Final Blog

For this final blog I am going to be looking back over my work and looking at what I have learned throughout this module. First of all I am going to be giving an overview of all the blogs that I have written, and then finally discussing all that I have learned while researching and writing these blogs.

The first blog that I wrote was a review on a game that I was playing at the time. This review was not a normal review, because I had to talk about the different game mechanics which make up the game. I then looked back into the past to look at game which also had the same type of game mechanics, so I could see where my chosen game had got its ideas from.

For my second blog, I wrote a detailed blog about one of the past games (Elite) that I spoke briefly about in my first blog. I had to do a lot of research into its development and the people who developed it.

My third blog was another research assignment, where I had to write about a game design studio. I looked at how it started out and where it is today.

The forth blog was an interesting one. It was about the controversial topic of computer game violence and the effects that it has on people. I had to watch a video called ‘First Person Shooter’. Once I had watched this I decided to write my blog about the research that has gone into the effect of violent games. After lots of research I got down to writing the blog. I would have to say that this was probably the most enjoyable blog that I wrote because, I have a lot of views on this subject, and so I was able to express my views in this blog.

For the next blog I was looking at game mechanics, but this time I would be looking at them at a deeper level. I looked at a review and pointed out the verbs, nouns and the rules that are in the review. This process allowed me to identify the key aspects of games design by linking the nouns and verbs together.

The sixth blog was more of a class activity; I say this because we had to decide a first person shooter to write a blog about, this blog would then go into a first person shooter family tree. It was another research assignment, where I had to decide a first person shooter no one else had chosen and then write about the game. I wrote about what the games about, the history behind it. I chose the game Delta Force: Black Hawk Down, this game is part of the Delta Force series so I wrote a little about the past games. I then wrote about the companies that developed and published the game.

The next blog was a very interesting one, I had to look at early Japanese games and American and European games and look at the difference between them especially the design aspect of these early games that were being developed in these different countries. I looked at the American Atari 2600 and the Japanese Neo Geo. I did research for this by choosing some of the well known games for each and playing these games, I then wrote about games and the differences of design between them.

For blog number 8 I had to write about different the business models from the early games industry. I had to watch a video called ‘The History of Video Games’. I talked about Atari and how they first started out, the way the games industry started out in Britain with its Bedroom designers and programmers I then finally looked at Nintendo.

The final blog was about MUDs, MUSHs, MOOs, and MMORPGs. This required me to do a lot of research, because I’m not the biggest fan of any form of RPGs. After a lot of research I talked about what each of the above is, I then looked at how MUDs have evolved into the MMORPGs that we have today.

So what have I learned from all this? Quite a lot actually. From the first blog where I had to talk about all the different game mechanics, I had never really thought about all the different types of game mechanics that there are in game (and there are a lot) and also looking back to other games that shared the game mechanics, so I could see where the games of today are thought up from. For the second blog, I learned a lot form writing about the development of the game Elite, from how it was made and who made it. I learned a lot from the research assignments, the third blog where I wrote about Rockstar. Rockstar make games that I play and enjoy so researching them and writing about them was very interesting. The blog I wrote about Computer Game Violence was I feel my best work, I had to do a lot of research and I learned a lot about some of the research that has been conducted into this subject. The next blog I feel was very interesting, I had to write about a review by picking out all the nouns, verbs and the rules of the game review. I learned a lot from this and found it a very interesting way of finding out all the game mechanics that exist in a game. I will hopefully remember this technique for helping me in games development. I learned a lot from the research that I carried out for the blog about games development in early American/European and Japanese game. I was surprised about the difference between them. While American/European developers were too busy ripping each other off by copying each others work, the Japanese were coming up with new ideas and making vibrant games (Although there were a lot of Beat – em – Ups!!! ). The blog about the business models was interesting. I learnt about the three different business models from different countries. The way Atari was set up and how well it was doing until it was sold and then all it problems started because the company that brought them tried to squeeze as mush money out of them as possible. As the games industry was crashing in America, in Britain bedroom designers and programmers were helping bring it back to its feet, and in Japan, Nintendo, who used to make game cards decided to make games as it saw that the games industry was proving to be a successful business to be in. I also learnt a lot from the last blog, I never even knew what I MUD was. All in all I have learnt a lot and enjoyed this module. I feel it has expanded my gaming knowledge, I have also been playing a lot of older games. I am also playing more games which I don’t normally play, e.g. I now play some RPGs even though I still don’t like them, but I know over time it will help my understanding of all types of game design.

MUD’s, MUSH’s, MOO’s and MMORPG’s

For this blog I will be looking into MUD’s, MUSH’s, MOO’s and MMORPG’s. I will be describing what each one is, along with some of the gameplay elements of each. I will then write a conclusion into my own feelings about how MUD’s, MUSH’s and MOO’s have evolved into today’s games.

MUD stands for Multi – User Dungeon. The first MUD was created in 1978 by Roy Trubshaw and Richard Bartle at Essex University. It is a computer game which combines elements of role-playing games. MUD’s were text driven games, the players would have to read descriptions of rooms, objects, events, etc. The players would interact with such objects by typing in commands. MUD’s usually took place in a fantasy world. The object of these games was to kill monsters, or anything that got in your way and explore the fantasy world. Developers of MUD’s got there ideas from pen and paper role playing games such as dungeons and dragons. Ideas also came from gamebooks such as fighting fantasy, choose your own adventure. There are different variations of MUD’s, the first of which is the graphical MUD. This was a MUD that used computer graphics to represent parts of the virtual world. An early graphical MUD was the Habitat which was released in 1985. Another type of MUD is the Talkers. These are MUDs but they have their game machinery stripped away, leaving behind the communication level commands. Next up are RPIMUD, which stands for Role Playing Intensive Multi Layered Dungeon. This type of game leaned towards more realistic enforced gameplay. The object of RPIMUD was not goal based; you had to collaborate with fellow players to create multilayered storylines in a cohesive game world. The last type of MUD was the complex combat MUD. These had a more complicated battle system. It usually meant the game didn’t have an automated fighting system.

MUSH stands for Multi Used Shared Habitats. It is a text based online social medium, where multiple users are connected all at the same time. The earliest uses of mush servers were for role-playing and socializing. There are two variants of MUSH which came from TinyMUD, which is also a social game.

MOO stands for MUD object orientated; it is a type of MUD and is a text based online game. Moo’s interactive systems are well suited for the construction of text based adventure games and with the invention of the internet MUD was formed as a network version, this Led to different types of MUDs and one of these were MOO’s. One feature of the MOO is that it can perform object orientated programming within the server. This aloud people to change things, such as authoring new rooms and objects, creating new levels, and changing the MOO interface.

MMORPG’s stands for massively multiplayer online role playing games. These are online computer role playing games where many players interact with each other in a virtual world. They are usually set in a fantasy world, where the player takes control of a character. MMORPG’s have the traditional dungeon and dragon style of gameplay. They have a character development system. This usually works by the player gaining experience points and then levelling up. In some of the games there is an economy which is usually based on trading, a final game mechanic is that some players will join together and form clans or guilds.

From all that I have written about MUD’s, MUSH’s, MOO’s and MMORPG’s, I feel that MUDs are the starting point for a whole new genre of gaming. I feel that MUDs with its early text based gaming has evolved into the huge MMORPG’s that we see today. It took its inspiration from dungeon and dragon pen and paper RPG games and with the technology we have I suppose it was only a matter of time that these games found there way onto the computer. From what I have written MUSH’s and MOO’s have been derived from MUDs and these have all helped in the development of MMORPG’s. Another reason that I feel that these games have inspired MMORPGs it that developers from early MUDs are still working but on MMORPGs, something that I do not find surprising due to my findings that the gameplay mechanics are nearly identical to today MMORPGs.

Blog #8

For this blog I am going to be looking at different business models which were described in the video ‘The history of computer games’. I will be looking at Atari, from how it was set up for only $500 and eventually being sold for $28 000 000 000. I will then look at how the games industry kicked off in the UK by looking at the Oliver Twins and Codemaster. I will then look at how the Games Industry moved over into Japan with Nintendo.

Atari was set up in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney for $500. They soon employed Al Alcorn, and Bushnell put him to work on a training exercise. This training exercise turned into the world famous Pong. Pong was a huge success when it was first released as a small arcade game in a bar. Within two months Atari were making one hundred Pong Arcade machines a day. Atari, realising how successful Pong was released Home Pong so now it could be played anytime. There was of course with all new things a problem. Someone else claimed that they had the patent for the game. That someone else was Ralph Baer, the designer of the Magnavox Odyssey. They claimed that Bushnell had seen the idea at a trade show. The damage had the case gone to court to Atari would have been huge, but they decided to settle out of court for $700 000 for a paid up licence. Atari went on to develop home consoles (The VCS) to great success; at one point Atari’s revenues made it the biggest growing company in US. Atari was then sold to Warner Communications for $28 million. Bushnell was retained as chairman. The relationship between Bushnell and Warner Communication was a rocky one. Bushnell wanted to keep the company moving forward with the development of next gen consoles, but Warner Communication was happy where I was, and after one too many heated board room arguments, it was decided that Bushnell was to sacked. Once Bushnell left, other were no to far behind him. David Crane who was a developer on the VCS left Atari with three others; they were the founders of Activision. They started developing games for the VCS but Atari stopped them. This was the first time an outside developer had created games for a console, and it took two years before they were allowed to make VCS cartridges. The company then went onto be sold in 1984 to JackTramiel for $240 million. This was seen as a lot of money for a company that wasn’t doing to well at the time.

In Britain the games development industry kicked off when teenagers started to develop games on there own consoles such as the spectrum. Two teenagers that did this were the Oliver Twins. The Oliver twin made many games, including Dizzy. It wasn’t until they met the Darling Brothers (Founders of Codemasters) that they got their big break. The Darling brothers were impressed with what the Oliver twins were developing, and paid them £10 000 for their Robin Hood Game. The Oliver Twins continued to make games for Codemasters and in 1990 started their own Games Company, Interactive Studios (now Blitz Games).

Finally the last major step in games development was when a Japanese Company which created playing cards decided to move into the games development industry because of how successful it was. That company was Nintendo. Nintendo went onto hire Miyamoto whose big break came up when the Nintendo game Rader Scope failed in the US. They gave the task of coming up with something new to Miyamoto. He went onto create Donkey Kong, which went onto sell 100 million in a year. Nintendo went onto become hugely successful with games like Donkey Kong, Mario and Zelda, and by the end of the 1980’s Nintendo held 85% of the games industry. Nintendo’s success continued when they released the GameBoy.

For this blog I have written about three different business models. Each one different from the last. The Atari business model shows us about a business that started of small and then became a huge player in the industry only for it then to decline once it was sold. A different business model is the British model which shows us that companies were looking to people developing games in their bedrooms, and for some companies this worked very well. The last model was the Nintendo model which was a totally different company before it became a games company. In today’s games industry, I feel that the business models today include small independent games companies being brought by the larger companies. E.g. EA buying smaller companies, Microsoft buying Lionhead Studios and Rare.

Blog

For this blog I have been asked to take a look at early Japanese games and early European and American Games and look at the difference between them especially the design aspect of the early games that were being developed.

To look at old games I had to look at some old consoles. For this blog I have looked at the Atari 2600 and the Neo Geo. I will be explaining a little about each console and then looking at the different games for them.

The Atari 2600 was first released in 1977, and it was the first successful video games console to use plug in cartridges instead of having games built in them. Some of the notable games that were released on the Atari 2600 are:

Atlantis
Breakout
Combat
Donkey Kong
Kaboom
Keystone Kapers
Ms Pac-Man
Pac-Man
Pitfall
Pole Position
Real Sports Tennis
Solaris
Space Invaders
Sword Quest Series
Yars’ Revenge

The Neo Geo was another console to use plug in cartridges. It was released in 1990 by Japanese game company SNK. It was years ahead of its time offering colourful 2D graphics and high quality sound. It was a major platform for arcade games at the time but was also available as a costly home console. There were two different versions of the system; these were known as the AES (Advanced Entertainment System) and the MUS (Multi Video System). Games for the Neo Geo included:

Nam 1975
Fatal Fury
King of the Monsters
Art of Fighting
Baseball Stars 2
Puzzle Bobble
Samurai Showdown
Sonic Wings 2
Super Sidekicks
Metal Slug
The Last Blade
Shock Troopers

Some of the games I have looked at for the Atari 2600 were Adventure, Kaboom and Pitfall

Adventure was, when first released, considered the first action adventure. It was released in1978 by Atari. Adventure was inspired by a computer text games called Colossal Cave Adventure. Atari bosses said that it could not be done but game designer Warren Robinett, created a graphic game based on a text game. Adventure went on to sell a million copies. The object of the game was to find the Chalice and return it too the Gold Castle. The character was represented by a square and would explore a multi screen landscape, which could contain castles, mazes and other various rooms.

Kaboom was designed and published by Activision in 1981. The idea behind Kaboom was to catch bombs dropped by the Mad Bomber with a set of three buckets.

Pitfall was released by Activision in 1982. The game is seen by many as the first platform game ever made, and is one of the best selling games on the Atari 2600, selling over 4 million copies. The idea of the game was to manoeuvre the character called Pitfall Harry Veditz through a maze like jungle. You have to avoid different hazards along the way, which included tar pits, quicksand, rolling logs, snakes, scorpions, walls, fire, and crocodiles. To avoid these obstacles the character would have to jump and climb, and in certain places he can swing on a vine to avoid them.

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The games that I have looked at for the Neo Geo are Ryuko no Ken (Art of Fighting), Gekka no Kenshi (The last Blade), Metal Slug: Super Vehicle SU-001 and Puzzle Bobble.

Art of Fighting is a fighting game series which was created by SNK. When released it was one of the first fighting games to include a super bar, it also introduced the spirt gauge and the desperation move. This game had its own sequels of 2 and 3 and it led it a huge amount of spin off games. Some of these include:

The King of Fighters series
Capcom Vs SNK series
Fatal Fury
Neo Geo Battle Coliseum

The last Blade is another fighting game that was created by SNK. The game takes place during the Bakumatsu era of Japan and also included Japanese mythology. The game was characterised by two selectable fighting stances, and a unique combo system. It also used a deflect and parrying system. The Last Blade also had sequels that included:

The Last Blade 2: Bakumatsu Rouman Dai Ni Maku: Gekka No Kenshi Tsuki Ni Saku Hana, Chin Yuku Hana.

The Last Blade – Beyond the Destiny

Metal Slug is a scrolling shooter computer game created by SNK and released in 1996. The game required the player to constantly shoot at re-spawning enemies in order to reach the end of the level; here you would meet the end of level boss.

Puzzle Bobble is a puzzle game series created by Taito. The idea of the game was to match up different coloured balls using a fixed cannon, whose angle could be changed, to fire the coloured balls at a pre arranged pattern at the top of the screen. If the ball manages to come into contact with identically coloured balls and forms a group of three or more, those balls and any hanging from them are removed. Points are rewarded depending on how many ball are removed from the screen at once.

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From the research I have carried out and the different number of games that I have played for this blog; these are my feelings toward early games design in Europe/America and Japan. The Games from Europe/America, I feel are all a bit samey. Many of them involve mindless shooting at objects to get to the next part of the game. Of course not all the games were like this, I have written about two who you could say kicked off there own genres. The Japanese games I feel were also trying something new when they come up with an idea for a game. (Although this game could then spawn off many sequels and spin off games as I showed with Art of Fighting. I feel that while European/American designers were churning out another shooter, Japanese designers were coming up with new puzzles games and bright and colour games. The main reason I feel for this the difference in what gamers wanted from each continent, and this is still apparent today in the gaming charts.

Having looked at the latest games charts on:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/charts.php

From these latest charts you can see the difference in the games that people play in different countries. In Japan you can see that the games they play are puzzle game and RPGs such as Brain age and English Training DS. As for the American and UK charts, they are full of shooters and sports games. I feel that this is one of the main reasons why early game design was different because they were making games for different people who wanted to play different things.

First Person Shooter Family Tree

Delta Force Black Hawk Down - xbox

For this blog I am going to be looking at a first person shooter and looking at who developed it. I will be looking at their history and some of the people who founded the companies.

The game that I have decided to look at is Delta Force Black Hawk Down. Delta Force Black Hawk Down was developed by Novalogic and Climax Studios.

Black Hawk Down was released in 2003 and is a first person shooter that takes place in Somalia, where the famous Mogadishu operation took place. The game is based on the real events that were also depicted in a book and a movie. In the first half of the game the missions consist of the missions that the delta force soldiers had to engage in, such as defending UN food convoys, rescuing hostages or destroying weapon shipments. In the second part of the game, it covers the events of mission Irene on October 3rd 1993. Its goal was to capture two lieutenants of the Somali warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid. For most of the missions you play as a member of a small delta force team, working in co-operation with US Army Rangers or Un Forces. Some of the missions include the player riding machine gunner on a Humvee or a helicopter.

Novalogic was founded in 1985 by John Garcia. Novalogic is a privately owned company. The Primary shareholder is Electronic Arts. Novalogic is a global publisher of computer games for the PC, Playstation, Playstation2, Nintendo Gamecube and xbox. It concentrates on a small number of titles each year. Novalogic spent it early years in producing home versions of popular arcade games. Throughout their history it has developed original gaming content for both console and PC platforms. Novalogic is best known for developing military combat simulations, with one of these franchises being the Delta Force Series. The Delta Force series includes:

Delta Force

Delta Force 2

Delta Force: Land Warrior

Delta Force: Urban Warfare

Delta Force: Task Force Dagger

Delta Force: Black Hawk Down

Delta Force: Black Hawk Down: Team Sabre

Delta Force: Xtreame

In 2004 Novalogic released Joint Operations: Typhoon Rising which dropped the Delta Force Name. Joint Operations: Typhoon Rising was Novalogics attempt to create a vehicular battleground. With its success in the consumer military simulation, Novalogic was brought to the attention of the US army. In 1999 Novalogic Systems was developed for the gaming market by bringing them to the military and civilian training communities. Novalogic Systems was the provider of the training software for the Land Warrior Soldier system.

John Garcia formed Novalogic in 1985. His computer software career started in southern California in the early 1980’s, when he worked for Datasoft as a programmer. He later became vice president of software development. He was responsible for 22 programmers and he helped develop more then 40 software titles. While at Novalogic he helped guide the company from small time arcade conversions to large scale development of best selling CD – ROM titles.

Climax was founded in 1987 by Karl Jeffery. It has grown into one of the world’s leading independent developers of interactive software. Climax is made up of four divisions which are: LA, Action, Racing and Handheld. They develop games for all the major consoles; Playstaion2, Nintendo Gamecube, xbox, and the Gameboy Advance. They also develop games for wireless devices and interactive television. Successful games that they have developed include:

MotoGP – xbox

Sudeki – xbox

ATV Offroad Fury 3 – Playstaion2

Karl Jeffery is the founder of climax and has been chief executive officer since then; he began as a freelance video games programmer, developing games for the Spectrum, Amstrad and Sega consoles for small UK publishers, which back then included Activision and Epyx. He would do everything from the design, the coding to the art, and a game would take him about four months to develop. He founded climax with several other programmers.

Week 6 Blog

For this blog I have been asked to read a review of a computer game and identify the verbs, nouns and rules.

The game review that I have chosen to work with for this blog is 24: The Game. To read the review click on the link below


http://ps2.ign.com/articles/692/692726p1.html


In the first part of this blog there will be a list of all the verbs that I identified from the game review. Then I will list all nouns identified and finally all of the rules that I found throughout the review. For the last piece of this blog I will be describing the nouns and verbs I identified and how they relate to one another.

Verbs

Plot Twists

Capturing

Shots

Acting

Play

Briefing

Talking

Invade

Exiting

Carries

Shooting

Driving

Solving

Pulling

Looking

Aiming

Hitting

Look

Navigate

Watching

Fine-tune

Pull

Hide

Move

Firing

Hiding

Run

Turn

Panic

Forcing

Strangle

Knock

Finding

Kills

Standing

Waiting

Emerge

Push

Open

See

React

Throw

Ruckus

Pursuit

Drive

Input

Apply

Crashing

Moving

Running

Taking

Thrown

Hack

Break

Finding

Matching

Sift

Engaging

Interrogation

Moodswings

Sniping

Firefights

Heading
Gunfight

Test

Run

Look

Conversations

Pause

Unlock

Shoot

Threaten

Steer


Nouns

Terrorists

Bombs

Storyline

Villains

CTU

Good guy

Money

Bad guys

Camera

Cutscenes

Team members

Cast

Jack

Field

Squad

Character

Clock

Puzzle

Controls

Target

Stick

Enemies
Guys

Bullets

Soldiers

Cover

Body

Tazer

Weapons

Guards

Doors

Room

Chairs

Traffic

Boat

Car

AI drivers

Vehicle

Landscape

Trees
Computer

File

Letters

Path

Button

Floors

Buildings

Snipers

Photos

Vitals

Shadows

Information

Assault rifles

Automatic machineguns

Ears

Fingers

Hand
Environment

Clutter

Barren

Tony

Kim

Animations

Team

Rules

It has plot twists, murders, terrorists, bombs, and everything you’d expect from the show

The show switches back and forth reasonably often, but the game really only follows CTU folk

The show at least builds deep character backgrounds

Invade the location

The game essentially follows the 24 – hour clock

The game encompasses everything from shooting to driving to puzzle solving

Press L1 to aim, the camera aims in the direction your character is facing

Pulling L1 causes a 180 – degree snap of your view

If you look up or down it’ll pop back the second you let go of the stick

Nearly impossible actually, to navigate stairs properly while watching out for enemies

You can snap between enemies with a flick of the right stick and then fine – tune shot placement for headshots

Flick the stick, pull R1 for a second, flick the stick again, pull R1 again, and repeat until and area is clear

And you’ll have to properly use cover and compensate for soldiers with cover of their own.

Wait for an enemy to hide and then aim at where his head was just at, as soon as he pops back out you can nail a head shot

Simply repeat the same firing and hiding stances until one of the two of you are dead

Enemies will sometimes run at you or past you if they panic in close proximity

You can strangle, knock out or even tazer someone

You’re told that the character you’re using at the time doesn’t have a lot of weapons training so you should try and avoid all contact with the guards

You can even throw chairs around in the room and cause whatever ruckus you want

Multiple driving sequences that range from getting from point A to B on time to evading some sort of pursuit

When you’re attempting to pass a car you’ll often wind up either nailing it because of the delayed response or crashing into something else because you’ve over – steered

These are used when someone needs to hack a computer, decrypt a file, and break into a room or some such

The games range from having to arrange various letters in the correct order to finding a path between a string of points to simply matching a button press to a coloured block on – screen

Need to sift through the floors of multiple buildings and try and discern possible snipers from satellite photos

Choose a push or calm question until you get their “vitals” in the right spot

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In the review it talks about shots, shooting, aiming, gunfights, firefights, firing. These can be related to the objects assault rifles and automatic machineguns

Sniping can be related to the word snipers

Plot twists can be related to the noun storyline

Hack can be associated with the object computer

Part of the review is about the driving elements in the game. These are seen in the words Driving, pursuit, crashing. These can be linked to the words, traffic, boat, car, vehicles.

The review lets us know about the different characters that are in the game. Words such as, terrorist, villains, CTU, good guy, bad guys, team members, cast, Jack, enemies, guys, soldiers, guards, Tony, Kim, Team. All these nouns can be associated with different action gameplay elements of the game, such as, solving, hitting, hiding etc, etc, and all of the other character based movements.

From looking at the connections that I have made between the nouns and the verbs, I feel that there is a lot of description about the characters and the movement and actions. I feel that this is quite important to 24, as it is a TV/game tie in. So for the game to be successful the developers are going to have to get the character and their characteristics spot on.

Computer Game Violence

For this blog I am going to be looking into computer game violence and its impact today. After watching the documentary ‘First person Shooter’, I have decided to look into the research that has been carried out into the affects that violent games have. I will look into what effects researchers believe violent games have on people. After writing about my research I shall evaluate what I have found out and give some of my own opinions on violent computer games.

According to psychologists, game players, particularly children, may become more aggressive and use violence to resolve conflicts. Research has also found that children may become more desensitized to violence in the real world, less sensitive to pain and suffering and more willing to tolerate ever – increasing levels of violence. There has also been concerns raised that the very young who play violent computer games may begin to believe that the real world is just as violent and dangerous as it appears in the computer game. This last concern was raised when it found in a survey of 900 eight year olds in the US, that over half of these children’s favourite game contained fantasy or extreme violence.

One piece of research hypothesized that we should expect computer games to have an impact on people’s lives because:

Children are more likely to imitate the action of a character with whom they identify. In violent computer games the player is often required to take the point of view the shooter or perpetrator.

Computer games by their very nature require active participation rather then passive observation.

Repetition increases learning. Computer games involve a great deal of repetition. If the games are violent, then the effect is a behavioural rehearsal of violent activity.

Rewards increase learning, and computer games are based on a reward system.

Another piece of research that compared their own research to other people’s research found that there were patterns of results in five areas.

The first of these areas is ‘Exposure to violent games increases physiological arousal’. The studies carried out have shown that violent games increase physiological arousal. The heart rate, systolic blood pressure and diastolic blood pressure all increased while playing violent computer games. Research has also found that the effect may be even greater for children who are more naturally aggressive. These children who were more hostile showed much greater results in adrenaline, nor – adrenaline, and testosterone. These effects are important because these are the same types of physiological reactions bodies have when engaged in a fight.

The second pattern is that ‘Exposure to violent games increases aggressive thoughts’. This study showed that when measuring cognitive responses to playing violent games increased aggressive thoughts. These findings have been found for males and females, children and adults.

The third pattern is ‘Exposure to violent games increases aggressive emotions’. This study has shown that when measuring emotional responses, violent computer games increased aggressive emotions. This study also showed that game players who were more addicted to computer games were significantly more likely to be in a bad mood before, during, and after playing then were non – addicted gamers.

‘Exposure to violent games increases aggressive actions’. This was the forth recognised pattern. This showed that playing violent computer games increased aggression. In one particular study, students played either a violent or non violent game. After playing the game, they were given a competitive reaction time task in which they played against another student. If they beat the other student they were able to deliver a load noise blast. They got to chose how load and how long the noise blast would be. Students who had previously played the violent computer game delivered longer noise blasts to their opponents.

The final pattern witnessed is ‘Exposure to violent games decreases positive prosocial actions’. This showed that after playing violent computer games it decreased the player’s tendencies towards positive behaviours. One study showed that children who spent more time playing computer games were rated less positively by their classmates, then children who spent less time playing computer games. Also a study on younger children, were rated as more aggressive and less prosocial by their peers and by their teachers when exposed to violent computer games.

Although all these studies and research all seem to point to violent computer games being to blame for game player’s aggression. A recent study (December 2005) has put it down to something else. It has found a brain mechanism that may link violent computer games with aggression has been discovered by researchers in the USA. This work shows us that there may be a casual link between the two, not just a simple association. This association is down to studies which tell us that people who play violent computer games are more aggressive, more likely to commit violent crimes and less likely to help others, as discussed earlier. While others say that violent people will play violent computer games, and not that games can change someone’s behaviour. The study found that people who play violent games show diminished brain responses to images of real life violence, but not to other emotionally disturbing pictures e.g. dead animals or sick children. The study was carried out on 39 experienced gamers who played violent computer games. They showed them real life images, interspersed with violent scenes. They did this while carrying out EEGs on the subjects; the P300 (this reflects an evaluation of emotional content on an image on an EEG) was smaller or delayed when seeing a violent image.

From what I have written I can see why it is easy to point the finger of blame on violent computer games for aggression in younger people and sometimes even murder. The problem I have with this is that from my own personal experiences while playing violent games, I have not felt the need during or after to go out and mimic what I just played. I feel that the people who we read about and see in the news must have other problems which are not documented in the press; it is always the games fault for making them violent and want to hurt or even kill. I am not saying that games don’t lead to aggressive thoughts; studies have shown that they do, but these are only short term and should not last forever. Also when we see these stories in the press they are normally under 18, so what are these people playing a violent game for anyway. Violent games like Manhunt and Grand Theft Auto have 18 certificates, and so it is illegal to sell these games to people under that age.

Another part of the research that I do not agree with is ‘violent people will play violent games’ I play violent games and I am not a violent person. Some research that I do agree with is that I do believe that seeing violent images in games (or in TV or film) does lead to some desensitivity of violent images.

In conclusion I feel that either you believe strongly that violent games are going to make others violent or you believe that there is no real strong evidence that violent games make people more aggressive. Before violent computer games, there was violence on TV and on film, and for a while these were blamed for aggression in younger people. I feel that violent computer games are just another scapegoat that people can use for a more deep rooted problem.