I gave a talk to students from Jurong Junior College yesterday afternoon on game studies, the second of such talks I’ve done this year for JC students. The 40 minute talk had a lot of content crammed into it as it was trying to give the JC students an idea of the sort of investigations that are centered on video games as a culturally significant phenomenon, and the list of topics I introduced included player behavior and motivations, gender issues, cultural issues, legal issues and violence. My talk was specifically intended to get them started thinking upon material pertaining to the game studies discipline (not quite the same thing as game ‘development’) which as I understood would serve also as start points for their general paper assignments.
During the Q&A, there was a JJC student who queried about the opposing arguments present on violence in games; very generally speaking, that some studies are suggesting that long term exposure to intensive gaming leads to desensitization of real-world violence in certain age groups versus other studies that point out that empirical data neither supports or disputes such conclusions.
While the intent of my talk wasn’t to persuade the JC students to a particular viewpoint on game violence but instead to expose them to the various arguments and debates surrounding the topic, I did share my inclination on this; that I – personally – believe that long term exposure to games might indeed lead to lower sensitivities towards some types of violent action, though whether that mental threshold results in real-world action is a very different matter.
Either way, it’s a hot debate that I don’t think will be resolved any time soon. Till then, it does make for interesting discussion.:)
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