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Mar
11
2008

Via Regine (WMMNA), an article in Wired Magazine by Clive Thompson, "Gamers Get Their Kicks From Dying."

He writes: "In 'The Psychophysiology of James Bond: Phasic Emotional Responses to Violent Video Game Events' -- published in this month's edition of the journal Emotion -- [Niklas] Ravaja [a scientist who has done pioneering research into the emotions of gamers as they play] reaches an amazingly counterintuitive conclusion: Gamers don't like shooting their opponents, but they're suffused with pleasure when they themselves are shot dead."

What's also interesting is that this presents some alternative evidence that one doesn't become desensitized to violence just because one plays violent online or computer games.

www.wired.com/...gamesfrontiers_0310
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clive_thompson death gamers gaming violence wired_magazine

  • I can't even count the number of ways I've died. Like most gamers, I've been slaughtered by AK-47-wielding terrorists, poisoned by eldritch spiders and blown up with alien frag grenades. I've also been impaled on medieval swords, ripped limb from limb by dinosaurs and impassively stomped by 20-story-tall, walking war machines that barely noticed my existence.

      

    Yet here's the thing: It's possible that these deaths have been among my most enjoyable game experiences.

  • This is the fascinating argument of a new paper by Niklas Ravaja, a scientist who has done pioneering research into the emotions of gamers as they play. In "The Psychophysiology of James Bond: Phasic Emotional Responses to Violent Video Game Events" -- published in this month's edition of the journal Emotion -- Ravaja reaches an amazingly counterintuitive conclusion: Gamers don't like shooting their opponents, but they're suffused with pleasure when they themselves are shot dead.
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