Gamers Prefer Challenge Over Violence
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20 Jan 2009, 13:10
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News
A study conducted by the University of Rochester has concluded that challenges and "meaningful opportunities to interact and work together" are more important to videogame enthusiasts than violence.While their results seem to fall well within the realm of the obvious, the data provides interesting talking points for fans of our particular hobby. Researchers worked with virtual environment think tank Immersyve, Inc. to conduct a pair of surveys with 2,670 "frequent game players," and carried out four experiments involving over 300 University of Rochester undergraduates.
In an interview with the Canadian Press concerning the study and its findings, lead author Andrew Przybylski notes that fans of titles like Halo 3 and Team Fortress 2 gravitate towards those particular titles in order to have "their psychological needs met," referring to the "experience of autonomy and competence in gameplay."
In one experiment, modifications were made to the popular first person shooter Half-Life 2. One version of the game saw players equipped with a shotgun, featured amplified levels of violence, and forced players to hunt down an adversary. The other featured psychic abilities, and players were "essentially playing a game of tag." If an opponent was hit with the psychic power, they would float into the air and evaporate.
After playing, participants were asked questions regarding their enjoyment of the experience, and whether or not they would return to the labs to play either of the versions again. The responses indicated that the a player's opinion of the experience, on average, wasn't affected by modifying the levels of violence.
Interestingly, even the 5% of participants who self-identified as having a preference for violent games did not rate the more violent game as being more enjoyable.
The study appears in the recently released February issue of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, but a free abstract of the report summarizes their research findings.
Blood and gore don't make video games more enjoyable: study http://www.gamepolitics.com/2009/01/16/research-gamers-love-challenge-not-gore
Awesome mod.
<3
Apathy leads to oppression :)
for example quake: in quake3 enemies evaporate in a bloody cloud when directly hit with rocket launcher or railgun. in quake live they removed the gore and enemies dissolve in some kind of golden fairy dust.
given the choice I would pick the bloody one.
anyway its good, that its public fact now ^^
some times you are thinking "damn why can't he just die right now" but only a few minutes after that you start thinking "how can I give him the most painfull dead" there is the challenge, more fun! :D
challenge + voilence = mu mu mu multikillll!