A forum post considering the broader discussions between violence and video games from an epistemological/behaviorist perspective.
I believe the violent video games topic has been politicized to the point where it has lost its roots in the broader discussion of things. Namely, in identifying the socioeconomic as well as cultural exposures that are also shaping an agent’s knowledge base and overall values.
From a behaviorist perspective it would be a simple matter of operant conditioning in which specific actions are rewarded or punished through either negative or positive reinforcement (Standridge, 2010) through game mechanics such as trophies, badges etc., (Figueroa-Flores, 2016) but this ignores the fact that video games runs a very large gamut of interactions, game designs are incredibly nuanced and offer a wealth of context and lore that creates a narrative logic for the agent to act upon. The behaviorist model requires a passive, uncritical player. The loose definition of ‘violence’ and the direct connection between violent behavior ignores the player as an agentic being who is required to be engaged in a ‘fantastical set up’ for an incredibly long period of time and must conduct a series of complex steps and decisions in order to keep the “lie” going. Meaning that, using a cause-effect framework when assessing the violent video games to aggression pipeline assumes that the player does not get bored, does not think of alternative options to problems and does not make agentic decisions.
From a constructivist or cognitive science point of view, the scope of the impact of “violence” on agents broadens the range from which we can assess what is occurring when a player is engaged in a video game that might run between 50-80 hours of play time. We might see how game mechanics and game dynamics influence identity, or how it might inform a player’s motivation to make certain decisions, particularly as the SDT (self-determination theory) framework reveals to us how agentic and autonomous tasks might instil a sense of ownership in a player (Figueroa-Flores, 2016). Information processing would require a player to execute on short term memory to utilize rehearsive tasks while also engaging long term memory to inform context for every task (Orey, 2002) and then repeat that behavior in increasingly larger patterned loops.
Additionally, the ‘brain in a vat’ thought experiment would ask us to consider how players immserse themselves in a sustained state of cognitive challenge, construct their realities, inhabit sense-making capacities, determine what they know (Fosnot, 2013) and what they must do in order to achieve their goals. Their experiences in-game through this lens requires that they build upon what they already know and who they already are.
By assuming that violence in video games transfers directly to increased aggression and violence in players, it should hold that two different players result in the same experience. In this light, rather than frame violent video games simply as a cause of aggression in players, we might consider it as a part of a larger socio-cultural framework that determines how an agent expresses the values and rules of the world that they inhabit. Many games such as Mass Effect, The Last of Us, and The Witcher which one might consider “violent” in terms of visual effects and game mechanics (as well as lore) place players in morally ambiguous positions and ask them to inhabit perspectives radically different form their own. The games success is dependent upon how players form identities informed by consequence, moral ambiguity and narrative accountability.
With the growing complexity of immersive game design the vagaries of human behavior and cognitive processes cannot be reduced to a trigger-result narrative. Video games are no longer 2 hour tasks that look like neon-green 8-bit pixels moving up and down a black screen, they’re deeply sensory, often engage in immersive world building and ask players to re-think and replicate their identities and humanity through a series of actions and decisions. It is imperative that as educators and researchers, we resist frameworks that reduce complex cognitive and socio-cultural phenomena to single variable causation. Instead, broaden the lens through which we assess how agentic beings internalize media.
References
Standridge, M. (2010). Behaviorism. In M. Orey (Ed.), Chapter 26: Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching, and technology (pp. 271-276). A Global Text.
Figueroa-Flores, J. F. (2016). Gamification and Game-Based Learning: Two Strategies for the 21stCentury Learner. World Journal of Educational Research, 3(2), 507-522.
Orey, M. (2002). Information Processing. In M. Orey (Ed.), Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching, and technology (pp. 25-34). A Global Text.
Fosnot, C. T. (Ed.). (2013). Constructivism: Theory, perspectives, and practice (2nd ed.). Teachers College Press.