brent phillips

I tuned in to BBC from Nice tonight and picked up an interesting story about processor technology. Part of the discussion focused on gaming supercomputing that would “offer the cinematic quality of modern films”  (like 300 perhaps?) rendered in real-time for game play on the PC. While the technologist in me is fascinated by the notion of such an immersive user experience, as a dad I get very nervous about how this might affect those who play them - especially younger children who are still developing emotionally and cognitively.   I decided to dig around on this and found some great links, the most interesting was a page written by Craig Anderson of the American Psychological Association. This is a good resource if you need more insight on entertainment violence. 

I will offer one outtake that confirmed my assumptions…

Violent video games are significantly associated with: increased aggressive behavior, thoughts, and affect; increased physiological arousal; and decreased prosocial (helping) behavior.

As with many technologies, I look forward to this with cautious optimism. I also firmly believe that the good will significantly outweight the bad. It definitely puts me on guard however, especially having seen the realism of violence in today’s video games. I did not see details of this in Anderson’s paper specifically, but I would imagine that the more realistic the experience, the greater the impact. 

Fixing this, i.e. making sure our kids are not overly exposed to violence, is not the responsibility of the chip and software makers, however. There is a reason why we’re called parents after all.