Excuse the intrusion, and if this is in the wrong place I'll be happy to move it and modify it to match this forum's etiquette. I'm a freelance journalist doing a story on video game violence research, and I've spent the last month or so slogging through countless reserach papers dealing with the subject in the wake of current events. As a gamer, the entire debate has always seemed taken completely out of the context of actually playing the games or being a part of the culture, and as a journalist I wanted to see if the research did the homework on this to back up their claims about video games having a link to violence.
Much to my surprise, no matter how prestigious the university nor qualified the researcher, they do not. As we speak, I have a gradutate student and child psychologist running through tons of published papers on the subject, grading them on their adherence to logic, the scientific method, and validity. Most fail hard on all counts. Among them is a paper published by Kimberly M. Thompson from Harvard titled "Violence in E Rated Video Games" from 2001 that was brought before Congress in 2006 to show how violent video games were. It was noted that it infamously labled Pac-Man as 61% violent, and at the time took some harsh criticism from the gaming press. We've taken a second look at it, and the notes on everything wrong with the paper have become longer than the paper itself.
But here's the fun part. In the data from the study, they claim they had a single undergraduate student power through 66 games listing the time it took him to complete each one. One of the glaring errors of the study was that if he reached the 90 minute mark he was supposed to stop, and in a few cases the time runs much longer. For the most part, however, he completed these games in record time. I mean, he beat Galaga in only 85 seconds, and saw all there was to see in Mario Golf 64 in just over 10 minutes! While some of these supposed runs have been beat on this website, such as SMB3, they are often only by a few minutes, meaning that it would have been a world record in its time. This guy has got to be a pro, maybe even a gaming god. Maybe he used shortcuts, hacks, or tools (which would have invalidated the results of the research) Or, maybe the data is a complete lie.
Regardless, we want to put this to the test, and see what it would be like to study the game footage from the reserach as presented by the data. Are you tough enough to accept the challenge? Below are the listed times of completion from the paper, and below that is a link where you can download a pdf of the paper in full if you are curious. Let the games begin!
Title System Length in Seconds
40 Winks PS 1159
Donkey Kong 64 N64 4243
Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko N64 6754
Goemon's Great Adventure N64 5656
Mario Party N64 4619
Monkey Magic PS 7203
Nuclear Strike 64 N64 2007
Paperboy N64 2318
Q*bert PS 1375
Rat attack PS 1465
Rayman 2: The Great Escape N64 5113
Sonic Adventure DC 5454
Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage PS 6137
The Smurfs PS 2622
Toy Story2:Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue PS 6447
Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards N64 6173
Super Mario Bros. NES 2138
Super Mario Bros. 2 NES 2877
Super Mario Bros. 3 NES 4107
Super Mario World SNES 4078
Yoshi's Island: Super Mario World 2 SNES 5375
Super Mario 64 N64 5414
1080 Snowboarding N64 1477
NHL 99 N64 1467
FIFA 2000 N64 1806
Mario Golf 64 N64 636
NBA2K DC 1693
NFL Blitz 2000 N64 1033
NFL 2k DC 3138
Sega Bass Fishing DC 2053
All Star Baseball 2001 N64 2605
Tee Off Golf DC 4257
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater N64 3384
Triple Play 2001 PS 2390
Gran Turismo PS 6833
Barbie Race and Ride PS 3174
Crash Team Racing PS 1467
Demolition Racer PS 1772
Hydro Thunder DC 1802
Lego racers N64 1777
Speed Devils DC 4939
Supercross 2000 N64 3552
Ridge Racer V PS2 1566
The Legend of Zelda NES 5477
Zelda II: The Adventure of Link NES 5374
The Legend of Zelda: A link to the Past SNES 5832
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time N64 8133
The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask N64 5598
Monster Rancher 2 PS 3831
Pokemon Stadium N64 1726
Fantavision PS2 902
Who Wants to Be A Milllionaire? PS 1202
Centipede DC 394
Harvest Moon 64 N64 7141
Worms Armageddon N64 2564
Pokemon Snap N64 1689
Caesars Palace 2000 PS 1765
Centipede (1981) DC 203
Dig Dug (1982) N64 228
Galaga (1982) N64 85
Galaxian (1979) N64 160
Ms. Pac-Man (1981) N64 276
Pac-Man (1980) N64 358
Pole Position (1982) N64 143
Q*bert (1982) PS 179
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=194068#qundefined
Sorry for the poor formatting, I couldn't paste out of the PDF directly.
Much to my surprise, no matter how prestigious the university nor qualified the researcher, they do not. As we speak, I have a gradutate student and child psychologist running through tons of published papers on the subject, grading them on their adherence to logic, the scientific method, and validity. Most fail hard on all counts. Among them is a paper published by Kimberly M. Thompson from Harvard titled "Violence in E Rated Video Games" from 2001 that was brought before Congress in 2006 to show how violent video games were. It was noted that it infamously labled Pac-Man as 61% violent, and at the time took some harsh criticism from the gaming press. We've taken a second look at it, and the notes on everything wrong with the paper have become longer than the paper itself.
But here's the fun part. In the data from the study, they claim they had a single undergraduate student power through 66 games listing the time it took him to complete each one. One of the glaring errors of the study was that if he reached the 90 minute mark he was supposed to stop, and in a few cases the time runs much longer. For the most part, however, he completed these games in record time. I mean, he beat Galaga in only 85 seconds, and saw all there was to see in Mario Golf 64 in just over 10 minutes! While some of these supposed runs have been beat on this website, such as SMB3, they are often only by a few minutes, meaning that it would have been a world record in its time. This guy has got to be a pro, maybe even a gaming god. Maybe he used shortcuts, hacks, or tools (which would have invalidated the results of the research) Or, maybe the data is a complete lie.
Regardless, we want to put this to the test, and see what it would be like to study the game footage from the reserach as presented by the data. Are you tough enough to accept the challenge? Below are the listed times of completion from the paper, and below that is a link where you can download a pdf of the paper in full if you are curious. Let the games begin!
Title System Length in Seconds
40 Winks PS 1159
Donkey Kong 64 N64 4243
Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko N64 6754
Goemon's Great Adventure N64 5656
Mario Party N64 4619
Monkey Magic PS 7203
Nuclear Strike 64 N64 2007
Paperboy N64 2318
Q*bert PS 1375
Rat attack PS 1465
Rayman 2: The Great Escape N64 5113
Sonic Adventure DC 5454
Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage PS 6137
The Smurfs PS 2622
Toy Story2:Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue PS 6447
Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards N64 6173
Super Mario Bros. NES 2138
Super Mario Bros. 2 NES 2877
Super Mario Bros. 3 NES 4107
Super Mario World SNES 4078
Yoshi's Island: Super Mario World 2 SNES 5375
Super Mario 64 N64 5414
1080 Snowboarding N64 1477
NHL 99 N64 1467
FIFA 2000 N64 1806
Mario Golf 64 N64 636
NBA2K DC 1693
NFL Blitz 2000 N64 1033
NFL 2k DC 3138
Sega Bass Fishing DC 2053
All Star Baseball 2001 N64 2605
Tee Off Golf DC 4257
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater N64 3384
Triple Play 2001 PS 2390
Gran Turismo PS 6833
Barbie Race and Ride PS 3174
Crash Team Racing PS 1467
Demolition Racer PS 1772
Hydro Thunder DC 1802
Lego racers N64 1777
Speed Devils DC 4939
Supercross 2000 N64 3552
Ridge Racer V PS2 1566
The Legend of Zelda NES 5477
Zelda II: The Adventure of Link NES 5374
The Legend of Zelda: A link to the Past SNES 5832
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time N64 8133
The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask N64 5598
Monster Rancher 2 PS 3831
Pokemon Stadium N64 1726
Fantavision PS2 902
Who Wants to Be A Milllionaire? PS 1202
Centipede DC 394
Harvest Moon 64 N64 7141
Worms Armageddon N64 2564
Pokemon Snap N64 1689
Caesars Palace 2000 PS 1765
Centipede (1981) DC 203
Dig Dug (1982) N64 228
Galaga (1982) N64 85
Galaxian (1979) N64 160
Ms. Pac-Man (1981) N64 276
Pac-Man (1980) N64 358
Pole Position (1982) N64 143
Q*bert (1982) PS 179
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=194068#qundefined
Sorry for the poor formatting, I couldn't paste out of the PDF directly.
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