It's difficult to argue that what we do in our down time doesn't affect us in one way or another. Most people would agree that hearts and minds can - and have - been swayed through clever use of mass media channels, from Communism to Capitalism to Beatlemania. I'm not suggesting that human beings are empty capsules to be filled, unthinkingly, with the fodder of those in control of the public voice; arguably, there's a synergistic effect between the audience and the medium: our desires and actions are reflected in the content we consume, and the content we consume reifies that which we are unclear about.
So how does this all play out in games? The Daily Mail brigade would have us believe that there is a direct correlation between the violent content in games and violence off-screen (while not taking into account the other sources of violence present in our everyday lives). Behavioural relationships are extremely difficult to pin down, and such conclusions are over-simplistic. What about our attitudes to things like violence, capitalism and conflict? How might games be shifting these enigmatic psychological properties of the great British public over time?
Well, Gareth Crabtree's contacted the gamesblog to ask these questions of folks interested in this relationship. He writes,
I am in the first year of a PhD at Manchester University which is centred around how the representation of conflict in video games has helped to shaped the British pleasure culture of war. I am using a questionnaire to gather information on the audience of this genre of games, as well as asking questions about the personal experience of play.
You can contribute to this research by contacting him at Gareth.J.Crabtree+at+student.manchester.ac.uk. We'll be following his results with interest.
