Who is Killing Video Games?

so the anti gamers have got a blog post going around at the moment entitled gamergate is killing videogames and they said gamergate wouldn't have an effect on anything so the blog begins by mentioning that totalbiscuit wrote a twitter longer questioning the theory of media influence particularly in video games asking where are the scientists because i don't trust anyone from gamer ghazi to document anything accurately we'll look at this for ourselves TB begins his post with I'm consistently bothered by this throwaway phrase media affect people as if it's some kind of argument winner and in an arguable statement of fact in reality it's lazy it's too vague it's pseudo-intellectual at worst it makes a gigantic broad-stroke which is so heinous in its inaccuracy as to render it an utterly meaningless buzz phrase and he goes on to say so I ask you this in what way specifically do video games affect people what kind of people do they affect is it universal or are some people more susceptible than others to what degree does it affect people what attitudes can inspire we already know based on uncountable studies that video games do not cause a violent behavior so that indeed is one way that video games do not affect people these are perfectly reasonable questions and apparently an actual social scientist posted a lengthy explanation of media influence and just to show you what side of the fence they stood on they posted it on reddit's gamer gauzy board a place so biased they have a picture of Anita sarkeesian with a son halo around her head like she is a goddamn Byzantine icon so why anyone would post anything that they want considered by all parties on gamer gauzy is baffling so gamer gauzy describes themselves as a community of 6031 cultural Marxists destroying video games with a hundred and eighty-nine social justice warriors there at the moment when I took this screenshot they say do you think people who care about social justice should have the freedom to review and make games without harassment and daxing well as someone who's both been threatened and doxed yes I totally agree that they should be able to do anything without the threat of harassment and DOX or do I just think that gamergate is a bunch of hypocritical right wing conspiratorial horse crap well as someone who gives a damn about facts let me check hmm it does seem that the vast majority of people in gamergate are in fact very much left-leaning libertarians so no I don't think that gamergate is excessively right-wing anyway getting back to the answer to where are the scientists in response to total biscuits question someone called an ani social scientist has posted a reply here the person claims to be a real social scientist who studies videogames in their impact and for the sake of argument I'm going to believe that they're telling the truth they claim to have published peer review research they're not a member of digress and their work is quantitative rather than qualitative this person says I think everyone here knows that video games are not linked to violence even amongst vulnerable populations and gives a citation however that doesn't mean that video games can't have negative real-world consequences which is the first point on which we will stop no one said they can't have negative real-world consequences the question isn't can they have negative real world of consequences the question is do they have negative real-world consequences and like you have just stated the answer appears to be no this person has deliberately reframed the question in order to make the answers ambiguous for example they say there is a difference between linkages to violence and links to aggression another negative effects this is deliberately nebulous terminology totalbiscuit asked for solid concrete specific examples to say aggression causes negative effects is deliberately vague and of course being deliberately vague in the face of a request for specific concrete examples means that this person is frankly not answering the question they go and say that in the past few years there have been much better evidence of the link between violent video games and aggressive behavior again the nebulous undefined term aggressive behavior a quite impressive recent long term longitudinal study in JAMA Pediatrics concluded the study found abit revile Nvidia gameplay increases long-term aggressive behavior by producing general changes in aggressive cognition and this occurs regardless of sex age initial aggressiveness and parental involvement and I am sure that this is true but now you have to explain to everyone how this is a bad thing the closest they get is by intimating that it's going to cause bad behavior there are apparently populations who are particularly vulnerable especially those with the traits of high neurosis ISM apparently prone to anger and depression highly emotional and easily upset disagreeableness cold indifferent to other people and low levels of conscientiousness prone to acting without thinking failing to deliver on promises breaking rules if the worst effect the video games have on people is that some people who play video games a lot are prone to acting without thinking deliver it failing to deliver on promises and breaking rules then I personally am of the opinion that that's their problem for them to deal with and is absolutely in no way my responsibility or should be pressed upon me as an issue the fact of the matter is that nothing that this social scientist has said has translated into reality there have been no real-world effects you can say all you want the video games cause quote unquote aggressive behavior but if the real-world effect of people becoming quote unquote more aggressive is that the rate of violent crimes are 1/3 of the rate of 1994 then it seems that either your studies are wrong or it doesn't matter and let's not forget that in the time between say 1990 and 2012 the population of the United States increased by about 65 million people our anonymous social scientist goes on to talk about gender next and says that studies have found that playing video games with the theme of female objectification I'd like to see what video games that was may prime thoughts related to sex encouragement view women as sex objects and lead to self-reported tendencies to behave in a pro towards women in social situations there's still more work to be done but the early evidence suggests that games matter on views of gender well let's have a look at say the crime statistics again let's look at say the forcible rape statistics from say again nineteen ninety one hundred and two thousand people down to two thousand and twelve where despite an increase in population of 65 million or so we're down to eighty four thousand and comparing this to the video game sales figures in the United States that have quadrupled since 1996 I don't know how your studies are wrong but they are not adding up they are not translating into real-world damage to women laws are not being broken video games are not encouraging people to be criminals I really think you should ask yourself about your own biases specifically in this case confirmation bias you have something you are looking for you want to prove something and the evidence does not seem to support your hypothesis I'll let you explain to everyone what's your bias and your agenda is mr. or mrs. anonymous social scientist added on reflection let me say one other thing there are a number of us in academia who love games who care about games and believe games are important we have been working for years to make games a legitimate tool for education and for study and we were making progress people were starting to take games seriously and then came gamergate I have seen the careful progress of a decade come crashing down and now when I go to talk about the games industry to groups or fellow academics game agates always comes up of an example of how terrible and immature the people who play games are well mr. or mrs. social scientist I'm going to give it to you straight I don't care I don't give a damn if people in universities take games seriously or not I literally don't care if you want to make games a tool for education or for study by wanting to make this the prime focus of games you have missed the point of games games are not for education or study they are for entertainment it has been this warping of the industry try and fit your agenda through the journalist through academics through feminist critics through pressure on developers that has caused gamergate to come about and I can't believe the entitlement I've worked for a decade to try and change your hobby into something it's not all tough shit that's your mistake then isn't it so these were my thoughts after reading this post on Game of gauzy and I had a look at the comments thanks for the great in-depth analysis we have facts while gamergate has their hate and misogynist crap big boy on campus 95 I don't think you know what a fact is especially given that the person making the post says we're not sure we have a long way to go that is not what you would call a fact all this on from 1080 pizza I've been looking for a proper scientifically supported post what solid conclusions did we draw from it only one the video games don't cause violence sexual or otherwise so I decided to make a post postulating this to our social scientist which was of course censored why because I am from gamergate and I care about facts and evidence and reason gamer gauzy does not and this threatens their echo chamber so Gigi please go but like everything gamer gauzy does they do it incompetently so here are my questions to our anonymous social scientist that was censored why is the violent crime rate dramatically drop since the advent and explosion in popularity of video games and if our social scientist studies are correct and the studies that find no correlation between video games and violence are not correct why is there no effect on the violent crime rate from this and the reason that I say that Ghazis incompetent is because not only did the social scientist see and reply to my question but but they left our social scientists response to that question intact the response is interesting and is as follows I stated pretty clearly that there is no direct link from video games to violent crime agreed there is not and the paper does not show a link and I do not claim that it does I'm glad we can establish that videogames do not cause violent crime and they don't say that the evidence presented links violent video games to aggression in a longitudinal study there are issues with the study obviously clearly but it concludes that video games can increase aggressive cognition and aggressive behavior but that does not for some reason translate into an increase in violent crime so what's the problem apparently people who played more violent video games were significantly more likely to have aggressive fantasies and to answer questions about real behavior such as when someone who has angered or provoked me in some way I have reacted by hitting that person in the affirmative well I'm afraid I do not care for such self-reporting when objective reporting shows that the number of violet assaults is down across the board even though the population has risen aggravated assault rape murder robbery burglary it's all down so for this person say again this is far from the final word but either way trends in overall violent crime wouldn't shed much light on videogames one way or another is disingenuous we're not trying to shed light on videogames we're trying to shed light on the results of playing video games on people and apparently a four-fold rise in the number of people playing video games has not led to any kind of increase in violent crime whatsoever it has in fact coincided with a decrease a dramatic decrease in these crime rates and this is despite the overall trend of increase in population the violent crime rates would be how we know that there is a problem with video games these would be the end effect of video games more sexual assaults more rapes more violent assaults more murders and as you have stated the best you can do is say that there is an increase of aggressive fantasies well I don't care I don't care if people have aggressive fantasies as long as they're not committing crimes they can have all the aggressive fantasies they want going back to our gamergate is killing games blog post they quote our social scientists added on reflection paragraph let's finish off the bit that I didn't read it will take years and years to repair the damage the gaming is caused and this is absolutely devastating to the serious study and application of the power of games to real problems we are going to have trouble getting grants getting foundations to fund games and getting people to take us seriously it's devastating and it makes me very sad well honestly I don't care I that if to be honest with you this is kind of good news for me do you want to know why the author of the blog post will show us exactly why for many years people have been fighting for games to be recognized seriously as an artform I don't care if games are recognized seriously as an art form by pretentious hipsters or feminist academics social scientists have been studying the influence of games not just because of their negative effects but because of the potential positive effects as well I do you want me to tell you about the positive effects of games I can save you all this kind of studying if you want games could potentially be a powerful tool to help teach empathy and to increase satisfaction and happiness you know what right they are games are already a powerful tool to increase satisfaction and happiness and this is done by fucking playing them and it is unaffected public perception of gaming in academia tough shit you corrupt motherfuckers sit there and demonize a consumer revolt that just wants cool standards in the fucking industry that they spend their hard-earned money on you run around to the press you run around to the mainstream media you run around to law and fucking order so they say oh gamers are terrorists trying to drive women out of the industry and you are now going to come to us with crocodile tears saying oh no our narratives backfired on us and no one wants to touch us tough fucking shit apparently though gamergate has not been shy about their disdain for academia and video games that's not true what we're shy at what we're not about is our disdainful feminist academia in video games because feminist academia seems to be crazy frankly and it seems to me corrupt I'll show you why but first let's finish this as evidenced by the popularity of anti academic figures such as youtuber known as Sargon of Akkad well that's funny because I'm not anti academic I'm all in favor of the STEM fields I'm all in favor of psychology and all that sort of thing well I'm not in favor of is people making specious arguments who've got a goal that they're trying to reach and are desperately trying to find some way of validating their arrival at that goal despite the fact that the evidence doesn't support them getting there I mean just reading the title of one of his videos tells you all you need to know well it does if you are a propagandist the author of this blog post then links to my video the professional cretins of academia the picture of the thumbnail of the video is a picture of a person called Katherine cross who is a feminist academic and we'll get back to her shortly for now let's turn our attention to Adrian Shaw he could be a bunny rabbit for all I care identification with videogame characters and arguments for diversity and representation this is hosted by die gray the conclusion of this paper is as follows playing as a character that is like you in terms of demographic categories does not necessarily engender identification this calls into question both the educated benefits and the marketing benefits of playing as a main videogame character that is a member of a marginalized group what she is saying there is that her research shows that shoehorning in diversity into video games is not going to draw in people who aren't already playing the video games and it does not give any kind of educational benefits to people who might want to know what it's like to play as a person from that marginalized group this is Adrian shores conclusion gamers do not need diversity so what does Adrian do she takes the exact same study and repurposes it to try and avoid using the term gamer altogether as a way of forcing diversity into video games which was then passed down to the gaming press to perform their assault on the gamer identity as if this intellectual dishonesty was not enough Adrienne Shaw and other dyg remembers Shira chess mere can solve oh and TL Taylor have been meddling directly with the games press and prominent figures within the gaming industry at for example the digraph playfulness political fishbowl conversation in which Adrienne sure asks how its feminists game studies influence developers and games where's the impact outside of academia a question which is answered by three people firstly Deirdre Squinkie who is Squinkie well Squinkie is someone who hates videogames and men and Squinkie is very highly regarded by the founder of silver stream media Lucas JW Johnson why silver string media important because the other two people who answered this question were Zora streets and Andrew Grant Wilson of silver stream media Andrew Grant Wilson is the partner CCO and director of design and zoya Street is an advisor and industry consultant also consulting for silver stream media or Anita sarkeesian and Jonathan McIntosh of feminist frequency what's their connection you say well they've got a few the first one being through Catherine cross who says that the reaction to gamergate in her professional circles has been one of shock and horror but also support for me in the work I do which presumably involves her giving talks for dygraf but more importantly involves her being the secretary of feminist frequency the nonprofit organization that Anita sarkeesian is the president of but I know what you're thinking I thought game great was dealing with corruption sorry did you think there wasn't corruption involved in all this collusion because there most certainly is how about silver stream media's involvement on crypt of the necrodancer silver stream media was contracted to consult on the story development create a thematic arc and write the narrative content sprinkled throughout the gameplay a neat sarkeesian naturally runs her feminist frequency steam curation service where she advises people on what games that she thinks they should buy and I'm sure it will come as absolutely no surprise to you the crypt of the necrodancer is one of her recommended games with of course absolutely no disclosure of her connections to the company that wrote it honestly fucking honestly you sit there and say oh academics you're so anti academic you're trying to get academics out of the interest Rhee you're all fucking corrupt I just want to lay out this complex web of relationships so you can be aware just how incestuous this all is so firstly we have say any two sarkeesian of feminist frequency feminist frequency is written by jonathan mcintosh they are both advisors for silver string media Andrew grant Wilson and Zoya Street of silver string Media work and have conferences with members of dye grow specifically Shira Ches TL Taylor meuk and salvo and Adrian Shaw and third party individuals such as Squinkie Chi who connected diagram and silver stream and Catherine crossed the Secretary of feminist frequency who can extra diagram Lee so do I care if academics are failing in the gaming industry not really I think they've kind of brought it on themselves this is what happens when you were corrupt and you were trying to shoehorn your agenda into an industry that doesn't need it or desire it so when on this blog post they complain that people in gamergate are happy that academic feminists are losing their funding are having trouble getting games taken seriously in academia you've really got to ask yourself who do you think you're fooling and then to have the gall to say gamergate is killing video games and that's exactly what they want here's a cute little nugget for you this is Maya felix kramer of silver stream media she's being supported on patreon by Deirdre Squinkie Kai Maya Kramer produced a line of t-shirts called cuties killing video games both Maya and Squinkie have supported on patreon a person known as Mattie Bryce Mattie death to video games Bryce yes I'm well aware that they'll say oh this is all I Roenick but there's only so long you can go around saying that we hate video games we want to kill video games before people are going to start thinking you're not joking is gamergate about corruption of course it is who are the corrupt people feminists academics feminists journalists and feminists quote-unquote developers these are broadly termed social justice warriors and they are a little clique who fund each other help each other out and advance each other's interests because their interests are all aligned

Channel: Sargon of Akkad

Views: 208,988

Rating: 4.9085264 out of 5

Keywords: video games, vidya, gaming, gamer, gamergate, GamersGate (Business Operation), Video Game (Industry), Video Game Culture, Games, Gameplay, Reborn, Computer, Mmorpg, Role-playing Game (Game Genre)

Id: X0EZl2Aq-8o

Length: 22min 52sec (1372 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 10 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/Sheepy_McSheepleton]

I don't know how your studies are wrong.

"I have no idea what you are doing, but you are wrong, because of my feefees!" There you have it, folks. That is all you need to know about Sargon of Akkad.

[u/[deleted]]

Let's be honest here - who's surprised? Sargon is pretty much the flagbearer of the conspiracy-ridden anti-feminist majority of gamergate and there are very few if any within the movement who won't agree with every little thing he says.

In many ways, he carries more weight to them than TB does because he's far more "based". This of course will help to solidify how the rest of the world sees gamergate - when its loudest voices shoot down peer-reviewed social science studies because... they don't like the results.

They're already an industry joke, let them keep making a joke of themselves to the rest of the world too.

[u/Missepus]

His followers love these videos because they don't understand how wrong he is. So they feel he dares to speak truth to power. The thing is: he speaks common misunderstanding to the least powerful discipline in academia, gender studies, and he supports it with the cultural marxism conspiracy theory. Then he shames the people who talk back, particularly if they are female.

[u/Cromulex]

From my understanding the main issue in this area of research isn't confirmation bias but publication bias. Studies that find a significant effect size for a given media effect are more likely to get published than a study which returns a nil result, because the latter is unsexy. This probably has the effect of exaggerating average effect sizes when people do meta-analysis.

I probably shouldn't post this because it will only give these idiots ideas but i can't help it because /r/iamverysmart.

[u/TheKasp]

"I don't know how your studies are wrong but they are not adding up..."

I turned off.

[u/shillaway_account]

Love that quote mine of Adrienne Shaw. They really do just read until they find something that fits their narrative. The very next bit of that paragraph explains that context of the game the player is placed in (NPCs, narrative, environment etc) has a greater effect on identifying with a character than what the playable character looks like alone.

[u/RexMundane]

That flair is very necessary. Ideally we could put the video behind a few warnings of "Are you sure you want to to this to your YouTube Recommendations? Cause I don't think you do."

[u/Zennistrad]

This guy understands social science the same way creationists approach evolutionary biology.

[u/[deleted]]

what a boob