These pictures are a common seen to college students. Many surveys and tests on video game violence, agression and addiction. This is Morrison Hall on the Boise State campus where video games are a part of everyday life. In this picture the gamers are playing Super Smash Brothers on Wii 'socially', when it's more one on one the Xbox and PS3 are much more common. Super Smash Brothers was a hit for Nintendo 64 so when they created the Wii Nintendo carried this game over with them. The point of the game?...

What is "Super Smash Bros."?
It's a brawling, battling, action-packed video game that features a varied roster of characters for four-player simultaneous melees!

When you hit an opponent, his or her damage meter builds up.




The number at the bottom is the damage meter.

The more damage that builds up, the farther an opponent flies each time he or she gets hit!




An opponent with higher damage flies farther.

Soon, people are flying around like rockets.
And when you fly off the screen in any direction.




You lose a life!

Also, in some modes, each time you KO an opponent, you earn points.
As an example, you can fight for a mere two minutes in a competition to see who can shoot their opponents off-screen the most.

http://www.smashbros.com/en_us/howto/basic/basic01.html

“The Affects of Reward and Punishment in Violent Video Games on Aggressive Affect, Cognition, and Behavior” Annotation

Anderson, Craig, and Nicholas Carnagey. "The Effects of Reward and Punishment in Violent Video Games on Aggressive Affect, Cognition, and Behavior." Psychological Science 16.11 (2005): 882-889.

“The Affects of Reward and Punishment in Violent Video Games on Aggressive Affect, Cognition, and Behavior” is an article that focuses on an experiment that examines how rewarding violent actions in a video game may have a continuing affect in aggression related traits. The research experiment required 80 participants to play one of three versions of a video game. The game was Carmageddon 2, the researchers had one version where violence was rewarded, one where it was punished, and the last version did not contain violence. The researched let them play the games for 20 minutes then measured aggressive affects, aggressive cognition, and aggressive behavior. They found where violence was rewarded all three areas of aggression increased, punishing violent behavior only increased hostile emotion and the non violent game did not increase any of the three. This research was a good model of the affects of violent video games on aggressiveness in players. The research supported increased aggression and also refuted excuses of increased aggression like the argument that competitiveness increases the aggression not violence.

This article, which contained a lot of pertinent research sources, was a well written and well researched article telling about the increased levels of aggression are affected by violent video games. My favorite part because of its usefulness is how it showed other reasons aggression levels may be increased but then, through research, it eliminated these theories from truth. I don’t think there is any way you can say there is one truth but it did a good job arguing for the side the research supported. This article added a few subjects I can discuss and try to find a truth about in my paper. It will help the content of my paper much better.

Video Games, an Addiction

While trying to find a focus for the research I've been doing I found that two topics within the video games and your social life subject dominate most research. You can look at all the evidence on whether or not video games will increase aggressive and violent behavior, or you can look at whether or not video games are a real addiction. Both of these topics fit within the subject so I think touching on both of them to a certain extent will be the best for this paper. This video skims the surface of the video games being an addiction topic. It is a good overview and gives a lot of information. Towards the end of the video there is a link for olganon.org which is a self-help website to help people that feel they are addicted. The creation of frequently used websites like this one shows the relevance of this topic especially for the near future when online gaming is easily accessible and increasingly popular with younger people. Will the future yield more obvious results from this ‘problem’? Or, is this just a passing thing. While video games become more and more advanced with evolutions similar to Wi-Fi on a touch iPod, when will online gaming be on a handheld device or create another avenue of portability making it even easier to not break from gaming to participate in real life?

See the Signs?

How ironic the truth may be... Many of the people that believe violent video games don't affect them may be like these boys. Do you really notice when your life and choices begin to change? Maybe it's just 'you'... But what negative influences are affecting and changing 'you' into how you are. Is the over the top violence even something people should be worried about? Is it really even a big deal?

Good vs. Bad

Video games today have changed the last generation of youth in many ways. Socially, does it help or hurt this generation? It’s nearly impossible to say but what you can do is review the pros and cons. Since 1972 video games have been changing drastically. Instead of two lines and a ball there are game systems that require movement like the Wii. A big part of Wii Fit’s sales pitch was directed at women. With their tagline “How will it move you?” it didn’t leave a question in anyone’s mind as to what the positives were. You get to work out in the comfort of your own home and be thoroughly entertained the entire time. Then you have Mortal combat on the PlayStation console that has caused people to look at the emergence of strong violent themes in games. After a study of 227 college kids the American Psychological Association (APA) found that ‘“Students who reported playing more violent video games in junior and high school engaged in more aggressive behavior," said lead author Anderson, of Iowa State University. "We also found that amount of time spent playing video games in the past was associated with lower academic grades in college."’ Now this is a small sample to base all your opinions on but looking at all sides of the spectrum is the only way to get a more credible opinion.

A Little History

People have been playing video games in their homes since 1973 when Atari released the pong video game and sold nearly 100,000 units in its lifetime. Video games were unsuccessful for the next day and companies crashed because the lack of interest. In 1985 Nintendo changed the future of gaming companies and gamers alike. The Nintendo Entertainment System came out with titles like The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Brothers which paved the way for console after console. The handheld Game Boy came out then the Sega Genesis followed by the Super Nintendo Entertainment System aka SNES. PlayStation debuted with the PlayStation 1 and soon after that the PlayStation 2 hit the market. Nintendo decided to compete by creating the Nintendo GameCube which had relative success. Xbox followed that trend by coming out with the Xbox and Xbox 360 before any other major consoles produced their next advance in gaming. Nintendo debuted the Wii which was followed by the PlayStation three. After a slow start in its beginning gaming has revolutionized the hobbies of children today. There is no way to know what the next breakthrough will be or when it will come but you can be sure it’s coming. It may have a large focus on the newish gained popularity of online gaming or even the motion activated controls like the Wii. One thing for sure is that the next generation of kids will be hooked on the next generation of games. Will they be better for it? Or is the future full of socially inept citizens?

The Beginning...

Any activity that takes a large chunk of your time will affect you in some way. It may not define who you are but there will, hopefully, be positive affects and there probably will be negative effects. A ‘gamer’ is simply someone who plays games and this label usually follows people that play video games. You don’t have to put in your time or give your right arm to become a gamer, if you game, you just are. There are other classes of gamers though. When it’s more than a casual game of Super Smash Brothers or more than just a round of COD (Call of Duty) you are at the next level. They are the level 10 COD players or the Generals in the Halo world. As gaming becomes a more popular hobby, as it has over the last decade, the question of ‘How does this hobby affect the hardcore gamer’s social life?’ still remains.