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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. 
Thread title:  
Edit history:
andrewg: 2013-01-24 04:19:46 pm
Hi! I'm andrewg!
A lot of these games don't exactly have real endings. Most are possible if they were done by someone who knows how to speedrun well. However, runs like Yoshi's Island and Majora's Mask are complete lies.
Edit history:
Carcinogen: 2013-01-24 05:18:07 pm
If these games were 'completed', then this list is bullcrap. However... I don't think that table is "times to completion". It just says "length in seconds".

Quote:
The student played each game to its conclusion or for at least 90 minutes, whichever occurred first.


It says 'at least' 90 minutes. So, he was supposed to play for 90 minutes at *minimum*. The article doesn't say anywhere that the researchers sat down and watched all the videos all the way through, does it? I'm pretty sure they just took quick samples from each videotape; all the while, paying more attention to the bestsellers.

Also, where is Table 3A? It didn't show up when I refreshed the article.
Edit history:
ztfreeman: 2013-01-24 05:39:39 pm
ztfreeman: 2013-01-24 05:30:10 pm
ztfreeman: 2013-01-24 05:29:03 pm
ztfreeman: 2013-01-24 05:26:00 pm
If you download the PDF on the sidebar of that page, 3A will be in there as just Table 3 in full.

It says that the "coders" incoded all of the violent acts on the video recordings of gameplay, implying that they watched all of the videos.  If they didn't, then the reserach would completely fall apart, as it was skew the results and they wouldn't get a true average of "violent acts" through gameplay duration.

And while you are correct about 90 minute mark, as I mentioned, some go behond that (like Ocarina of Time), which is of course another glaring error in the study that skews all of the results.  They were supposed to stop at 90 minutes or complete the game, whichever came first, yet sometimes they go beyond the time limit, and most end far before any normal gamer would reach the end. *edit: If there even is an end, if there isn't it would logically mean they'd need to study footage of 90 mintues of gameplay, which they don't.

If they had some amazing speedrunner do this that would honestly be something else that would skew the results.  But so is only having a single undergrad student be the sole game player without any control or sample size, or the strange fact that he was invovled with "coding" some of the results, so this whole thing stinks from the head down. We  would love to get a hold of the footage and see what they analyzed if we could, but we aren't getting any call backs.

Regradless, we wanted to know what it would be like looking at game footage as per the study's outline.  I've seen some of the crazy runs posted on this webpage before, so I thought this would be the best place to go to see if anyone could pull these times off.

edit: fixed some errors.
Another thing to mention is, what is the definition of a game "finishing" or "completing".

In regards to an arcade game, it could be argued that the game you are playing is "finished" when you run out of lives and continues. The definition given doesn't necessarily say "reach the end of the game". (Although is obviously meant, I can only read what is on paper)

"Conclusion" is also very ambiguous, since again, a game can reach a conclusion once out of lives in regards to the arcade. (Which may explain Galaga, because I don't think it's possible, without some kind of stage select code or something wacky, to finish it in just over a minute.)
just( •_•)>⌐■-■ ..... (⌐■_■)wing it
Regarding the Yoshi's Island time..... it's either the PAL version or the person cheated.  It was supposedly finished in JUST under 1:30 (by comparison Carl Sagan's WR for NTSC-U/J is 1:48).  That being said no one would even bother trying to match that time as it's just impossible without PAL.
Quote:
Another thing to mention is, what is the definition of a game "finishing" or "completing".

In regards to an arcade game, it could be argued that the game you are playing is "finished" when you run out of lives and continues. The definition given doesn't necessarily say "reach the end of the game". (Although is obviously meant, I can only read what is on paper)

"Conclusion" is also very ambiguous, since again, a game can reach a conclusion once out of lives in regards to the arcade. (Which may explain Galaga, because I don't think it's possible, without some kind of stage select code or something wacky, to finish it in just over a minute.)


I'll be honest, we didn't even consider this, but this points out one of the biggest flaws in the paper is the ambiguous nature of some of the defintions provided.  You see, in a scientific paper you pretty much have to explicitly define everything, and adhere to that strict definition provided.  We shouldn't be having to scratch our heads at how they interpreted "game complition", because this reserach has to be able to be replicated to have any validity. 

The only part of the paper that adhears to a strict definition of a cited term is violence, which is used in the most obtuse and literal way imaginable.  The grad student and the doctor combed through this paper and determined that this was done on purpose to insure whatever results they had at the end of the day matched up with the talking point of the ESRB ratings being inadequate. There's also some math issues with the data collection, outside of just the methodological problems, and the grad student says she's found evidence that the genre of action adventure was purposfully oversampled for the same purpose of rigging the test to say what they wanted.

The methods reserachers use to run experiments and publish their findings are tailored to expressly prevent this from happening.  The fact that this was not only published with the Harvard name on it, but was also presented in Congress to demonstrate the dangers of video games is a disservice to the scientific method, the acadmic community, and the field of psychology.

But, more on the topic of trying to match the run times, I'm going to hit up the researchers in the morning and see if there's anything else in the paper that hints at "game completion" meaning acutal game completion or just until player death.  I'd still like to see the farthest someone could make it in Galaga in 85 seconds, just to prove a point.
Fucking Weeaboo
I've yet to find a study about video game violence that wasn't a big fat joke. This is another one that I can laugh at.

Playing Galaga and Galaxian is MAKING OUR KIDS VIOLENT! Yeah, the desire to shoot space ships and aliens is gonna kill us all. RIGHT. (Also, I didn't know the N64 came out in 1979.)
berserker status
Quote from Sir VG:
I've yet to find a study about video game violence that wasn't a big fat joke. This is another one that I can laugh at.

Playing Galaga and Galaxian is MAKING OUR KIDS VIOLENT! Yeah, the desire to shoot space ships and aliens is gonna kill us all. RIGHT. (Also, I didn't know the N64 came out in 1979.)


I'm of the opinion that Galaga/Galaxian perpetuates xenophobia toward "illegal" aliens.  Also, Caesar's Palace 2000 enables gambling junkies, Sega Bass Fishing endorses animal cruelty, and Mario Party promotes debauchery with your friends.  Clearly, they should pull every game from the market in order to protect the Greater Good.
Fucking Weeaboo
Quote from Riskbreaker Y:
Quote from Sir VG:
I've yet to find a study about video game violence that wasn't a big fat joke. This is another one that I can laugh at.

Playing Galaga and Galaxian is MAKING OUR KIDS VIOLENT! Yeah, the desire to shoot space ships and aliens is gonna kill us all. RIGHT. (Also, I didn't know the N64 came out in 1979.)


I'm of the opinion that Galaga/Galaxian perpetuates xenophobia toward "illegal" aliens.  Also, Caesar's Palace 2000 enables gambling junkies, Sega Bass Fishing endorses animal cruelty, and Mario Party promotes debauchery with your friends.  Clearly, they should pull every game from the market in order to protect the Greater Good.


Even Elmo's Letter Adventure? Wait, wasn't he accused of staring at Katy Perry's boobs? Tongue
Yes, a cucco riding the ground.
Quote from Riskbreaker Y:
Quote from Sir VG:
I've yet to find a study about video game violence that wasn't a big fat joke. This is another one that I can laugh at.

Playing Galaga and Galaxian is MAKING OUR KIDS VIOLENT! Yeah, the desire to shoot space ships and aliens is gonna kill us all. RIGHT. (Also, I didn't know the N64 came out in 1979.)


I'm of the opinion that Galaga/Galaxian perpetuates xenophobia toward "illegal" aliens.  Also, Caesar's Palace 2000 enables gambling junkies, Sega Bass Fishing endorses animal cruelty, and Mario Party promotes debauchery with your friends.  Clearly, they should pull every game from the market in order to protect the Greater Good.

Don't forget Mario Kart:

http://i.imgur.com/mq4xzcr.jpg
We all scream for Eyes Cream
Playing GTA makes me want to drive recklessly, shoot random pedestrian, and disobey every available law known to man while crashing a plane into a building and parachuting out.


Even though I don't have a license, don't own a gun, follow laws, don't like flying in general, and have no desire to imitate video games cause they're fictitious.
sinister1
so pro u don't even know
This guy clearly did not understand how "pacifist" gaming works. If it was me, I wouldn't have killed any enemies Tongue
Wow, this man was really reaching to prove his point.  I suppose jumping on a walking mushroom and popping a coin out of it could count as violence but when I need some money I go to work I don't just start pounding on peoples heads and stating around waiting for loot to drop. 

Ztfreeman, If your looking for a bunch of footage to analyze for you paper the best plan would be to head over to the video archives page and start watching the current world record runs on the video games in question, It will let you do two things. 
1. Determine (in an absolute fashion) how quickly a game can be completed.
2. Let you examine the strategy that people use to finish games that quickly, sometimes the best way isn't by plowing through piles of enemys.

Quote from sinister1:
This guy clearly did not understand how "pacifist" gaming works. If it was me, I wouldn't have killed any enemies Tongue
I'm actually genuinely surprised there was a study of this sort of thing done at all. For years I've been jokingly saying things like "In games like Mario and Sonic you 'kill' enemies by jumping on them so how long until some little kid kills their friend by jumping on them because they were copying Mario and these games are threatened with being banned?". I never thought I'd see a study that claims to be trying to study the level of violence in Mario games.


Quote from Manocheese:
Don't forget Mario Kart:

http://i.imgur.com/mq4xzcr.jpg
The worrying thing about that? If it were in the Daily Mail rather than the Metro, chances are that he wouldn't be taking the piss Cheesy


Following the events at Sandy Hook, TotalBiscuit released a video that does a good job of portraying views that I agree with.
Granted, rather than focusing on scientific studies he was more interested in chastising the media (and rightly so), but there's something worth considering: Who's funding the studies that claim to show a positive link between games and violence? The saddening truth is that "scientific studies" these days are often used as a marketing tool. I'll never forget seeing an article in a newspaper one day that went on about some scientific study claiming that the sun's UV rays can still cause massive amounts of damage to your skin even when you're indoors, as the rays are passing through windows or whatever. The article only made a single passing reference to the study being funded entirely by Boots (a British pharmacy chain, for anyone who doesn't know). Just a couple of days after that article was in the papers, I saw a TV advert for a new sun cream exclusive to Boots that claimed to be scientifically proven to protect you from the sun's rays even while you're indoors. Nothing more than a coincidence, I'm sure Roll Eyes
Likewise, I remember seeing something on TV about misleading health claims in things like food products (often those grossly over-priced yoghurt things with "friendly bacteria" in them, things like that) and in health supplements - they harp on about the extreme health benefits that can be had by eating these things, but when the studies were analysed, it was found that the studies were always skewed in favour of the product (e.g. an advert for vitamin C supplements might sound like the pills would be beneficial to anyone and everyone, making claims about how much they can improve your health, but if you saw the study you'd probably find that every person the product was tested on suffered from something like scurvy, a condition that's caused by a deficiency of vitamin C)
But yeah, in that video TB mentions that studies have repeatedly shown no direct link between games and violence. When one comes up that does, is it someone like Jack Thompson who's put the money forward for the research, which might explain why there's such a strong bias towards getting a positive result? Tongue


And while some people here (including the OP) have questioned the legitimacy of the likes of Galaga being completed in 85 seconds, I'd go further than that. The table claims that Galaga and Galaxian combined were played for 4 minutes and 5 seconds. Whether they were completed, that the player "saw everything there is to see" or whatever, I couldn't really care less. What caught my eye is that it claims that there was violence in every single second both of those games were being played. I don't care how far you stretch the definition of "violence", that data is total and utter nonsense.