A Follow-Up to Violence in Videogames

As a timely follow-up to Sunday's blog post about media violence, Toronto institution, Ryerson University today released some statistics from a scientific study looking at the issue of violent video games.

Turns out the media content has little on Emotional Memory. From the University's press release:

The researchers hypothesized that video game players would be less sensitive to the negative images and therefore show reduced memory for these materials. The results, however, showed no difference in the memory of video game players and non-players. Moreover, exposure to video games was not associated with differences in self-reported arousal to emotional stimuli.

"The findings indicate that long-term emotional memory is not affected by chronic exposure violent video games," said Bowen.

Will this and further research end the debate on violent video games? Probably not, but as with anything knowledge is power. Personally, I'd be interested to see if these findings bear any weight on the pending Supreme Court case Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association. (#08-1448)

Finally, let us not forget that it is ultimately the decision of the parents to police the content being consumed in their household, and not the government or media vendor. Associations such as the ESRB, the MPAA and the RIAA exist to offer insight into the content of their respective media.

For further information on the issue of violence in video games, including some interesting demographic statistics (hint: gamers are older than you think), the Entertainment Consumer's Association is a good reference point.