I did a meta analysis on this for uni. Most research is not balanced, criteria is coded incorrectly when studying games, consider reward / punishment systems, genre of game, natural aggression (psychological) tendencies, age of respondent, etc etc.
I believe age demonstrated that infact older males were more inclined to have aggressive tendencies following play.
Guess which game has been used most frequently in violent game studies? Mortal Kombat, well that's not a fair representation of all violence in all games at all.
Interesting questions posed relate to sport aggression in games and its influence as opposed to fantasy / realistic.
Conclusion, it needs way WAY more research. Tv / Film violence studies are mammoth in proportion and theres not enough research to conclude anything. One last problem is that this is principally what is studied, just violence.
Theres plenty more variables involved in video game / user communication, universitys are wasted on this shit.
“When we make some new announcement and if there is no positive initial reaction from the market, I try to think of it as a good sign because that can be interpreted as people reacting to something groundbreaking. ...if the employees were always minding themselves to do whatever the market is requiring at any moment, and if they were always focusing on something we can sell right now for the short term, it would be very limiting. We are trying to think outside the box.” - Satoru Iwata - This is why corporate multinationals will never truly understand, or risk doing, what Nintendo does.
