L4sBotSep 23, 2023

Violent video games linked to verbal aggression and hostility but not physical aggression

https://lemmy.world/post/5584705

Violent video games linked to verbal aggression and hostility but not physical aggression - Lemmy.world

Violent video games linked to verbal aggression and hostility but not physical aggression::Violent video games are linked to higher levels of verbal aggression and hostility but not physical aggression, with narcissistic traits also correlating with aggressive behaviors, according to a study published in Frontiers in Psychology. The research emphasizes that personality traits and game choice independently contribute to aggressive tendencies, but neither is proven as a causal factor. …

Show threadChefdano3Sep 23, 2023
Replace “violent video” with “competitive” and you’ll find the same result.
Show threadlolSep 23, 2023
To be fair, almost every popular competitive video game does involve violence in some way and will be classified accordingly by PEGI (which they looked at in this study).
Show threadKnusperSep 23, 2023

That’s part of this whole debate that I’d love to see much more focus on. Why are so many video games built around violence? Like, violence in video games may not be bad, but what makes it so popular?

Obviously, there’s some folks who love blood splatter effects and some (horror) games cater to that. But then you’ve got RPGs where people report having their immersion broken from how much genocide their hero has to commit. Or even child-friendly/cutesy games sometimes struggling to make it make sense (Pokémon don’t die, they just faint, and they totally want to fight, yep).

It just feels like the demand for violence is significantly lower than the supply and I’ve never seen comprehensive research into why that is.

Show threadlud

That’s part of this whole debate that I’d love to see much more focus on. Why are so many video games built around violence? Like, violence in video games may not be bad, but what makes it so popular?

It’s interesting that almost every single game involves violence and death in some way.

I suspect that it’s just a universally understood concept that every living creature gets.

Death bad, alive good.

Violence is just part of our predator DNA.

Sep 23, 2023 at 6:42pmWeb
Show threadKnusperSep 24, 2023
Yeah, I’ve also seen it argued on a much smaller scale, that fun in video games is often done on a risk-reward basis. You bring yourself in danger to get a reward. And well, there’s other ways than violence to portray that, like spikes in a jump’n’run or a stupid wall in a racing game. There’s also other ways to induce fun, like puzzle mechanics. But yeah, ultimately you’re left with a small fraction of genres that really work or have been explored…