It’s been a big few weeks for censorship in Australia. Mortal Kombat gets refused classification, another Attorney General blocks the R18+ debate for a set of reasons even more ridiculous than the last guys, Australian Christian Lobby spokesperson Lyle Shelton and Australian Council on Children and the Media Elizabeth Handsley both made arguments against the R18+ which could have been predicted beforehand almost word for word by anyone familiar with their brand of moral panic (A particular low point was a comparison of games companies and the media in Australia to the tobacco industry, charming Lyle).

Plus the recent and even more baffling comments to rise from the ACCM, from Handsley’s colleague Barbara Biggins, the Honorary CEO of the ACCM. Despite her charming Hobbit like name Barbara has spoken out with not a little venom about a dastardly conspiracy by media and commercial interests to subvert children and twist minds to allow an R18+ to be introduced. Her piece which you can read here http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/45770.html is pretty damn speculative and full of suspicions with no facts.

An American psychological researcher named Christopher Ferguson was moved to retort her opinion here http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/55382.html based on a concern she was misrepresenting the studies (I am shocked!) and you can read some of his own studies here http://www.tamiu.edu/~cferguson/pubs.html. Ferguson’s brand of research seems focused on debunking fear mongering connections between new technology and anti social behaviour in juveniles, as groups like the ACL and the ACCM love to do, and trying to refocus attention on the socio economic and mental health issues that actually cause problems.

Barbara Biggins commented on his article at ABC's The Drum website with a large swath of research of her own. She probably didn’t think anyone would bother to go through and find each of these references and read them to check if they enforced her argument.

Well I did.

And big surprise, not a single one of them supports the suppression of an R18+ rating for gaming or even that gaming is harmful in any long term or meaningful way for juveniles, at least compared with any other typical juvenile behaviour. I’m not suggesting that this reference list that she posted represents the entire ACCM evidence to contest an R18+ for games. But this is the first time I’ve come across an objector to an R18+ for gaming actually cite their evidence; so I was pretty damn interested to see how they’d reached their conclusions.

Barbara posted this list as, and I paraphrase, the most recent peer reviewed research on the impact of harm by violent video games on children. The actual information is a mish mash of articles and reports, some circumstantial, none of which actually cover the specific impact of video game violence on violent behaviour in juveniles.

So here we go. I’ve listed the references as they were written by Barbara Biggins, added a hyperlink for all bar one (she failed to provide links to any of these articles) and given my brief layman impressions of the research. I encourage you to read them yourselves and sound me out if you think I’ve written anything misleading.

Vieira, Edward T and Krcmar, Marina (2011) "The infuences of video gaming on US children's moral reasoning about violence" J of Children and Media 5(2) 2011

Research details are not available online. This is the one I couldn't dig up.

-Details that people who have recently played violent games are less sensitive to violence around them. It does not state that video games increase violent behaviour. This was a questionnaire survey of a small group aged 7 to 15, not a full clinical study.

I wasn’t able to find any published studies on this particular item but read the write ups on Gamepolitics.com and Gamespot.com that were very thorough and included interview excerpts with the researchers.

Fischer, Peter; Greitemeyer,Tobias; et al (2011) “The Effects of Risk-Glorifying Media Exposure on Risk-Positive Cognitions, Emotions, and Behaviors: A Meta-Analytic Review.” Psychological Bulletin, Online February 21, 2011.

http://www.psychologymatters.org/pubs/journals/releases/bul-ofp-fischer.pdf

-A study that risk taking behaviour glorifying media (racing games are mentioned but all media is covered including films, television, music and magazines) may cause people to take more risks. Behaviours studied included reckless driving, extreme sports and binge drinking. All these activities are in games available under the current classification, some at a rating of PG and G, and entire film franchises are based on risk taking behaviour.

Gentile, D A et al (2011) "Pathological game use among youths: a two year longitudinal study" Pediatrics, 127 e319-329

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/127/2/e319

-This was a study about game addiction, and how it may impact mental health and school performance in adolescents, more study was recommended. In case it wasn’t obvious it has no bearing on an R18+ decision.

Gentile, D A et al (2011) "Media violence, physical aggression and relational aggression in school age children: a short term longitudinal study" Aggressive behavior, 37, 193-206

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ab.20380/full

-Another study focusing on all media types increasing aggression. It does correlate violent stimulus increasing aggression levels in males but does not specifically highlight games or their interactive nature impacting the results. As with similar studies which we’ve mentioned before on this site the average measured impact (usually neurological activity) on a mind and aggression levels while playing a game is no greater than that of someone watching an action movie or a football game involving a team they support.

Swing, E. et al (2010). Television and video game exposure and the development of attention problems. Pediatrics, 126, 214-221

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/126/2/214

-A brief piece that video games may have the same impact on attention span as television but more research is needed. Similar to the game addiction article there’s no mention of adult or questionable content, only that certain individuals, particularly ADHD sufferers, could have a detrimental effect from playing too many games. Note this was a research to see if game playing is only as bad as TV for affecting attention span, which unsurprisingly the research seems to indicate.

Bushman, B J and Anderson, C A (2009) "Comfortably numb: desensitizing effects of violent media on helping others" Psychological Science 21(3) 273-77

http://sitemaker.umich.edu/brad.bushman/files/ba09.pdf

-Okay, now Anderson and Bushman are old hats at feeding the fear mongers, Craig Anderson has made media statements in the past linking his research to the policy makers arguing that games are harmful and has built something of a career chasing the violent video game bogeyman. He’s come under condemnation in professional research circles for his study practises and publication bias, but to avoid me being accused of an Ad Hominem fallacy lets examine the research anyway. In this case they had groups of college students playing a violent game or watching a violent or nonviolent film. They were then presented with either an actor injured after a violent confrontation or a woman (also an actor) on crutches struggling and requiring help.

The people who had played a violent game for 20 minutes before hand or watched the R rated movie (it was The Ruins, the nonviolent movie was Nims Island) were slightly slower to respond to calls for help. Anyone who took a high school science class can guess that there are literally dozens of factors that could have influenced this. Watching a scary film or playing a violent game could have put them in a more alert state and they might have a greater concern for their own safety than someone bored stupid after watching Nims Island might have rather than a lack of empathy. There are dozens of reasons that could have contributed aside from an assumed insensitivity. The test group seems slightly skewed as well, fFor a start the group was small, only 320 people, all the participants were close to the same age (early 20’s) and socio economic group being college students, and the effects were measured immediately following the stimlus and not at varied times. It’s a result that proves no long term effect.

Not to mention that once again it lumps video games in with other media and had the same outcomes of the first listed Vieira, Krcmar that mentioned decreased sensitivity but no personality impact.

Anderson, C. A., Sakamoto, A., Gentile, D. A., Ihori, N., & Shibuya, A., Yukawa, S., Naito, M., & Kobayashi, K. (2008). Longitudinal effects of violent video games on aggression in Japan and the United States. Pediatrics, 122, e1067-1072

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/122/5/e1067

-It's Craig Anderson on the list of involved persons again so I'm tempted to ignore the report out of hand. But to be fair lets take a closer look here.

This was a better study than the previous one with research carried out in the US and Japan to contrast a culture with a high incidence of physical violence versus a culture with a low incidence. On the surface the report results look pretty favourable to support the idea a high amount of violent video gaming in teenaged juveniles can result in an increase in violent behaviour. It's a longitudinal study similar to one carried out in Germany (Möller and Krahé 2009) that indicated that six months later children who played an above average amount of violent video games confessed to acting violently.

Christopher Ferguson has commented on both this study and the Moller Krahne study and that self reporting, wherein the researches relied on the participants in the study to provide feedback are not the same as an objective measure of aggression. Ferguson also points out the same problems seen in previous studies Anderson has been involved in such as the lack of control of major variables. In any case, while the study may indicate a link between the difference between increased feeling of violence, the actual measured increase based on their own formula is so small, no more than 0.5% to 2% of the difference between aggressive and non-aggressive youth, that it's barely worth noting. Let alone publishing to the press. Climate conditions in monsoonal regions have bigger impacts on aggression levels.

Gentile, D. A. & Gentile, J. R. (2008). Violent video games as exemplary teachers: A conceptual analysis. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 9, 127-141

http://www.psychology.iastate.edu/~dgentile/pdfs/G2_Exemplary_Teachers_in_press.pdf

-I think this addition might have been a mistake on the ACCM’s part, this article is about the relationship between teaching and gaming and concludes that educators could learn a lot from the techniques used in video games to teach players how to play. There’s some discussion about violent games teaching violent behaviour but it’s entirely anecdotal and not the main focus of the article.

Gruel, Steven F (July 19 2010) Brief of California State Senator Leland Y Yee, the California Chapter of the American Academy of pediatrics, and the California Psychological Association ... No.08-1448 in the Supreme Court of the United States [Amicus Curiae (Gruel) brief]

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/51025008/Brief-for-the-California-State-Senator-Leland-Y-Yee

-In case you’re unfamiliar with the name, Leland Yee is a senator in the US who likes shark fin soup and hates video games. Really hates video games. He introduced a bill to ban the sale of violent games in California and have them graded the same as pornography meaning store owners could not display the games and consumers would have to ask for them and provide ID. The bill was being drafted when the infamous GTA San Adreas Hot Coffee mod slipped out and he was quick to use Rockstars SNAFU to promote the legislation; even though his original bill was supposed to be about violence in games and the Hot Coffee mod was about sexual behaviour (strangely no one batted an eye lid when identical material was in the GTAIV expansion The Ballad of Gay Tony). The bill was called unconstitutional by a judge and tossed out. Anyway, this isn’t a study; it’s a politician arguing for a bill to be passed. I’m sure any information presented to him to inform his opinions was impartial and without bias.

So, if you’re not keeping track, the score is as follows:

References that demonstrate a link between violent video games and juveniles becoming noticably violent: 0

References that demonstrate that video games interactive nature makes them more potentially harmful than other media: 0

References that support government regulating the sale of any video games to minors: 0

Chances of the ACCM and the ACL laying down their arms and admitting they have no factual evidence to support what amounts to an opinion by a tiny but politically active group of Australians: 0

Mark Serrels at Kotaku posted an excellent, albeit tragic article the other day, read it here http://www.kotaku.com.au/2011/04/r18-rationality-is-dead/, in which he points out that we’re not in an argument here. The ACCM and the ACL aren’t debating, they’re fighting based purely on bull headed belief, they don’t care that they have no evidence, or that public opinion is almost completely against them. Their faith is too blind and their moral superiority is too grand. Through aggression, misleading statements and bureaucratic manipulation they will do anything to stall an R18+, even though they’re perpetuating the opposite of what they claim they want to protect.

It’s worth noting that as far as impacting regular Australian lives goes the lack of an R18+ rating for games doesn’t matter a toss. I know plenty of parents who pay little or no attention to the existing ratings system, letting kids play any games they ask for. I even know of parents who have ordered games that have been RCed here, such as Left 4 Dead 2, from UK distributors at their child’s insistence. I’ve heard my son and his group of friends, who is none of whom older than 15, debate the merits of GTA versus Saints Row.

As a parent, after being a kid whose parent’s attitude was that objectionable content in a movie was okay as long as parents watched it with them; I believe that attitude is by far the best one to have. The ACL and the ACCM believe (and have even stated) that parents aren’t fit to parent. They think they can create some legal cocoon to hide children from reality until they’re 20. It wasn’t working twenty years ago when I was in school; in the digital 21st century it’s even less feasible.

Legally and commercially a fair and equitable rating for games in Australia would be a good thing, for all parties involved. But don’t hold your breath.