about such trivial issues? When will they address the questions we really care about -- the ones about video games? Well, actually, right now.

Non-partisan, not-for-profit advocacy group Common Sense Media has quizzed some of the leading presidential candidates on a variety of media issues, video game violence legislation among them. Here's a quick summary of their views on proposed federal legislation limiting children's access to violent games:

• Senator John Edwards (D - NC): The ESRB and retailers are doing a pretty good job, but the FTC found that 42 percent of children under 17 can still purchase M-rated games, and that's too high. Publishers need to tone down the marketing of violent games to kids. If the industry isn't careful, the government "will need to consider further steps" to keep these games away from children
• Senator Barack Obama (D - IL): Video games should use technology to let parents restrict content [Note to Obama: they already do.] The rating system should be improved to make content information "easier to find and easier to understand. ... but if the industry fails to act, then my administration would." In any case, the government should spend money to study the problem.
• Governor Bill Richardson (D - NM): "I would consider this legislation," but it's really up to the parents. I'll give federal employees paid time off to spend with their kids.
• Fmr. Governor Mitt Romney (R - Mass.): I would enforce current obscenity laws to protect children from "a societal cesspool of filth, pornography, violence, sex, and perversion." I would "go after" retailers that sell violent games.
  

While the responses are interesting, the lack of participation from front-runners like Hillary Clinton, Rudy Guliani and Mike Huckabee makes the information a little less than complete just weeks away from the Iowa caucuses. Still, the full questionnaire has illuminated the candidates' thoughts on other game-related issues such as childhood obesity, screen time, media literacy and the media's impact on the candidates' own kids. Be an informed voter and give it a read.

While he might be a big shot politician these days, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will always be associated with his breakthrough movie role as Conan the Barbarian. So it's not horribly unfair for the ABC7 Sacramento news team to ask the Governor's office how his public opposition to video game violence gels with THQ's new, extremely gory Conan video game. "The Conan character existed far before the governor portrayed him in the movies, and it still exists in different forms of entertainment," said Aaron McLear, the governor's press secretary. "The governor has no association with that game."

Fair enough, but we're a little disappointed the ABC7 reporter didn't go the extra step and ask Schwarzenegger how he felt about the violence in the Conan movie -- the one he was associated with. Surely some children were exposed to the movie's wonton brutality and turned into broadsword wielding murderers, right? So why the double standard? And why no Kindergarten Cop video game? Inquiring minds want to know!

[Via GamePolitics]