Reality Bytes: Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked
Henry Jenkins
MIT Professor
Main FAQs The Myths About Role-Playing Games. Over the years, the role-playing hobby has amassed a menagerie of myths and legends - both about how the game is played, and the type of people who play them. What follows is a brief collection of the most popular myths you may hear about role-playing games in general and Dungeons & Dragons in. Download and play Myths of the World games. Hunt for Hidden Objects, find clues and solve puzzles in one of our most popular series!
A large gap exists between the public's perception of video games and what the research actually shows. The following is an attempt to separate fact from fiction.
1. The availability of video games has led to an epidemic of youth violence.
According to federal crime statistics, the rate of juvenile violent crime in the United States is at a 30-year low. Researchers find that people serving time for violent crimes typically consume less media before committing their crimes than the average person in the general population. It's true that young offenders who have committed school shootings in America have also been game players. But young people in general are more likely to be gamers — 90 percent of boys and 40 percent of girls play. The overwhelming majority of kids who play do NOT commit antisocial acts. According to a 2001 U.S. Surgeon General's report, the strongest risk factors for school shootings centered on mental stability and the quality of home life, not media exposure. The moral panic over violent video games is doubly harmful. It has led adult authorities to be more suspicious and hostile to many kids who already feel cut off from the system. It also misdirects energy away from eliminating the actual causes of youth violence and allows problems to continue to fester.2. Scientific evidence links violent game play with youth aggression.
Claims like this are based on the work of researchers who represent one relatively narrow school of research, 'media effects.' This research includes some 300 studies of media violence. But most of those studies are inconclusive and many have been criticized on methodological grounds. In these studies, media images are removed from any narrative context. Subjects are asked to engage with content that they would not normally consume and may not understand. Finally, the laboratory context is radically different from the environments where games would normally be played.Most studies found a correlation, not a causal relationship, which means the research could simply show that aggressive people like aggressive entertainment. That's why the vague term 'links' is used here. If there is a consensus emerging around this research, it is that violent video games may be one risk factor - when coupled with other more immediate, real-world influences — which can contribute to anti-social behavior. But no research has found that video games are a primary factor or that violent video game play could turn an otherwise normal person into a killer.3. Children are the primary market for video games.
While most American kids do play video games, the center of the video game market has shifted older as the first generation of gamers continues to play into adulthood. Already 62 percent of the console market and 66 percent of the PC market is age 18 or older. The game industry caters to adult tastes. Meanwhile, a sizable number of parents ignore game ratings because they assume that games are for kids.One quarter of children ages 11 to 16 identify an M-Rated (Mature Content) game as among their favorites. Clearly, more should be done to restrict advertising and marketing that targets young consumers with mature content, and to educate parents about the media choices they are facing. But parents need to share some of the responsibility for making decisions about what is appropriate for their children. The news on this front is not all bad. The Federal Trade Commission has found that 83 percent of game purchases for underage consumers are made by parents or by parents and children together.4. Almost no girls play computer games.
Historically, the video game market has been predominantly male. However, the percentage of women playing games has steadily increased over the past decade. Women now slightly outnumber men playing Web-based games. Spurred by the belief that games were an important gateway into other kinds of digital literacy, efforts were made in the mid-90s to build games that appealed to girls. More recent games such as The Sims were huge crossover successes that attracted many women who had never played games before. Given the historic imbalance in the game market (and among people working inside the game industry), the presence of sexist stereotyping in games is hardly surprising. Yet it's also important to note that female game characters are often portrayed as powerful and independent. In his book Killing Monsters, Gerard Jones argues that young girls often build upon these representations of strong women warriors as a means of building up their self confidence in confronting challenges in their everyday lives.5. Because games are used to train soldiers to kill, they have the same impact on the kids who play them.
Former military psychologist and moral reformer David Grossman argues that because the military uses games in training (including, he claims, training soldiers to shoot and kill), the generation of young people who play such games are similarly being brutalized and conditioned to be aggressive in their everyday social interactions.Grossman's model only works if:
- we remove training and education from a meaningful cultural context.
- we assume learners have no conscious goals and that they show no resistance to what they are being taught.
- we assume that they unwittingly apply what they learn in a fantasy environment to real world spaces.
6. Video games are not a meaningful form of expression.
On April 19, 2002, U.S. District Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh Sr. ruled that video games do not convey ideas and thus enjoy no constitutional protection. As evidence, Saint Louis County presented the judge with videotaped excerpts from four games, all within a narrow range of genres, and all the subject of previous controversy. Overturning a similar decision in Indianapolis, Federal Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner noted: 'Violence has always been and remains a central interest of humankind and a recurrent, even obsessive theme of culture both high and low. It engages the interest of children from an early age, as anyone familiar with the classic fairy tales collected by Grimm, Andersen, and Perrault are aware.'Posner adds, 'To shield children right up to the age of 18 from exposure to violent descriptions and images would not only be quixotic, but deforming; it would leave them unequipped to cope with the world as we know it.' Many early games were little more than shooting galleries where players were encouraged to blast everything that moved. Many current games are designed to be ethical testing grounds. They allow players to navigate an expansive and open-ended world, make their own choices and witness their consequences. The Sims designer Will Wright argues that games are perhaps the only medium that allows us to experience guilt over the actions of fictional characters. In a movie, one can always pull back and condemn the character or the artist when they cross certain social boundaries. But in playing a game, we choose what happens to the characters. In the right circumstances, we can be encouraged to examine our own values by seeing how we behave within virtual space.7. Video game play is socially isolating.
Much video game play is social. Almost 60 percent of frequent gamers play with friends. Thirty-three percent play with siblings and 25 percent play with spouses or parents. Even games designed for single players are often played socially, with one person giving advice to another holding a joystick. A growing number of games are designed for multiple players — for either cooperative play in the same space or online play with distributed players. Sociologist Talmadge Wright has logged many hours observing online communities interact with and react to violent video games, concluding that meta-gaming (conversation about game content) provides a context for thinking about rules and rule-breaking. In this way there are really two games taking place simultaneously: one, the explicit conflict and combat on the screen; the other, the implicit cooperation and comradeship between the players. Two players may be fighting to death on screen and growing closer as friends off screen. Social expectations are reaffirmed through the social contract governing play, even as they are symbolically cast aside within the transgressive fantasies represented onscreen.8. Video game play is desensitizing.
Classic studies of play behavior among primates suggest that apes make basic distinctions between play fighting and actual combat. In some circumstances, they seem to take pleasure wrestling and tousling with each other. In others, they might rip each other apart in mortal combat. Game designer and play theorist Eric Zimmerman describes the ways we understand play as distinctive from reality as entering the 'magic circle.' The same action — say, sweeping a floor — may take on different meanings in play (as in playing house) than in reality (housework). Play allows kids to express feelings and impulses that have to be carefully held in check in their real-world interactions. Media reformers argue that playing violent video games can cause a lack of empathy for real-world victims. Yet, a child who responds to a video game the same way he or she responds to a real-world tragedy could be showing symptoms of being severely emotionally disturbed. Here's where the media effects research, which often uses punching rubber dolls as a marker of real-world aggression, becomes problematic. The kid who is punching a toy designed for this purpose is still within the 'magic circle' of play and understands her actions on those terms. Such research shows us only that violent play leads to more violent play.
Henry Jenkins is the director of comparative studies at MIT.
Sources
Entertainment Software Association. 'Top Ten Industry Facts.' 2003. http://www.theesa.com/pressroom.html
Gee, James. What Video Games Have to Tell Us About Learning and Literacy. New York: Palgrave, 2001.
Grossman, David. 'Teaching Kids to Kill.' Phi Kappa Phi National Forum 2000. http://www.killology.org/article_teachkid.htm
Heins, Marjorie. Brief Amica Curiae of Thirty Media Scholars, submitted to the United States Court of Appeals, Eight Circuit, Interactive Digital Software Association et al vs. St. Louis County et al. 2002. http://www.fepproject.org/courtbriefs/stlouissummary.html
Dmv near me locations. Jenkins, Henry. 'Coming Up Next: Ambushed on 'Donahue'.' Salon 2002. http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/08/20/jenkins_on_donahue/
All Myths Are True
Jenkins, Henry. 'Lessons From Littleton: What Congress Doesn't Want to Hear About Youth and Media.' Independent Schools 2002. http://www.nais.org/pubs/ismag.cfm?file_id=537&ismag_id=14
Jones, Gerard. Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Super Heroes, and Make-believe Violence. New York: Basic, 2002.
Games All About Myths Time Travel
Salen, Katie and Eric Zimmerman. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003.
Myth Games Online
Sternheimer, Karen. It's Not the Media: The Truth About Popular Culture's Influence on Children. New York: Westview, 2003.
Wright, Talmadge.'Creative Player Actions in FPS Online Video Games: Playing Counter-Strike.' Game Studies Dec. 2002. http://www.gamestudies.org/0202/wright/
Myth Game Download
Games About Mythology
Main> FAQs > TheMyths About Role-Playing Games Overthe years, the role-playing hobby has amassed a menagerie of myths andlegends - both about how the game is played, and the type of people whoplay them. What follows is a brief collection of the most popular mythsyou may hear about role-playing games in general and Dungeons& Dragons in particular. If you know of any that Ihave missed, drop me a note to let me know -
A player is a realperson; a character is the role that the player plays in the game. Allof the actions that the character makes, all of the items that theypossess, even the characters themselves areimaginary, and do not exist in the real world. This is possibly themost frequent mistake that people make about role-playing games. Inthis respect, a player and their RPG character are no different than anactor or actress and the role that they play. Charleton Heston isn'treally Moses. Vivien Leigh isn't really Scarlett O'Hara. Gene Wilderisn't really Willy Wonka. The things that those characters do in theirrespective stories are not the actions of the people who play them. Itis terribly ironic when a news story accuses gamers of confusingfantasy with reality, while exhibiting much of the same confusion allon its own.
Thismyth also includes any claim that RPGs share some qualities that mostof the games that preceded them do (they're played on a board, a playerrolls dice to determine how far to move a piece, etc). Unlike otherforms of games, RPGs do not usually have clearly defined winners andlosers; rather, they are much more of an exercise in team effort.Confusion in this area is often proof that no real research into RPGshas been done.
RPGsoften have a system of magic involved, and it is usually a form offantastical magic, far-flung from anything found in witchcraft or theoccult. There are some RPGs that have been designed to have amore 'real-world' feel to them, and the authors have used actualoccultic sources as their framework; nevertheless, one cannotlearn how to cast spells by playing a role-playing game, anymore than they can learn to swing a sword or ride a horse. Themagic used in RPGs is entirely 'make-believe,' it exists only in thegame world, and NEVER causes any effects in the real world. It is NEVER directed at real people, and any claims to the contrary areFALSE. Whilemany RPGs have some form of magic system, many others do not,especially the plethora of science fiction RPGs.
While combat does exist in most RPGs, it isnever promoted as the answer to everything. Conflict is alarge part of our history, and RPGs reflect that. But thereis much, much more to the hobby than simple hack and slash.. if thatwere not true, there would certainly not be asmany gaming books on the shelves as there are! There arebooks on other cultures, people, races, and traditions, all of whichare interacted with in any number of ways, only one of which iscombat. If AD&D (for example) was the roleplayingequivalent of Quake (for example), it would fitrather neatly into one 100-page rulebook. For the record, itdoesn't.
It'sstrange that a devout sports fan who can talk about little more thanscores and statistics isn't considered 'obsessive' by most people, yeta gamer who plays once a week is. Any pastime holds the potential to dowhat it does all too well: pass time. A person who spends alot of time playing RPGs is simply a person who would spend a lot oftime doing something else if games were not a partof the equation. Personal responsibility and maturity are thetrue focus here. Gaming is no more of an obsessive hobby thanany other, it just involves more brain power than most. Perhaps this iswhat a lot of the critics fear.
Inmany circumstances, games have been blamed for causing 'seeminglynormal' people to commit crimes that they would never have dreamed ofhad they not been exposed to RPGs. This is a preposterousnotion to those of us who understand RPGs, but to many, it seems verypossible in the light of all of the myths that are held as truth aboutgames. The truth is, according to the CAR-PGa,that all media accounts of crimes committed 'in thename of gaming' had many other, more understandable factorsinvolved. The real story here is that 'Abused Child KillsParents' does not sell quite as many newspapers and magazines as 'GameTaught Child To Kill.'
Whetherby causing severe depression over the loss of a character, or as somedemented way to start their life over again at the beginning, RPGs havebeen accused of being a possible cause of suicide among theirplayers. The Center for Disease Control, Departmentof Suicidology, and Albert Einstein University feel differentabout the matter, however; all three have done extensive research onRPGs and found no connection between gaming and suicide. Theexperts have spoken. Also, as mentioned above, the CAR-PGa has researched all ofthe 'gaming related suicides' on the record, and found extenuatingcircumstances in every one. Again, itcomes down to what sells more papers or keeps the public tuned inthrough the commercial break. Itbears noting that the isolated incidents in which gamers havecommitted suicide are usually misinterpreted by the uninformed to makeit appear as if gaming causes people to take theirown lives. By their own figures, the suicide rate amongpeople who play RPGs would be much lower than theaverage for any other group of people. Therefore, uninformedreally isn't that harsh of a title.
Whilethis may have been close to being accurate many years ago, it iscertainly not true today. The fact is that many gamers arefemale, although the hobby is still male-dominated. In a study conducted by Wizards of theCoast in 1999, it was found that 19% of the respondentsbetween the ages of 12 and 35 were female. That's almost oneout of every five gamers.
Role-playingcan be as simple as a game of cops-and-robbers in the backyard, or anintense session of playacting the bickering leaders of city-states onthe brink of war. At it's root, it is the same type of game,but for most of us, the way we play is altered as our tastesmature. An 11-year-old can play a fighter in Dungeons& Dragons and go about hunting dragons and rescuingdamsels and never tire of it. An adult who does the same willbegin to look further into the character, developing a personalhistory, and pursue higher-minded goals. It'sone of the great things about roleplaying; it spans not only age andmaturity, but culture and gender, and becomes what the player wants itto be. It's hard to find a hobby that does that. Inaddition, in a study conductedby Wizards of the Coast in 1999, 59% of the gamers surveyedwere between the ages of 19 and 35, and the largest portion of thatrange (34% of the whole) were between 25 and 35. Keepin mind that any of the above myths apply equally as well toD&D, as it is the granddaddy of all RPGs. Likewise,some of these myths could have been applied to other RPGs that aresimilar to D&D in certain ways.
Thismyth has been propagated by William Schnoebelen, evangelist andself-proclaimed expert on satanism and witchcraft - but by no means wasit started by him. Usually, this is an attempt to make D&Dlook like a tool for Satanists or occultists to gather new members.There is no evidence to support this claim. For more on Schnoebelen andhis various claims, visit the Basic Gaming FAQ.
Whilenot the most common myth, I have heard it more than once. AndI have combed all editions and printings of the DM'sGuide and Player's Handbook and foundnothing of the sort. Can anyone help me outhere? What could they be talking about?
Thismyth is only half right. While it is true that certaineditions of D&Dand AD&Dcontained several types of demons and devils in it's MonsterManual, they were listed as opponents,along with most of the other creatures in the Manual. When TSR released the second edition to D&D in the early 90's,they removed the demons and devils and replaced them with othercreatures, in an attempt to keep everyone happy. In 2000, TSRannounced that demons and devils would be returning to the game whenthe third edition of Dungeons & Dragons wasreleased. In the November 1999 issue of InQuestGamer, TSR brand manager Ryan Dancey referred to them as the'ultimate bad guys,' and said in 'all materials ever produced for thegame, they are portrayed as opponents to be overcome, if not killedoutright.' Players do not worship anyof the things found in a D&D manual; it'sthe characters that may (See the myth PlayerAnd Character Are The Same, above), and they arenot given the option of worshipping either demons or devils.
Thisfirst came to me from a copy of the Jehovah Witness magazine TheWatchtower back in 1983, and since then, I've heard itrepeated several times. The truth is, there are no rulesfor arson, rape, or torture among the manuals forD&D, so therefore, these acts are not promoted by thegame. However, it is possible for a character to performthese actions if the player wishes so. Therefore,technically, it can happen; however, anyone who actively chooses to dothese things, and seems to be enjoying it, reallyneeds to seek help. It is a sign of very serious problems. Someopponents of gaming have claimed that the Dungeons Master'sGuide mentions rape in a manner that might encourage playersto act it out. This is untrue. For more on thismatter, check out the BasicGaming Advocacy FAQ.
Again,this one is only half right. There are deities for thecharacters to serve in certain D&D books (Deities& Demigods, and the latter revision LegendsAnd Lore, as well as others), but these are for the charactersto serve, not the players. (See the myth PlayerAnd Character Are The Same, above). Noone has to do anything special in the real worldfor a deity that their character serves in the game. That's just silly. Also:no character has to serve a deity. Thereare no specific rules designating that this must occur, except possiblyin the case of cleric characters (holy men and women who gain theirpowers from a higher source). The original statementregarding this, made in the first edition Dungeon Master'sGuide, suggested that all characters should serve a deitybecause it would help to flesh out the background and motivations ofthe character. This is just as if a Christian actor wouldresearch the Muslim faith if he were preparing for a role as a Muslimcharacter. It is a vehicle for better role-playing, and notan adoption of a new faith system.
Actually,there was a book called The Arduin Grimoire thatcontained charts that were supposed to make medieval combat more'realistic.' These charts contained bloody descriptions ofbody parts being torn off or crushed. But,it wasn't an official D&D product, andwas not recognized by TSR as such, and due to it's violent nature, manystores refused to carry it. The combat used in D&Dand AD&D is much more 'heroic' and unrealistic,because it is meant to recreate tales of heroic fantasy, not the firsthalf hour of Saving Private Ryan.
This one has come to me in many forms - that he is mentioned as someonewho embodies 'D&D-style charisma,' that he appears as acharacter in the manuals, or even that he would have made an excellentplayer. Actually, the first edition DungeonMaster's Guide does mention Adolf Hitler - but not as a hero,villain, or even as any part of the game. The mention is madein a discussion about the difference between charisma and physicalbeauty, and it uses him as an example of someone who had a very strongcharisma with a certain group of people, but not much in the way ofphysical beauty. Any attempts to use this example as aconnection between games and racism or anti-Semitism is very, verylow. In doing so, one would also be suggesting that severalhistory and sociology books are doing the same thing. Toread more about this topic, including a direct quote from the DungeonMaster's Guide, visit the Basic Gaming Advocacy FAQ.
Thisis probably the first myth I had ever heard aboutD&D. This comes from the tale of James Dallas Egbert,who hid in the steam tunnels beneath his university and attempted (andfailed) to commit suicide with a drug overdose. There is no evidence that he went down there to play D&D, asthere was no one with him, and he didn't have any dice orbooks. Plus, he admitted his intentions to themedia. Despite that, investigator William Dear,chose to maintain the gaming angle, partially in an attempt to protectboth Dear and his family members from the truth about his homosexualityand drug abuse. In reality, most of us would rather sit around a tableand enjoy the game, rather than get all hot and sweaty in anunderground tunnel.. Contributors:Spencer Lease, Owen Raine Thisdocument is a work in progress, and is in no way complete as you see ithere. If I have left something out, or missed an importantpoint, it is imperative that you, the reader, bring it to myattention. All contributors will receive credit for theircontributions at the end of the document. You can learnmore about role-playing games by exploring the other FAQ files in thissection:
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