i played nerf arena and it made me want to stab someone in the face

I did the survey. Good luck with your research.

im doing the survey, but in all seriousness, this tests nothing, or im just not all that into violence, since when i finally got the the violence stuff i was laughing my ass off, since the descriptions where describing some war crazed maniacs perception of what is fun in a game. Sorry, but that's how i see it.

Is defeating the opponent more fun for you, when you see them BLEED?

Would enjoy frags more if you saw gibs & guts flying around like q3. So I signed 'totally agree'.

You know what so did I lol. I like playing with gibs on ahaha

it doesn't add to the enjoyment of defeating and opponent for me at least, more like a cheesy-factor fun maybe, but in the context of fragging, it makes no difference for me. Maybe that is being a bit pedantic about it..

Gibs mean nothing to me. You can replace character model with a rectangle and take all humanesque sounds out of the game and I wouldn't even notice. It's about accuracy, position, and prediction. Not gore, rage, and killing.

Bye

When I get my hands on a RG, RL, and LG irl, I'm berzerk

Cara i dont mean to be disrespectful but I don't think you really understand the motivations for playing shooters. It is generally the desire to win that makes it fun. I enjoy the competition. I don't feel violent when I play, although it can be frustrating to lose.

I also thought some of the questions seemed loaded. Describing the games as being cruel seems ridiculous to me. All games are harmless. Nobody dies or gets hurt. It is pure fiction.

Also asking if you feel spiritually connected to people or believe in luck doesn't seem very scientific to me. Are you trying to find out if people are fatalistic? Believe in god? I think simpler questions would have helped improve the reliability of the answers. If I did it again I honestly don't know I would answer them the same again!

Hi n1ghtfly,

personally I do agree that the violence in certain games is not the main aspect for people and its more about the competition. The fact that most people don't feel guilty or upset by extreme violence in some games is what I am interested in- I want to know if a reason for this is moral disengagement. Of course its entirely possible that players don't consider morals at all during gameplay, but since moral disengagement occurs often in real life (e.g. soldiers killing enemy) I just want to see if there is a degree of it in a shooter game context.

The questions related to spiritual connectivity and are used to measure empathy and locus of control respectively. I did not make these questions, they are part of previosuly tested reliable scales. I know that some of them seem slightly far fetched, but I am not able to make my own scales as an undergrad.

Thanks again for taking part, and for your feedback.

When you explain it like that it does make a lot more sense to me. I don't think I understood your opening premise. I'm sure my answers reflect what you just said. Will you post a link to your work when you are finished?

If you are looking for a reason for the disengagement, I would say for me it is a combination of escapism and boredom. Office based work is dull in my opinion and makes you look for excitement elsewhere. That's why I play a lot of sport outside of work and when the weather is crap, computer games!

Games are also way more engaging / immersive than TV programs.

Good luck with your project.

Yeah I would be happy to post a link when I have my findings :)

I am expecting to find that people with a high tendency to disengage from their morals to have a positive attitude to violence in videogames- I feel the main reason for this relationship would be because violent games are a form of escapism for many people- when people play these games they are completely immersed and not thinking about anything else including any potential moral issues that may arise in such games.

Research regarding moral disengagement in a videogame context seems to be pretty mixed in that some studies have found morals not to even be considered during videogame play, and others have found that certain people, especially those who are highly empathic, do display moral disengagement in violent videogames (which is why I am also measuring personality traits).

Thanks for your comments by the way, it is helpful to have some serious constructive comments about what I am doing!

But he does still bring a good point. In hindsight excluding multiplayer games would've made sense, because in multiplayers there are more and different explaining factors. The emotions reported may be affected by the poor perfornance and loss of competition (like sports) more heavily just than mere simulated violence.

Yeah I see your point, but to be honest a lot of games do have a multiplayer component to them in some sense, so I think it would be difficult to gain a large sample of people who only ever play violent single player games. Also I am not investigating how violent games affect emotions, but I am measuring how enduring personailty traits, such as empathy or general affect influence a players attitude towards videogame violence or their tendency to display moral disengagement.

I expect to find the personality variables to have a greater association with moral disengagement than with attitudes towards violence in videogames as I understand that there are other factors that may encourage someone to enjoy violence in games more, like the competition aspect as you say. I admit this could be a flaw in my research, but as an undergrad I cant really investigate every possible variable that may be related to attitudes to violence in games!

tetris boiled my blood.
quake didnt.

Did the survey. Seems very thorough and I hope you manage to find some sort of conclusion.

But you're in a forum where there are a lot of heavy enthusiasts and hardcore gamers. I can imagine answers will vary enormously between casual gamers, enthusiasts and hardcore gamers. The more of a 'hardcore' gamer you are, the more you care about winning and the less you care about aesthetics. The more casual you are... well.. the opposite of 'hardcore gamers'.

Obviously I'm not stating a fact, but it appears to be the case for me and many people I talk with who cover those different levels.

glhf

People are born either passive or aggressive, usually the latter is a testosterone bombarded person w/c is aggressive in nature, he/she just needs some checking here and there to avoid violent incidents in the future, parents often neglect this.

As the saying goes: "Prevention is better than cure"

tl;dr

C U R E
U
R
E

1. Did the survey.

Now offtopics just because:
2. There are dozens of studies about the topic. No point in yet another.
3. GTA V is a great, not researched example. It's the most realistic, violent and over the top game I've played - all combined.

This doesn't look like a dissertation project to me.
Also, you claim to be 20.

Is this some stuff they make you do in psychology 101?

If you have to show the answers to your mother in law, select 1. on every question.

Fatal1ty was violent as fuck in the early days, with that mad lisp of his, if you asked him to repeat himself he'd slap you right away. Like 'BISH I SCHED IT ALWEADY, WA YOU WANTH FROM MEE!?!"

It's what drove him to be the best. pwactice pwactice pwactice muddafuka

Uh this survey was pretty much hilarious. The violence section made it sound like you were some crazy guy who loves chopping people's heads off but is too big of a pussy so you play Cod instead.

Maybe Quake players aren't really a good survey group for this. Pretty much everyone who plays is extremely interested in competition not flashy graphics. A better group would be your 12 year old CoD players.

You should include comment section to thesis, it'll add what is missing from these researches, real input, instead of dots in a schema, made from preconceptions about video games and not what it really is.

yeah, maybe he could invite jamerio and lethe. between them they'll finish the whole thing off in afternoon, by word count at least

jack thompson would be proud.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5jq8RuYXwA

lol

KILL BURN

D I E
I
E

SLAUGHTER

DECAYING CORPSES

BLOOD

INTERNAL ORGANS OUTSIDE OF BODY

In a nutshell.

I think zoot brought up good points.

I answered all the questions to my best intention but I could not shake the feeling that me being a casually competitive (wut?) quake player, who plays on lego picmip and TankJr my answers could be misinterpreted, because some of them were about my feelings during combat engagements. While I am sometimes rather emotional in game it is a similar rush/excitement as in a chess game. As I capture a light square bishop in chess I don't get excited or feel a power rush visualizing a priest being sodomized and decapitated, I feel the competitive spirit, of out thinking and out performing my opponent. The feelings might be similar but the questionnaire answers don't show the cause of those feelings, thoughts and motivations.

I hope you know what you are doing and how to interpret the results. However, I think a better target audience would be some single player games idk like GTA's Saint's Row's, military shooters, anything that makes you role play, i.e. put yourself in the shoes of a character and immerse yourself in a virtual world where you make decisions in this universe, at least there I somehow see a connection to morality. Because as far as quake goes it is the equivalent of a 3D chessboard and you don't play to kill your in-game enemies but to out play a person that plays with you.

Hope this is helpful or relevant to what you are trying to achieve.
Best of luck with your research! (...and I am going back to work on my dissertation now)