Is Pac-Man a Scourge? The Violence in Pac-Man and Other Games Discussed

 

 

Over at about.com, Aaron Stanton has written a pretty interesting piece regarding the testimony of Dr. Kimberley Thompson on the effectiveness of the ESRB rating system. Dr. Thompson cited a 2001 study on the violence in E-rated video games which, if most of us were to look at it rationally, would make absolutely no sense.

In that study, Pac-Man is 62% violent and Centipede, 92.6% violent. Amazing, no?

Even more amazing is that it was taken seriously, and that said research was done by observing how often the average player engaged in violent activity in the game within a 90 minute period. According to Stanton, applying that same measuring system “to 15 minutes of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, an M rated game, you find that it says Oblivion is 18 times less violent than Pac-Man, about 5%.”

 

 

Over at about.com, Aaron Stanton has written a pretty interesting piece regarding the testimony of Dr. Kimberley Thompson on the effectiveness of the ESRB rating system. Dr. Thompson cited a 2001 study on the violence in E-rated video games which, if most of us were to look at it rationally, would make absolutely no sense.

In that study, Pac-Man is 62% violent and Centipede, 92.6% violent. Amazing, no?

Even more amazing is that it was taken seriously, and that said research was done by observing how often the average player engaged in violent activity in the game within a 90 minute period. According to Stanton, applying that same measuring system “to 15 minutes of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, an M rated game, you find that it says Oblivion is 18 times less violent than Pac-Man, about 5%.”

Stanton says that such a study was flawed simply because, while the research method seemed sound, violence in itself is subjective and, thus, fails to pass today’s standards of common sense. He writes,

Asking around you find quite a range of what is considered “violence”. Thompson’s study is not particularly note-worthy because it has a measurement of violence that doesn’t match the average American family. If you were to label the arcade version of Pac-Man as 62% violent instead of the ESRB rating E it wouldn’t be more informative for consumers. In fact, it would be using a scale that most consumers disagree with.

 
At the same time, the study only applied to E-rated games, making the whole inquiry so specific as to pigeonhole gaming with a small subset, one that already is supposed to be rated as “For Everyone,” if the Senate actually read between the lines and checked out a game store.

One thing that is actually done by the ESRB to help make informed decisions on their game ratings is surveying what “violent” is in our present context. Looking at it from the vantage point of playing Oblivion, for example: while you can spend as little as 30 seconds fighting in a span of 15 minutes, using the rest of the time to talk to people, some people may find it more violent because the graphics make the violence more real. That’s the sort of thing, Stanton points out, that isn’t mentioned at all in the study and in the testimony.

We gamers understand it, and a good number of parents might see the sense in finding out what constitutes violence in this day and age, but the problem lies in legislation not being able to understand the context of things. Lack of context leading to false understanding, and to the proposition and creation of unrealistic laws on even the least violent of games.

It’s only too bad we can’t tell them to focus on something more important, like drug addiction or gun control, or perhaps even the ozone layer.