For the week of 2.13.06 

Even as video game producers and marketers battle regulation of their products and smear anyone advocating such regulation as "censors," ever more scientific evidence accumulates demonstrating that the use of violent video games is harmful.

Of chief concern to psychologists and medical researchers are MMORPGs, short for Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games, in which thousands of players can participate in a game at once.  The games are increasingly attracting players: More than 4 million players worldwide, 1 million of them in North America, have plunked down $45 for the software and $15 a month to play World of Warcraft, one of the newest and most popular MMORPGs.

Like gambling addiction, MMORPGs can also create financial hardships for players. Some gamers buy their characters or online goods in the real world for actual dollars or accumulate online "gold" that they in turn sell to other players for actual currency. One academic researcher sold an online character on eBay for enough money to pay for a trip to Europe – and, obviously, another gamer was willing to spend that much.   (Christian Science Monitor, October 13, 2005)

Maressa Orzack, director of the Computer Addiction Study Center at McLean Psychiatric Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, has treated many people who have been unable to stop playing MMORPGs and who have neglected their jobs, schoolwork, and families.  Even gamers themselves are aware of the addictive nature of such games; one early MMORPG, Everquest, has earned the fan nickname "Evercrack."

Many players claim that MMORPGs are merely a kind of "giant chat room" which enables them to make new friends, and which just happens to have gaming activities going on. But even that can backfire, Dr. Orzack says. One of her patients told her how his wife decided to participate in an online "marriage" ceremony between her online character and that of another player she met in a MMORPG. They even e-mailed wedding invitations. The real-life husband "was absolutely beside himself," she says.   (Christian Science Monitor, October 13, 2005)

QUOTE: "They have withdrawal symptoms. They can't wait to get back on [the game] again."  --  Maressa Orzack, director of the Computer Addiction Study Center   (Christian Science Monitor, October 13, 2005)

Such concerns are not restricted to the United States. In Asia, where computer games are far more prevalent and culturally acceptable, the addictive potential of computer games is taken more seriously.  

The People's Republic of China has opened its first officially licensed clinic for Internet addiction.  "All the children here have left school because they are playing games or in chat rooms everyday," says The clinic's director, Dr. Tao Ran, stated that all of his patients were children who dropped out of school to have more time to play games. "They are suffering from depression, nervousness, fear and unwillingness to interact with others, panic and agitation. They also have sleep disorders, the shakes and numbness in their hands."  According to government figures, China has the world's second-largest online population - 94 million - after the United States. (AP, July 5, 2005)

In South Korea, which has the world's highest per-capita rate of broadband connectivity at 70 percent, the rise in addiction to multiplayer online gaming is alarming psychologists. The number of counseling sessions for game addiction quadrupled last year, the government says. There were 8,978 sessions in 2004 compared with 2,243 cases the previous year, and the first seven months of this year saw 7,649 sessions. (Christian Science Monitor, October 13, 2005)

17 million gamers – approximately 35 percent of the population, most of them males in their teens and twenties - are obsessive.  In 2002, a man died in Kwangju after 86 hours of marathon gaming. And on August 5, 2005 a 28-year-old man was moved to a hospital when he collapsed after nearly 50 straight hours of playing online computer games without food or sleep. He died three hours later, with doctors saying they presumed he died of heart failure. So obsessed by gaming was the man that he was reported to have lost his job due to absenteeism.   (AP, October 6, 2005; Christian Science Monitor, October 13, 2005)

QUOTE: "You have no life. You only focus on gaming, putting off everything. I've seen people who play games for months, just briefly going home for a change of clothing, taking care of all their eating and sleeping here." --  Internet café owner and former game addict Jun Mung-gyu (AP, October 6, 2005) 

Yet even after such incidents, the popularity of computer gaming is so popular in South Korea that the government is funding construction of the world's first "E-sports"  stadium, to be completed by 2008, where online competitions will be displayed on huge screens.   (Christian Science Monitor, October 13, 2005)

In addition to its addictive potential, evidence is mounting that playing violent video games causes increased aggression in those who play them.

New research, carried out by by Bruce Bartholow, a psychologist at the University of Missouri-Columbia, demonstrates a causal link between computer games and violence. When shown images of real-life violence, people who played violent video games were found to have a diminished brain response.

Researchers found that the particular reduction in response associated with violence was correlated with aggressive behavior. A type of brain activity called the P300 response, which reflects the emotional impact of an image on the viewer, was measured in 39 experienced gamers. The participants were shown a variety of real-life images interspersed with violent scenes and other non-violent negative images. In subjects with the most experience of violent games, the P300 response to the violent images was smaller, and delayed. "People who play a lot of violent video games didn't see them as much different from neutral (images)," Dr Bartholow said. Furthermore, when gamers were given the opportunity to "punish" a pretend opponent in another game, those with the greatest reduction in P300 brain responses meted out the most severe punishments. (London Times, January 9, 2006)

Dr. Bartholow's research is merely the latest example. Many studies have suggested that people who play violent games are more aggressive, more likely to commit violent crimes, and less likely to help others.

René Weber, assistant professor of communication and telecommunication at Michigan State University,   Klaus Mathiak of RWTH Aachen University (Germany) and Ute Ritterfeld of the University of Southern California have found that playing violent video games leads to brain activity pattern characteristic for aggressive thoughts. In a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, 13 male research participants were observed playing a latest-generation violent video game. FMRI is a technique for determining which parts of the brain are activated by different types of stimulus, such as sight, sound or the movement of a subject's fingers. This "brain mapping" is achieved by setting up an advanced MRI scanner in a special way so that the increased blood flow to the activated areas of the brain shows up on functional MRI scans.

Thirteen male volunteers between the ages 18 and 26 played a minimum of five hours of video games weekly. On average, participants played video games for 15 hours per week and started playing video games at the median age of 12.  Participants played the mature-rated first-person-shooter game "Tactical Ops: Assault on Terror" for five rounds, 12 minutes per round (an average of 60 minutes total), while in an fMRI scanner. Each participant's game play was recorded and content analyzed as brain activity was measured throughout game play. Eleven of the 13 subjects showed large observed effects that can be considered as caused by the virtual violence. (Michigan State University website, October 11, 2005)

QUOTE:  "There is a causal link between playing the first-person shooting game in our experiment and brain-activity pattern that are considered as characteristic for aggressive cognitions and affects.  Violent video games frequently have been criticized for enhancing aggressive reactions such as aggressive cognitions, aggressive affects or aggressive behavior. On a neurobiological level we have shown the link exists." -- René Weber, assistant professor of communication and telecommunication at Michigan State University (Michigan State University website, October 11, 2005)

Dr. Jeanne Funk, a psychologist at the University of Toledo, has studied violent video-game play among young children for a decade. Funk has found that first- to fifth-graders with the highest video-game exposure are significantly more likely to see aggressive acts as normal and be less likely to express empathy. (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, October 24, 2005)

So overwhelming is the evidence of violent video games' potential for harm that Dr. Craig Anderson helped craft a resolution at the last year's annual meeting of the American Psychological Association which called for less violence in video and computer games sold to children. The APA resolution based its case on 20 years of research. (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, October 24, 2005) Yet those who profit from the sales of videogames continue to exploit children and trumpet their "First Amendment" rights to market products shown to be harmful to individuals and society.

QUOTE: "Extensive research on violent television shows and movies shows younger children are more susceptible to behavioral changes than older adolescents…There really isn't any room for doubt. Aggressive game-playing leads to aggressive behavior. The naysayers don't have a leg to stand on."—Craig Anderson, chairman of the psychology department at Iowa State University (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, October 24, 2005)

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