Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Video game industry growing faster than the overall US economy

A new study by The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) found out that the video game industry growth far exceeds the average growth of the US economy. The video game industry growth grew more than 17% from 2003 to 2006 while the overall economy grew only 4%.

It seems as if the video game industry is thriving even during generally tough economic environment. Maybe it'd be time for our legislators treat the industry with some amount of respect.

Monday, November 19, 2007

No research to show causation between playing violent video games and violent behavior

A Texas A&M Professor Christopher Ferguson has conducted a study of all existing research on the affects of playing violent video games.

His study concludes there is no evidence whatsoever to support the video game critics' assertion that playing violent video games causes young children to become more violent. The Professor says publication bias has a lot to do with the public perception of video games causing violent behavior.

He also opines that it would be nearly impossible to prove one way or another whether violent video games cause violent behavior due to the fact that nearly every child in the country plays them:

Put another way, can an almost universal behavior truly predict a rare behavior?


Indeed.