The Educational Value in Video Games and How They Affect Decisions/Aggression

Video games have been controversial ever since they came to be. Do they cause adolescents to act in violent ways, do they have educational value or not, and are they worthwhile to play, or are they are just a waste of time? These are the ongoing questions that parents, teachers, etc. are asking the gaming industry. There are, however, steps being made to make gaming more educational and worthwhile. Don't get me wrong, they are worthwhile as a recreation tool, but can they help adolescents improve and sharpen the necessary skills needed to thrive in today's society?

"The gaming industry has already figured out that educational games don't make money in the consumer marketplace. The new approach would instead market them directly to schools. Doug Lowenstein, president of the Entertainment Software Association, said there will soon be 75 million Americans who are 10 to 30 years old - an age bracket that grew up on video games (Feller)."

Games that do have an educational value do not sell well. Many companies and developers have tried and tried, but they just don't appeal to today's adolescents. Another possibility, though, is to market the games directly to the schools and require the students to play them in classrooms. I know when I was younger; I had a few educational computer games. They had various games that honed in on all the basic skills (math, reading, English, spelling, etc.) that a child needs to practice. Those games were veryhelpful, but I must admit, they were not even close to being as fun to play as my other, non-educational games. I think that the only way to get children to learn is to make it so they don't know they are learning.

"More than three-quarters of American youths have video-game consoles at home, and on a typical day at least 40 percent play a video game. Some academic scholars claim playing games is good for literacy, problem-solving, learning to test hypotheses and researching information from a variety of sources. Others say gaming may be good for understanding technical information but not for reading literature and understanding the humanities. Enthusiasts claim gaming is preparing young people for the knowledge-based workplace. Critics worry that it's making kids more socially isolated, less experienced in working with others and less creative. Experts remain divided about whether addiction to games is widespread and whether violent games produce violent behavior. Increasingly, researchers are studying why games are so engrossing, and some are urging educators to incorporate games' best learning features into school programs (Glazer)."

Games can be utilized as a learning tool if done the right way. The question remains, though, whether people who play the games can utilize the skills they learn and sharpen in everyday situations, or whether they can only utilize them in the same context in which they learned them.

Experiments were done in which gaming consoles were placed in the basement of a library to see if the adolescents that came to play them, would also visit the actual library and get interested in reading (Trout). Some other libraries put video games on the shelves next to books and monitored what kind of an effect that had on an adolescent's desire to read. The results were astonishing. Adolescents were reading more and more thanks to gaming; the experiment had worked. These are the thoughts of one subject, Ian, 17, from Ann Arbor, Michigan.

"If it wasn't for the gaming stuff dragging me in that first time, I would have gone maybe once in the past two years," says Ian Melcher, 17, a gamer in Ann Arbor, Mich., who had just checked out two calculus books. "I realized the library was pretty cool and had other things I was interested in."

The next subject is a very touchy subject when it comes to video games. It involves video games and their effects on shootings around the country. Are they the cause of the shootings, or aren't they? This is a major dilemma, especially for modern-day politicians, that won't disappear on its own. There are strong arguments for both sides, but I think the argument that it's mainly based on parents, and what they let their kids do, is the strongest one.

"This study tested the hypothesis that violent video games are especially likely to increase aggression when players identify with violent game characters. Dutch adolescent boys with low education ability (N = 112) were randomly assigned to play a realistic or fantasy violent or nonviolent video game. Next, they competed with an ostensible partner on a reaction time task in which the winner could blast the loser with loud noise through headphones (the aggression measure). Participants were told that high noise levels could cause permanent hearing damage. Habitual video game exposure, trait aggressiveness, and sensation seeking were controlled for. As expected, the most aggressive participants were those who played a violent game and wished they were like a violent character in the game. These participants used noise levels loud enough to cause permanent hearing damage to their partners, even though their partners had not provoked them. These results show that identifying with violent video game characters makes players more aggressive. Players were especially likely to identify with violent characters in realistic games and with games they felt immersed in (Off Target)."

Violent games do have an effect on one's behavior, but anyone with an ounce of self-control knows how to control those emotions so things don't get out of hand. In the article, the author stated that the test subjects had a "low education ability," so their perception of right and wrong is definitely different than one of a more intelligent person. The psychology behind it is quite simple, however. It has been proven that when a person does a certain action in a certain situation, then later gets put back into the same exact, or a similar situation, they will perform the same action as they did the first time. There are many alternative arguments to this theory, however. Many argue that shootings are caused by bullying, and that the shooter simply wants revenge on the bully. There is also the argument that the majority of the shooters were found to have had a serious psychological disorder and were mentally unstable.

"Even the surgeon general's youth-violence report, which the FCC cites in its recent findings, couldn't find a convincing link. 'Taken together, findings to date suggest that media violence has a relatively small impact on violence,' the surgeon general reported. And the specific inferences about game violence were even less swaying. 'The overall effect size for both randomized and correlational studies was small for physical aggression and moderate for aggressive thinking...,' the surgeon general found. 'The impact of videogames on violent behavior has yet to be determined (Off Target).'"

In conclusion, education and video games could be mixed, but it would take an enormous amount of effort to mix them effectively. Adolescents just don't want to knowingly mix them. They'd be fine if they were learning, but didn't know they were, but that's the tricky part for teachers everywhere. Many companies have attempted to do so, and many have failed because adolescents simply do not prefer to learn while they are performing a recreational task. There is also a concern if the learning they experience can be used in real-world situations, or will they only be able to use it in the same context in which they learned it. Mental education is not the only type of learning companies are trying to aim at adolescents, physical education is another. With the "Wii," children can now move around while playing a game, instead of just sitting there pressing buttons. With the release of the "Wii Fit," that aims at teaching various exercises and such, people of all ages are able to do certain exercises while playing a video game. This shows that companies are surely trying, but are they all trying, and are they trying hard enough?

Violence in video games has been and will always be a debatable subject. There will always be the debate on whether they cause people to act in violent ways, and both sides will never agree with each other. I, personally think that they have somewhat of an effect, but not as big of one as people make it out to be. The majority of the time these major acts of violence happen, it is proven that the subject already had some form of psychological disorder and was mentally unstable. Politicians and authority figures try to blame violence on video games when, in fact, it's more the parents' fault, if anything. Many parents let their children play such games, when they shouldn't be getting their hands on them until they are much older. Parents will never admit that they failed, though, and will always turn and blame something else for their faults.

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Glazer, Sarah. (2006, November 10). Video games. CQ Researcher, 16, 937-960. Retrieved March 25, 2008, from CQ Researcher Online, http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/cqresrre2006111000.

"Off Target." Electronic Gaming Monthly (August 1, 2007): NA. General OneFile. Gale. Slippery Rock University-Bailey Library.

Trout, Josh, and Brett Christie. "Interactive video games in physical education: rather than contribute to a sedentary lifestyle, these games demand activity from the players." JOPERD--The Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance 78.5 (May-June 2007): 29(7). Academic OneFile. Gale. Slippery Rock University-Bailey Library. 2 Mar. 2008

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