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  • Violence May Not be Why Kids Play Video Games 
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    Reported by: WROC-TV

    Friday, Jan 16, 2009 @06:28pm EST

    "I'm amazed because I really thought that violence and videos was a direct result of the violence in our kids," said Dr. Richard Ryan, a motivational psychologist at the University of Rochester co-authored a new study on video games.

    That's right. It's not the carnage attracting people to video games...It's the challenge.


    "What this study addresses is whether the blood and the violence and the gore is part of the attraction for players," Ryan said.


    Researchers took popular and violent games like "half life" and altered them.

    Replacing guns with laser tag, red blood became green ooze.

    What they found: The violence didn't matter.


    "The attraction is that the games offer opportunities to really a sense of achievement, a sense of confidence. Some opportunities to explore," Ryan said.

    The research found that video games have the same kind of draw as any other game or activity: Its challenge and its action. Which makes the argument that perhaps all that violence that we see in video games might be unnecessary.

    "At this point, we've amped up the violence as much as possible and that this point, our research suggests that not only that may not be a successful strategy, it may turn off another demographic of people."

    But this study is good news to parents like Nicki Hastings of Brighton.

    "I don't let my kids play video games at all,"said Hastings.

    We found her at the Rochester Museum and Science Center today.


    "If they could develop better video games that aren't as violent and promote the same kind of action and attraction to my kids, I would be more likely to let the kids use the videos," Hastings said.

    As to whether violent video games actually cause violence, that question is still being debated.

    "Some people say there is clear evidence that media aggression transfers over to people being more aggressive, other people's research suggests that's not so at all," said Ryan.

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