I'd be careful about throwing this (or any) statistic around too carelessly. First of all, it's a hard number that describes the subjective adjective "violent," although there's probably an official definition they're using to get their numbers, but somebody else could just do another study with another definition of "violent" and get a very different result (just how violent was Knights of the Old Republic, etc.).

Secondly, this is really just a data point, not an indicator of a general decline in violent videogame content. A more useful data point statistic would be how many games currently in development would be defined as violent, because this could give us a short-term forcast, and also give us more information about current publisher mindsets than the recent-history view afforded by sales numbers. Especially considering that several big-ticket violent games were pushed beyond 2003, including Doom III, Half-Life 2, and Ninja Gaiden among others. This may mean that 2004 may show an increase, possibly a net increase in the sales of violent videogames.

On the other hand, sometimes all you need is a few positive numbers here and there to turn some heads and change some minds. The old "videogames out-grossing Hollywood" statistic gets thrown around a lot, and it's good for getting people to stop dismissing the game industry as unimportant, despite the fact that the numbers for that statistic don't exactly make for a fair comparisson. Personally, I'm not ready to make this my trump card, but I'd make it a bullet point in my argument.

Clockwork, the official definition of what they described as "violent" was the M-rating for the game.

Bending to the definition of "what is violent content" only allows for people to claim that Mario Sunshine is violent because you can jump on creatures' heads to defeat them. In that argument, everything save Tetris is violent.

I think using the M-rating is significant, because it justly keeps games like KotoR (which is arguably no less or more violent than the SW movies it's based off of, which are marketed for children) out of the argument.

As Grue says, one person could consider a game violent, while another may not. Consider such Teen titles as Jak 2 or Ratchet 7 Clank: Going Commando. Though the games are pretty much a continuous series of violent acts, they are still only rated T for "mild violence", and I imagine they probably aren't included in those numbers (though I haven't seen them and could be wrong). Though the quantity of "violent" games may be on the decrease, the "quality" of the violence should be considered as well. TO cite an overused instance, Manhunt has the user's character doing some pretty twisted things to people, in a degree I certainly didn't notice in any titles in 2002. Perhaps the extreme-violence enthusiast demographic is becoming a niche market.

Personally, I'm a big fan of videogame rating systems, and I wish that society was more conscious of them because I want the industry to be able to make games for adults and games for kids without moms getting confused.

In any case, the people who most need convincing are the people who are going to be analyzing T and E rated games for "too much violence." Indeed, that we have descriptors like "mild violence" and "cartoon violence" may cause irate muckrakers to point fingers and jump up and down that we are trying to sneak violence into games or something.

In any case, I see the easiest rebuttal to this statistic as "What did you call 'violent' games?" Followed by "What do you mean by 'M-rated' games?" Followed by bickering over semantics, ad nauseum.

Still a good thing to add to the arsenal.

A single data point, as ClockworkGrue says, is hardly the trump card bowler makes it out to be. And playing "trump cards" isn't going to convince Joe Lieberman that what few violent games there are out there aren't harmful. To be facetious for a moment, if someone pointed out the hard statistical fact that in 2003 only 11.9% of the pornography produced was child pornography, which is down from last year's 13.2%, would that convince you that child porn was no longer something to worry about?

Statistics about violent games [or child porn] are not condusive to an honest and public discussion about what is going on in the culture of computer games. If you are in favor of violent games, now is the time to contribute to the discussion. Try to have some pespective, instead of pandering to the audience.

This just in: Joe Lieberman will personally buy two dozen copies of GTA: Vice City and Unreal Tournament 2004, and eat them, with catsup, bloody-looking catsup, and proclaim them delicious, if he wins one state in the Democratic primary. Every man has his price and apparently Joe's price is an excuse to stay in the 2004 presidential.

"If you are in favor of violent games, now is the time to contribute to the discussion."

I'm in favor of game studios having the same latitude that filmmakers, writers, visual artists and musicians have to make entertainment art that pushes boundaries in social mores and public acceptance. Stastically speaking, of course.

Oh, I forgot to be serious about this.

"To be facetious for a moment, if someone pointed out the hard statistical fact that in 2003 only 11.9% of the pornography produced was child pornography, which is down from last year's 13.2%, would that convince you that child porn was no longer something to worry about?"

Granted, it's facetious, but it's not a valid point. Child pornography is not illegal in this country because it's against the public conscience. Or patently immoral because the Bible says so (actually the Bible isn't particularly against sex with children; sex with your own children, yes; sex with children in general, ah, not such a big deal). Child pornography is illegal in this country because voluminous research indicates that it is bad for children. Don't believe me, ask the Supreme Court. They recently struck down an obscenity law banning child pornography that depicts simulated and computer-generated child actors because no children are actually involved and our child pornography laws are predicated on the widely supported concept that engaging in production of such materials is bad for children. But no real children, no problem.

I haven't read a plentitude of studied opinion indicating that violent video games are bad for anyone.

Yeah, I could see the "other side" using that statistic as proof of the success of their efforts. Kids are now safer, Greedy "killographers" are being forced to clean up their games, etc. Just goes to show how a pretty meaningless statistic can show you whatever you want to see in it.

I don't think quoting any statistics will move these activists, because they are only moved by the violent image that offends them. Let's revisit the "what is a violent game" question that was just asked. To the outsider critic, a violent game is really one that offends him/her at first glance. You can make the case that Mario is violent, but it's 'cute' violence. It passes the violence test because the observer is not frightened or offended by it. However any game with blood (which is, I believe, a main qualifier for an M rating) will present a shocking image to those who are not accustomed to video game violence. When they say games are getting more violent, they mean the imagery is becoming more intense.

The truth is, non-gamers simply perceive games differently than gamers. The arguments that convince you won't convince them because they are afraid. They equate virtual violence with real violence, and it scares them. They are afraid for their children. They are afraid of the strange and unknown.

Bowler:

Interesting stat, and worth bringing up. Thank you. But we need more numbers than this - actual sales quantities are at least as relevant; and of course actual play hours would be even better! (If only!)

CFoust:

It isn't just fear of the unknown. It is cheap, and poor, argument to dismiss "non-gamers" (as though they are all the same!) as timid people too scared to listen to reason. Just as cheap as saying that anyone who likes these games likes the violence they model, possibly because they are scared of and hostile to real people. (I have seen this opinion expressed!)

I play many games, including those that use violence and disturbing imagery, as a matter of cultural interest and/or personal enjoyment, and I am interested in and potentially concerned about the effects of these pastimes on me and on other people.

We do not know exactly how culture feeds into behaviour. Many people take the common-sense (though unproven and not necessarily correct) approach that the ideas and images we consume do have some sort of influence on the behaviours we exhibit. When we don't know exactly how that influence works, they feel that we should show some respect for the seriousness of actual violent behaviour and be wary about the things which might contribute to it.

And before you say "what about poverty, family problems, individual psychological issues, etc" - many of the people who decry violent games also consider these other factors to be serious social issues too. The existence of other possible factors does not make this one any less worthy of investigation.

I'm not saying that violent games automatically make people violent. I'm saying that there are unanswered questions about the relationship between games and behaviour - and for us to say that people who raise those questions are afraid of the unknown just makes US look irrational, and weakens any other arguments that we care to advance. If we want to settle this, we need to analyse the facts, not collectively psychoanalyse the "other side" on the basis of a few remarks or attitudes on a single topic.

Not to godwin-ize the thread, but my favorite quote is from David Cross:

"What was the name of that video game Hitler used to play?"

Phil:
"It isn't just fear of the unknown. It is cheap, and poor, argument to dismiss "non-gamers" (as though they are all the same!) as timid people too scared to listen to reason. Just as cheap as saying that anyone who likes these games likes the violence they model, possibly because they are scared of and hostile to real people. (I have seen this opinion expressed!)"

Oh my, that's not what I meant to say at all.
By 'non-gamers' I meant non-gamers who are concerned and critical of violent games, without having an intimate knowledge of them. I really am trying to avoid 'us vs. them' language, but it's hard to do without typing a big long qualifying phrase every paragraph.

I also don't mean to say that anyone is timid and unreasonable. It's simply that statistical "trump cards" like these are very unlikely to comfort anyone concerned about violence. What is really needed are scientific case studies showing the long term effects of games on children. If anyone fails to address such studies (no matter what the outcome may be), then I may consider them unreasonable.

"I am interested in and potentially concerned about the effects of these pastimes on me and on other people."
As am I, to a point. But did the statistic in the article allay your concerns even one bit? I doubt it, and that was my main point.

san: I think the child porn comparison is somewhat valid, simply because there is a widely perceived notion that that violent games are harmful to players, just as being in porn is perceived as being harmful to children(no argument there). The retort from the concerned citizen, In both cases, will be that any is too much.

If you really want to use this as an arguement for video games not being related to violence, you'd need to compare it the latest violence statistics from 2003 also.

If violence went down, and the rate of violent video games went down, then this could clearly be touted by 'them', as opposed to 'us'.

Granted that I think violence has little/nothing to do with todays video games. Stats like this are just silly to compare. But I am of the mind that we have to take the responsibility that comes along with shaping culture, as do books, movies, and music. Not saying that we should hold ourselves back at all, just that video game creators are in a strong cultural position. And will be moreso as games become even more accepted.

Oh, and armaghetto? I'll see your David Cross, and raise you a Chris Rock, "Whatever happened to crazy? Remember crazy?" Love some David Cross though. Great stuff.

Truthfully, the numbers of any kind don't matter to the Joe Liebermans.

First, I can tell you, having read through the research on television, children and violence that the allegedly hard numbers and evidentiary proof in this research, cited with such confidence by the critics of televisual violence, are much less than they appear. Some of the data are based on very old research which almost everyone now concedes was overwhelmingly flawed in its design. Other data show extremely miniscule "effect sizes", meaning that they amount to virtually nothing in real life, outside of laboratory settings. Attempts to deal with more real-world, sociological measurements of the effect of violence in games or television have mostly come to nothing, or rely on extremely flawed or problematic guesstimated assumptions, most typically by magically turning correlations into causations.

Such research also ignores considerable bodies of contradictory quantitative and qualitative evidence--for example, the lack of a correlation between the incidence of violent representations in games or television and the incidence of violent behavior among audiences or consumers in other nations (most notably Japan). Or the observable, undeniable fact that as representations of violence have proliferated on television and in computer games, the actual incidence of violent crime in the United States has decreased markedly.

None of this slows down the Lieberman machine because numbers, facts, quantities were never material to the real structure of the anti-games (or earlier anti-television) argument in the first place. It's a cultural crusade that has the logic of a moral panic, which is a stable, recurrent cycle in modern American history. It comes from someplace other than empirical evidence and has other internal logics that play themselves out regardless of what the data show. If said crusades gain enough legitimacy in the public sphere, they generally can generate a body of pseudo-scientific or exaggerated research findings to trail in their wake simply because they create a money incentive to which researchers respond. If I had enough money behind me distributed through governmental and non-governmental funding mechanisms, I could probably generate research findings that suggested that gravity doesn't exist or that pornography turns people into Baptist ministers.

The point at which I would have thought most of the simplistic "violent representations create a desensitization to violence and therefore cause violent behavior" crowd would have slunk away in embarassed silence was September 11th. After all, we'd all seen pictures of skyscrapers getting blown up before, in "Independence Day", right? But there wasn't a single person, no matter how media-saturated and intellectually challenged, who failed to understand instantly, electrically, tragically, what the difference between reality and fantasy was when they saw the Twin Towers burning. So much for "desensitization". But the anti-violent media mafia has no shame--most of them were back hawking their usual wares the very next morning.

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Posted by: outsider on April 11, 2006 08:34 AM