14 DAY TRIAL // Over the past few years, the debate between those who believe that violent video games are boosting aggressiveness in young people and those opposing this belief has taken on new dimensions. Now, a new study calls into question the very foundation on which the entire argument is built.
Scientists from the University of Gothenburg, in Sweden, recently uncovered evidence suggesting that the ability to cooperate and work well with others is in fact a requisite of the gaming community, especially when playing online.
In addition, their study also revealed that gamers are very likely to learn how to cooperate well with others, even if they start out by playing online. At the same time, those who play computer games understand how to improve their skills better than others.
They are also more likely to search for and discover cause-and-effect relationships, which is something that is apparently very difficult for many to do correctly. Those who oppose exposing teens to violent video games say that violent in-game behaviors can transfer into the real world as well.
Details of the new investigation appear in a paper entitled “How gamers manage aggression: Situating skills in collaborative computer games,” which is published in the latest issue of the International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning.
The work was authored by University of Gothenburg experts Ulrika Bennerstedt, Jonas Ivarsson, and Jonas Linderoth. All team members spent hundreds of hours playing various online games, so that they could observe other gamers in action (both directly and through video recordings).
The team was especially interested in how gamers fought with and against each other, in games that portrayed both violence and aggressive actions. “The situations gamers encounter in these games call for sophisticated and well-coordinated collaboration,” says Jonas Ivarsson.
“We analyzed what characteristics and knowledge the gamers need to have in order to be successful,” adds the expert, who is a Docent with the Department of Education, Communication and Learning.
The group discovered that gamers who were inconsiderate, those who acted emotionally and those who lashed out aggressively tended not to fare well within the community.
“The suggested link between games and aggression is based on the notion of transfer, which means that knowledge gained in a certain situation can be used in an entirely different context. The whole idea of transfer has been central in education research for a very long time,” the expert adds.
“The question of how a learning situation should be designed in order for learners to be able to use the learned material in real life is very difficult, and has no clear answers,” Ivarsson goes on to say, quoted by Science Daily.
In other words, the team is suggesting that the entire gaming and violence debate is not based on a real problem, “but rather on some hypothetical reasoning,” he concludes.