Episode 62: Violent videogames

Before the panic over social media—but after the panic over “video nasties”—was the panic over violent videogames. Was Pac-Man causing little Johnny so much frustration that he’d take it out on his siblings with his fists? Was Doom secretly training little Timmy to be a school shooter?

You don’t hear so much about videogames and violence any more, but if you look at the studies (and the critiques of those studies) there’s a lot to learn about where science can go wrong. In this episode of The Studies Show—in addition to, if we’re honest, just spending quite a lot of time talking about videogames—Tom and Stuart ask whether there’s any decent evidence that gaming can make people more aggressive.

The Studies Show is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine—a journal of underrated ideas to make the world a better place. In the episode we discussed a recent essay on cruise ships, and the surprising (and continual) improvements over the years. You can find all their essays, all of which are free to read, at worksinprogress.co.

Show notes

* Horribly violent games of yore: Death Race, Postal, Postal 2, Carmageddon, Doom II, Quake

* Newer games mentioned in the episode: Slay the Spire, Hades, Doom Eternal, Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Elden Ring

* Hilarious attempt by an MP to ban Space Invaders in 1981

* Chris Ferguson’s 2013 review of videogames and violence

* 2003 review of “The Influence of Media Violence on Youth”

* Pete Etchells’s 2019 book Lost in a Good Game

* List of publications based on the Singapore dataset

* Influential 2008 study by Chris Anderson showing a correlation between videogame violence exposure and violence

* Small Ferguson study from 2012 controlling for several variables and finding no correlation

* Study in the ALSPAC/Children of the 90s dataset

* Are modern, more realistic games worse for us than older ones? Study from 2021

* Use the CRTT to get whichever result you want

* Psychological measures aren’t toothbrushes

* Violent crime rates over time in the US, UK, various European countries, Japan

Credits

The Studies Show is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions.