Author: Jonas Heide Smith

Turning Japanese

Had the pleasure today of visiting the Tokyo Game Show to take part in what was a genuinely chaotically entertaining experience. New consoles where everywhere but apart from that, horse racing seems to be the game theme of tomorrow. Saddle up, gentlemen.
Afterwards I met up with Espen, Espen’s friend, and Lisa Galarneau of Social Study Games fame. We were led wisely through the Ginza district to find both beer and raw fish in suitable quaintities.
Tomorrow I’m off to Kobe for the Icec 2005 conference.

The danger of effect studies

I wrote an “analysis” for the newspaper Politiken (4 Sep) on the issue of violent games and aggressive behaviour. The immediate reason was recent press releases from the American Psychological Association purporting strong claims based on absurdly low-powered new recearch (an informal 5 page research review presented at the association’s yearly meeting).

I strongly suggested that there were good reasons to be skeptical of many standard (social psychological) experimental studies into this issue.

The editors, as it happened, made a few additions/changes. One was the headline which they changed to “Video games cause violence – just as children come with the stork, right?”. This was an allusion to the problem of mixing correlation with causation (an increase in storks has, during a certain period, correlated with an increase in child-birth).
The editors also added a sub-heading: “All studies to date which claim to establish a connection between computer games and violent behaviour rest on shaky scientific foundations”. Now, this is somewhat in line with my argument but I would not myself have put it as strongly simply because the problems with the studies are very different and depend upon a great number of assumptions.

Finally, the editors added the “What link?” graph from a recent The Economist article with the caption “The claim that video games cause violence has no basis in reality. On the contrary, the number of violent assault in the US is decreasing while sales of video games are on the rise.”

But of course, while the graph is surely thought-provoking, it does not prove the claim in the caption. In fact, it is interesting but obviously dangerous in such a critical article where any error will, of course, be flung back in the author’s face.

That happened in yesterday’s Politiken when a Bjarne Frandsen felt that the graph indicated either “manipulation” or “an amazing degree of ignorance concerning elementary statistics”.

I just send my objections to be (hopefully) printed as a brief letter to the editor.

It will be interesting to see if there are more reactions, whether to my text or to the additions of the editors.

A rare bird in these parts

The seldom-heard catharsis hypothesis gets aired by Steven Johnson, as a sort of spin-off of his recent book (in which it did not rear its much-criticized head).

I personally doubt if the idea is as dead as some people like to think. Hell, I predict its triumphant return in the near future. Beware.

Of course another interesting explanation for crime decrease has recently been aired.

Psychologists reveal: “violent perpetrators in interactive media go unpunished 73 percent of the time”

The American Psychological Association continues its quest for improved morality in games, interestingly revealing that “violent perpetrators in interactive media go unpunished 73 percent of the time” (Source: MTV).
This is fascinating. It goes to show how unrepresentative I am- when I played Vice City I never completed the game, and was consequently punished for my in-game crimes 100% of the time. But we now have proof that most (perhaps all!!) other players must have completed the game at first try.

Here’s APA’s press release and official Resolution on Violence in Video Games and Interactive Media.

Indecent immigration affairs

The Danish Immigration Service has found itself in a crossfire of disastrous allegations concerning corruption at a level practically unprecedented in Danish administration (within the set of known cases, of course). Given the present knowledge the institution is in dire legal difficulties.
The vice director admits today that she cannot give guarantees against additional problems given the current “campaign” against the Service. Let me give a peace of free communication advice. What you want to say is this: “Given that we are taking our problems extremely seriously, leaving no stone unturned I cannot guarantee that still-hidden cases will not turn up but I can guarantee that no new cases will be added to this pile because of our new procedures for avoiding such scandals”. That’s what you want to say. You do not want to blame the media. Trust me.

Adding to the oddities, the right-wing Danish People’s Party declares today that it will not protect the minister of immigration affairs if it turns out that she was aware of the situation in the service. Excuse me, the person legally responsible now has to have been aware of the situation? Such an approach to administrative responsibility is of course likely to create a veil of ignorance around all ministers so that they can rightfully claim that, no, we really were not aware of the situation.
But then again, the Danish People’s Party, never lost much sleep over immigration bureaucracy irregularities.