Prostitution in Video Games: Stigma, Violence, and Male Pleasure

Media and Child Health

AMA Acts on Critical Psychiatry-Related Issues

Tobacco content in video games: 1994–2011

電玩，現今時下年輕人最為盛行的娛樂休閒活動之一；同時卻也是家長們最不希望孩子們去碰的娛樂活動。原因在於家長們認為電玩遊戲的內容有可能會影響青少年，使其產生言行上的偏差、暴力化。只是青少年們在生活中能夠接觸到的諸多娛樂媒體當中，並不盡然只有電玩帶有暴力色彩，電視節目、網路、動漫畫等均有暴力描寫情節。筆者認為隨著所選擇電玩軟體內容之不同，電玩遊戲亦可成為具有正面教育、教化功能之娛樂活動。因此筆者在指導教授．馬耀輝教授的指導之下，選用了日本光榮公司所開發的歷史戰略模擬遊戲．「三國志X」為題材，針對其在遊戲中對三國歷史的查證翔實度、表現手法等進行研究，以釐清此類運用歷史題材之電玩遊戲，是否有辦法提升使用電玩之青少年的歷史認知能力。 在先行研究方面，大致分成社會學及心理學角度來看以電玩為議題的相關研究與成果。並簡要介紹了三國志系列遊戲的演進與設定，最後再將研究題材所設定的歷史事件與正史進行對照比較，結果發現「三國志X」裡所安插的歷史事件與正史『三國志』之符合度達7成，其餘三成不合史實。但因著電玩所具備的多媒體特性(運用動畫、圖片、音樂；提供主動參與之虛擬體驗)，能夠讓使用電玩之青少年透過遊戲過程，更深入了解到歷史事件的發生年代、相關人物、過程及結果，而得出了確實具有提升青少年之歷史認知能力效果之結論。

The Personalized System of Instruction (PSI), or Keller Plan – Thirty Years Later\nIn the early 1970s a mastery-oriented, self-paced style of instruction, called the Personalized System of Instruction, or Keller Plan, came into physics courses. For a few years the Keller Plan flourished and reached an apex in physics with the publication of a complete set of Keller Plan materials for the calculus-based physics course in 1975. By 1980 it had all but disappeared from physics courses. This presentation will discuss the features of the Keller Plan, the explanations of why it disappeared and what are some attributes of the Keller Plan that can improve present instruction in physics.\nCalculus-based Physics Modules - Then and Now\nIn the summer of 1975, fifteen physics educators met for three weeks to create a complete course of Keller Plan modules for the calculus-based physics course. These materials consisted 45 modules and each module included a practice test, three equivalent mastery tests and grading keys. This presentation will describe a CBP module and explain how they got produced and distributed and used. Subsequently the CBP modules got transformed into an extension course for calculus-based physics. The extension course materials lived on for several more years as self-study materials for AP courses in high schools. This transformation and after-life will be discussed.

Increasing physical activity (PA) and reducing the time spent sedentary can favourably impact health in youth. Active video games discourage sedentary behaviour by incorporating PA into video gaming, and have the potential for increasing opportunities for, and the promotion of, PA. The aims of this thesis were to a) compare adolescents' energy expenditure (EE) whilst playing sedentary and active video games; b) to examine the contribution of upper limb and total body movement to adolescents' EE whilst playing non-ambulatory active video games; c) to compare the physiological cost and enjoyment of active video gaming with sedentary video gaming and aerobic exercise in adolescents, and young and older adults; and, d) to evaluate the short-term (12 weeks) effects of a home-based active video gaming intervention on children's habitual PA and sedentary time, behaviour preferences, and, body composition, with a mid-test analysis incorporated at 6 weeks. The first three studies were cross-sectional. They revealed that active video games significantly increased PA and EE compared with sedentary video games in adolescents. These increases were typically of insufficient intensity though to contribute towards recommendations for daily PA in youth, and were less than those observed for authentic sports and brisk treadmill walking and treadmill jogging. Nevertheless, active video games encouraged PA and discouraged sedentary behaviour compared to sedentary equivalents. Further, similar physiological responses observed between adolescents and adults in study three provided support for the promotion of active rather than sedentary video gaming throughout the lifecourse. Greater enjoyment of active video games compared to a sedentary video game and brisk treadmill walking and treadmill jogging suggested that active video games may be an enjoyable mode of entertainment for young people and adults. The methodologically-focused study two revealed that the best single measure for explaining the variance in EE during active video gaming was a hip-mounted accelerometer. This was congruent with current recommendations for measuring habitual PA using accelerometers. Interestingly, using combined PA data from accelerometers placed on the hip and wrist similarly explained the variance in EE during active gaming compared to combined HR and activity monitoring. This provided support for the assessment of upper limb movements during non-ambulatory activities in adolescents. The intervention study revealed that a targeted increase in active video gaming and decrease in sedentary video gaming at 6 weeks did not positively affect children's PA relative to an age-matched comparison group. An increase in total video gaming was observed at 6 and 12 weeks relative to the comparison group, and this was accompanied by non-significant but detrimental changes in PA compared to the comparison group. These findings may suggest that an increase in time spent playing video games may be detrimental to PA in children. Rather than simply enabling PA by providing active video gaming equipment, interventions that consider the wide range of PA and sedentary behaviour opportunities available to young people in the home environment may be necessary to benefit PA and health. Further, the novelty effect observed for active video game use supports the call for the production of new active video games that attract children and sustain their interest.

Take a digital game world, throw it in a blender, add some information and research skills, sift out the word educational and maybe, just maybe, we have a new and effective way to teach our students bibliographic instruction. As the video game industry momentously grows into one of the most dominant forms of digital entertainment, moving from geeky adolescence into a mature entertainment juggernaut reaching audiences young and old, the academic community begins to pay heed. In reality, the recent academic focus on "game studies" is actually a return to an educational examination of video games that began in the 1980s when personal computers and their pre-packaged games began to spread. This re-examination of educational gaming has been spawned by video game ubiquity as well as the commercial success of the gaming industry. There is also significant evidence suggesting that enhanced problem-solving skills and knowledge have become unpredicted byproducts from well-developed stories in games. Subsequently, there are innovative game studies courses and programs popping up all over university curricula and campuses. Programs from communication studies and media studies to English and computer science are all incorporating elements of game studies into their programs. Some new programs are being formed, shyly avoiding the video game label, while others, such as the University of Wisconsin-Madison's groundbreaking Games, Learning & Society Program, boldly proclaim their focus on games. If game studies is becoming a widespread area of research, should information science also be looking at ways of incorporating this area into its field, and if so, how can this integration be appropriately accomplished? In a 2003 poll, 69% of teenagers reported that they spend time playing video games each week and 25% of those polled reported playing at least 11 or more hours per week (Gallup Poll, 2003). Educators and librarians need to be aware of these kinds of statistics if we want to know our users. In truth, librarians and information scientists are already paying attention to the video game phenomenon, either by conscious strategic planning and programming or by fulfilling user requests for information on the fly at the reference desk. Video game sales continue to grow, and as gaming becomes a permanent pastime for teenagers, public libraries in particular are realizing the need to re-examine the scope of their collections and services by looking at the gaming medium from a fresh perspective. New approaches include developing collections of video games, developing and providing special gaining programs by hosting gaming tournaments (otherwise known as LAN parties for the gaming community) and offering gaming advisory services similar to the traditional readers' advisory services provided for the hard core reader seeking recommendations from well-read librarians. (See the papers by Gallaway, Gullett, Neiburger in "For Further Reading.") Of course there are legitimate concerns surrounding the decision to support or not support video games as a new medium for libraries, including the expense of supporting various gaming platforms. However, many of the arguments against moving into the video game realm seem a little déjà vu, mirroring the arguments against the collection of film and other non-book media in libraries. Librarians who fought to collect films and music are aware that their original arguments supporting these new collections, which insisted that alternative mediums would draw people into the library to expose them to the book collection, have not proved at all accurate. And perhaps that is a good thing. New types of collections invite new types of users, and the library becomes a more multifaceted place. Music lovers are not necessarily readers, nor should it be our mandate to insist that they should be. Of course, video game appreciation has not yet reached the same acceptance level as music appreciation. Nonetheless, with new technologies, the way people use libraries is changing, and the collections and services offered by libraries are consequently changing and evolving to stay relevant and to meet the needs of the public. Along with staying abreast of the latest and greatest video games, it is important for information specialists to be aware of the technologies at work in the video game industry. For library collection purposes, adding video games is not quite as straight forward as purchasing music or film on DVD. There are several platforms or gaming consoles to consider when purchasing games, so deciding which one to support could be a difficult and costly decision. Planning and strategy will be key for the library to be successful in these collection endeavors. Along with the public interest in supporting video games and game playing in libraries, librarians and information scientists are also analyzing video games from the learning theory perspective, particularly in the academic library community where bibliographic instruction plays an important role within curriculum and lifelong learning. The flow of information in the digital age is changing the way publishing takes place, which has an impact on research techniques as new mediums and tools are learned and assimilated into the scholarly research process. As well, as people begin to take on "real" virtual identities online, virtual societal rules are being formed as the rules for the physical world are not always appropriate or sufficient. One area that has recently been identified as something particular to the online world — and specific to video games — involves the development of virtual economies. Non-existent fictional items used in game-play are being bought and sold on eBay (Steinkuehler, 2005). Incredibly, virtual game currencies are at work in our real world. This economic anomaly alone seems to indicate the importance of paying attention to the influence of video games in our society. The power of video games to teach cannot be denied. Scholars in the field of game studies are well aware of the peripheral and accidental learning that goes on behind the scenes as a child, teenager or adult engages in an interactive video game. Harnessing the power and creating the recipe for success are more difficult. Remember the failure of the recent past when educators espoused the glories of edutainment, only to watch as that industry failed to leave the ground. Given that the idea to use games to teach is not a new concept, why should we go down this road again? One reason has to do with the generation of younger people and their use of technology (Prensky, 2001). They are born and bred using games. They are being trained to be visual learners with a preference for active learning and intolerance for purely passive learning in traditional lecture-style teaching. The potential for building a video game to incorporate knowledge and information is appealing to educators. Librarians with an aptitude for technology and an interest in promoting active learning in training modules will find the idea of incorporating library instruction in a video game just as attractive. It's one way to get beyond the boredom that students often associate with library instruction. In the past, educational video games have struggled to prove their effectiveness. There are many reasons for the edutainment bust that occurred shortly after the first wave of excitement about using video games to teach. Companies simply could not sustain themselves and compete with huge commercial gaming companies. As the intelligence and complexity of video games grows, there is again a fierce interest and desire to analyze the learning that results from game play. This interest and the success in the commercial gaming market encourage the educational community to look again at ways to incorporate technology in teaching in order to reach learners in innovative ways. Avoiding past mistakes will be the only way to succeed if we continue to strive to apply gaming in our teaching. One way is to take the focus off learning. We can model our educational games after commercial games. Unexpected learning seems to happen in successful commercial games whose prime goal is to entertain. Also, current developers of gaming products and tools need to be aware of the reasons behind the past failure of edutainment. If developers take the focus off learning objectives and drop the educational adjective in the description of our games, we can simply adopt the Marshall McLuhan adage and trust that the medium is the message. This concept will undoubtedly raise concerns among educators who know well that good teaching begins with clear learning objectives. Also, administrators often demand method to the madness in innovative teaching, especially when a lot of money is being devoted to new and potentially risky endeavors. These concerns are understandable, but we can't simply dismiss the powerful learning that goes on as students interact with complex games full of rich stories, complicated instructions and interfaces. And that is not considering the social skills that are developed through the communication that goes on outside of the game environment in the fan communities. We need to try new approaches if we want to be successful in applying games in education. If we build games that do not focus so much on objectives, the players will be more motivated to play — especially if the objectives of the game do not center on learning particular skills or knowledge, but rather on engaging the player in complete immersion in the game world. Complete immersion will be the best measure for success of an educational game — or any game, for that matter. Librarians stand apart from other educators, as bibliographic instruction in many academic institutions is already located on the periphery of the curriculum. Librarians in the business of bibliographic instruction have the freedom and experience of trying new things because reaching our audiences and getting buy-in from the administrators and learners has always been a struggle. The ideal situation would be if we can incorporate information literacy and research skills into a game that teaches information literacy. Many librarians are aware of and support the argument that bibliographic instruction is most successful at "point of need." Merging the idea of game-based learning and library instruction flies in the face of the "point of need" theory, but it need not compete with it; instead, the two teaching approaches should compliment each other. Another way to avoid failure in development of games with an eye at educating players in particular concepts is to involve the players in the design and development of the games and to constantly test players throughout every stage of development, getting feedback from users on everything from storyboarding to graphical interfaces. Usability testing is important in any tool — especially one involving interface design, and for the educational video game such testing is also important. Of course, whether a game is "playable" may not result in its ultimate success. Commercial developers and game players will tell you that a good game is one where you lose complete track of time while playing. Wasted efforts will be the greatest fear of educators and librarians involved in game development. In all likelihood, the pedagogy in the game itself will not be a flaw in a failed game — it will be the inability to find that intrinsic fun factor, that magical ingredient that motivates people to play. A user needs to find the game fun or addicting in order for it to be successful. Accomplishing a successful game is going to prove to be the most difficult task of the educational game developer. The fact that game studies programs are becoming very popular will help our endeavor as we will have well trained students — undoubtedly dedicated gamers — who can help us succeed. In fact, the next wave of commercial video game development is moving into player design — where game players actually build the games they want to play (Borland, 2006). This can only assist us in usability testing as gamers become very articulate about why they find certain games fun. Another benefit of the video game as a learning tool is that the player can go at his or her own pace. Games can be built to adapt to the player's skill level to make it truly interactive. With games, players get immediate feedback. As gaming becomes more popular, players begin to progress into the building mode. We can eventually tap into our students' skills and get their buy-in to our learning games by seeking their help in building the games. Involving players in the development is important, but the developers should also have an interest in games and game-based learning. Developers need to be passionate about teaching and reaching students at a different level — one that is not necessarily measurable in traditional ways. Finding ways to measure game design effectiveness will be the next difficult task for educators and game developers. Understanding common learning patterns will be important. For instance, people do not begin a new game by first reading the manual from cover to cover. Most players prefer to learn the basic moves in the game and then begin the exploration on their own. The learning is completely interactive and immersive. The unknown and the discovery factor in learning and playing a game are a big part of the appeal. Being thrown into a new environment and learning to survive is half the fun. Imagine if our students viewed learning how to use the library in the same light as they do learning how to navigate around a new world in a video game. They need not fear it — the discovery should be fun. If we can borrow techniques from video games, libraries might be able to push past their intimidating reputations. Another reason the video game is potentially an excellent framework to teach information literacy skills, has to do with the fact that many game players often partake in secondary research to assist them in their game play. Secondary material supporting game play is vast — many current scholars in game studies are taking a close look at the skills players develop in seeking out information and at ethnographic analysis of the communities formed around particular games. This secondary literature goes beyond simple strategies and game cheats. Much fan-written fiction and literature is completely extraneous to what was conceived by the original game designers (Steinkuehler, 2005). Another interesting phenomenon involves websites devoted to classic video games. Nostalgic programmers and players have developed software to support original games of the 70s and 80s. This software enables the now 30-something child who grew up playing games on the original PCs to emulate their experience as a child. Finding game literature could be an excellent search topic for librarians to use in order to interest students when teaching basic research skills. The topic is meaningful and fun because the skills players learn in their independent gaming research are completely transferable to the academic world. The proliferation of game studies programs on campuses creates the potential for librarians and information scientists to tap into groups already developing and evaluating games. Some librarians may have an aptitude and desire to learn new skills, but for many, creating a good teaching tool that is fun and effective will be the prime concern, so making use of resources that are already available will be key. A wonderful aspect of the gaming community is a natural inclination to share knowledge. Also, a new thrust for user-driven games will only encourage the proliferation of free support material and software. There are many open source tools available for game development. Similarly, those librarians interested in using games to teach would benefit by sharing templates and game engines that can be easily adapted for other libraries. We know that our users are gaming. Let's tap into these skills and interests and use games to teach. Let's add interesting gaming-related programs to our public libraries in order to encourage information literacy and help our libraries evolve the way they need to in this next phase of the information age.

Reducing the prevalence of tobacco use requires both efforts to encourage cessation among existing smokers, and to reduce uptake among young people. One area of success is the growth in restrictions on tobacco advertising in a number of countries, which now includes the introduction of standardized (also known as “plain”) tobacco packaging. However, there remain a number of relatively unregulated channels through which tobacco brands, and tobacco-related imagery more generally, can be promoted. These include social media, movies, television, and video games, among others. However, the evidence regarding the prevalence and impact of tobacco marketing via these channels is uneven; for example, there is a far larger literature on smoking in movies than in other domains. In this issue, Forsyth and Malone1 address this gap by reviewing the literature on smoking imagery in video games. There is now substantial evidence that smoking in movies is associated with tobacco use initiation in young people2. Much of the evidence comes from cross-sectional studies, where determining a temporal order is obviously not possible. However, there is also a growing number of prospective studies, recently summarized by Leonardi-Bee and colleagues2, which provide stronger support for the possibility that exposure to smoking in movies may indeed contribute to subsequent tobacco use initiation. This relationship appears to depend on the degree of exposure, with the most exposed young people 40% more likely to become smokers than the least exposed2. Given that tobacco imagery is relatively common in movies, and therefore exposure among young people is high, it is plausible (particularly as other forms of promotion have been removed) that this exposure is now a substantial driver of tobacco use uptake. Indeed, the US Surgeon General has concluded that the evidence is sufficiently strong to conclude that there is a causal relationship between smoking in movies and tobacco use uptake in young people3. In this context, it is likely that similar imagery in other media, such as video games, will show similar associations. Nevertheless, it is still necessary to develop an evidence base around this question in order to inform policy. In this context the review by Forsyth and Malone is both timely and important. They conclude that research into the associations between tobacco imagery in video games and tobacco use and attitudes in young people remains in its infancy. However, they also highlight methodological difficulties specifically related to video game research. For example, while tobacco use occurs in various video games, the nature of this imagery may be very different, from characters who are smokers and who smoker regularly, through to brief static images. Moreover, video game play is interactive, so that the degree of exposure will depend very much on engagement with the game, including length of time spent playing it, and progress through it. Until recently, most tobacco marketing occurred through channels relatively amenable to regulation and codes. Movies could be given ratings that reflected their content (although in the context of tobacco imagery this was often applied unevenly), television programmes could be shown after a certain time, and so on. However, more recent technologies have proven increasingly difficult to regulate. Movies and television programmes can be watched online, allowing age and time restrictions to be more readily circumvented, while social media channels are difficult, if not impossible, to regulate. Video gaming, in particular, is rapidly becoming a major form of entertainment for young people, but as Forsyth and Malone report their age ratings typically do not reflect tobacco imagery content. Understanding this important but rapidly changing landscape is critical if we are to continue the success of attempts to reduce exposure to tobacco marketing among young people. The review by Forsyth and Malone is an important step towards addressing this.

Although there is a vast and useful body of quantitative social science research dealing with the social role and impact of video games, it is difficult to compare studies dealing with various dimensions of video games because they are informed by different perspectives and assumptions, employ different methodologies, and address different problems. Studies focusing on different social dimensions of video games can produce varied findings about games’ social function that are often difficult to reconcile— or even contradictory. Research is also often categorized by topic area, rendering a comprehensive view of video games’ social role across topic areas difficult. This interpretive review presents a novel typology of four identified approaches that categorize much of the quantitative social science video game research conducted to date: “video games as stimulus,” “video games as avocation,” “video games as skill,” and “video games as social environment.” This typology is useful because it provides an organizational structure within which the large and growing number of studies on video games can be categorized, guiding comparisons between studies on different research topics and aiding a more comprehensive understanding of video games’ social role. Categorizing the different approaches to video game research provides a useful heuristic for those critiquing and expanding that research, as well as an understandable entry point for scholars new to video game research. Further, and perhaps more importantly, the typology indicates when topics should be explored using different approaches than usual to shed new light on the topic areas. Lastly, the typology exposes the conceptual disconnects between the different approaches to video game research, allowing researchers to consider new ways to bridge gaps between the different approaches’ strengths and limitations with novel methods.

Background: Video gaming (VG) has since the 1980s become increasingly ubiquitous entertainment among the adolescents and young adults. Many young people expe­rienced dizzy spells, but not vertiginous episodes, after playing VG. Objectives: This study performed ocular vestibular-evoked myogenic potential (oVEMP) and cervical VEMP (cVEMP) tests in subjects before and after engaging on VG to investigate the effect of VG on the otolithic reflex system. Methods: Twenty subjects who frequently played VG (>3 days per week) for more than 10 years were assigned to the long-term group. Another 20 subjects with engaging on VG <3 days per week or <10 years were assigned to the short-term group. Each subject underwent baseline oVEMP and cVEMP tests first, followed by playing VG for 1 h. Then, all subjects underwent the same paradigm. The “VG-year” is defined as frequency of VG playing within 1 week (day/week) multiplied by total length of VG engagement (year). Results: Engagement on VG rarely affected the oVEMP responses for either short- or long-term players. In contrast, the response rates of cVEMP significantly declined from pre-VG period (80%) to post-VG period (58%) in the short-term group, but not in the long-term group. The cutoff value for predicting absent cVEMP in VG engagement is 21 VG-year. Conclusion: Short-term engagement on VG may result in temporary cVEMP loss, while permanent cVEMP loss could be identified in long-term VG players. The cutoff value for predicting absent cVEMP in VG engagement is 21 VG-year, indicating that damage to the sacculo-collic reflex system could be anticipated in a subject who has played VG at least 1 h per session, 7 days weekly for 3 years.

New information and communications technologies have become extremely dynamic. While content in the past was more or less controlled and regulated, it is now more and more free to access, and increasingly independent of any formal institutional framework. Images on screens, which used to be viewed on different platforms in specific locations and at more predictable times, now cross through space and time, and this particularly for the younger generations. Some questions arise in this context: what is the role and what are the effects, for example, of film content and video games on young people? What role does rating systems play with respect to these young people and their parents? In order to answer such questions, we need to understand their needs, expectations and skills. Some consider young people to be passive, easy to manipulate, unaware of their values and entirely lacking in critical thinking skills. Others see them instead as active users, capable of using knowledge and competencies. Given our objectives, we chose a qualitative approach designed to take young people’s everyday environment into account in the construction of their relationships to on-screen images. Family interviews (semi-structured interview guides), logbooks and digital video cameras were used to gather information in the families. Discussion groups were held with young people and parents separately and evaluation groups with young people aged 14-16 were held in our research facilities. Answers to such questions about the effects of images were found to be complex and full of nuances, despite the fact that there are some who would want simple yes or no answers that support their views. “This invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them.″ Plato, Pheadrus, 275b, 300 B.C.

This is a training project in personal and social skills in the form of an interactive game based on eight different online narratives. It takes place on a group level, under the supervision of a team using a set of instructions drafted in training and trial situations. The school environment is of special importance in prevention, due to its educational and information role, which encourages reflection and the ability to make choices that lead to good decisions and promote well being. This project is based on the global communication process in present-day network societies and shows us that the Internet is a precious tool in the teaching and learning process, where teenagers play an active role in their education. This is an interactive online multimedia game for young people at school designed to respond to their values, interests and problems. The game and its stories use a recreational approach to stimulate creativity, learning and a reflexive discussion on topics affecting young people’s everyday lives (e.g. adolescence, growing up, friendship, expectations, fears and doubts…). It also develops media literacy not only through the skills needed to play an online game but also the guided, supervised research that they have to do to work with the topics as they appear. The case study was conducted with a group of students and we discuss the results related to issues of media literacy and the relationship between its theory and practice.

The video game market has become increasingly popular among children and adolescents in recent decades. In this research, we investigated the Video Game Addiction Scale (VGAS) for Chinese children and adolescents. We aimed to examine children and adolescents’ prioritization on the VGAS criteria and comparative analysis of the trend of video game addiction among them. A cross-sectional paper questionnaire study was conducted on 1400 Chinese students from grade 3 (9 years old) to grade 12 (18 years old). The respondents had to complete the socio-demographic information and the VGAS test. The VGAS characteristic was prepared in 18 criteria, which was the combination of the Video Game Addiction Test (VAT), Gaming Addiction Scale (GAS), and Revised Chinese Internet Addiction (CIAS-R). Eventually, the VGAS criteria prioritization was ranked methodologically through the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method for each grade separately. Additionally, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) weighting technique was utilized to analyze the video game addiction of each grade under the four alternatives, individually. The results indicate that 3rd-grade students with some levels of addiction were the youngest who felt their life would not be fun without video games. Students in 5th grade with some levels of addiction were the youngest students who disclosed that their willingness to play video games is for forgetting their problems or feeling down. Moreover, they played video games more than before, thus, they did not sleep enough. Pupils of grade 6 reported that they played video games more than last semester. In their opinion, it is fair to play video games this much and does not need to reduce playing hours. Not getting enough sleep because of playing video games was seen in 7th graders as their first preference. 10th-grade students were the first to neglect to do their important responsibilities for playing video games. None of the 7th and 12th graders were somehow safe from video game addiction. In conclusion, playing video games can negatively affect studying, sleeplessness, getting far from society, and skipping important responsibilities for school students. Furthermore, the symptoms of video game addiction had seen at younger ages. These data provided insights for decision-makers to target effective measures to prevent children and adolescents’ video game addiction.

VIDEO GAMES: THEIR EFFECT ON SOCIETY AND HOW WE MUST MODERNIZE OUR PEDAGOGY FOR STUDENTS OF THE DIGITAL AGE By Christopher John Baker, BA A Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University. Virginia Commonwealth University, 2014 Major Director: Noreen C. Barnes, Ph.D. Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Theatre This thesis aims to explore how video games have become an extremely beneficial tool in regards to education, art, medicine, psychology, economics, and beyond. Chapter 1 focuses on how ubiquitous video games have become in America, and what makes video games such a uniquely enjoyable experience to warrant such popularity. Chapter 2 explores how video games have become instrumental in various fields. Chapter 3 discusses the role that video games now play in the world of education; specifically how we, as educators, must adapt a modern pedagogy best suited to students who have grown up with video games, which have influenced how they learn. This is the thesis’ primary contention and purpose. Chapter 4 dissects the two most studied controversies which surround video games as a medium: video game violence and video game addiction.

V ideo G ames : A S ite for S ore E yes Sahar Mozaffari B S J This paper will address three distinct areas of research in which video games are being used to im- prove eye and brain conditions in the medical field. “I was very surprised by this finding,” research Roger Li, PhD, of the School of Optometry and the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at University of California, Berke- ley said in a news release. “I didn’t expect to see this type of improvement.” From the earliest days in the history of video games, accusations (whether true or not) have circulated suggesting that they somehow negatively im- Figure 1. A Play Station 2 contoller, used to control the movements of characters in video games. pact society, specifically the juvenile and adolescent life- style. However, recent studies suggest that video games may prove to be useful treatment methods in the field of vision science. It has been assumed that video games are detrimental to vision, in the same way that staring at any electronic screen for long periods of time has been traditionally discouraged. However, the accidental discovery of using video games to cure adult amblyopia, more commonly known as “lazy eye,” has provided a basis to help those without perfect vision in a non-clinical way as opposed to contact lenses, glasses, or laser surgery. This study is one of the first to show that playing games can improve blurred vision in adults with amblyopia (Li, On September 21, 2010, an issue of PLoS Biology pub- lished a study in which people with amblyopia showed improvement in their vision after playing video games. Amblyopia is improvable in children through treatment, but is more difficult to treat in adults. After playing 40 hours of video games, adults with amblyopia showed an 1 • B erkeley S cientific J ournal • A ccidents • V olume 14 • I ssue 2 improvement in visual acuity and 3-D depth perception (Li, 2010). According to the National Eye Institute, amblyo- pia is a brain disorder in which the vision of one eye does not develop properly (Li, 2010). It is the most frequent type of permanent visual impairment in children, affecting two to three of every 100 children (Li, 2010). Amblyopia is also the most common cause of one-eye visual impairment among young adults or people of middle age (Li, 2010). While the study has shown vision improve- ment for adults with amblyopia, researchers say this does not necessarily justify spending more time playing video games for the general population, as there have been no observations of similar benefits for people with normal vision (Li, 2010). “These new findings are very encouraging because there are currently no accepted treatments for adults with amblyopia,” says Dennis Levi, of University of Cali- fornia, Berkeley and Dean of Optometry at the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute. Levi says that conventional wisdom has held that unless the disorder is corrected in childhood, damage was thought to be irreversible. Li and Levi said they have found that intensive training on a perceptual task, such as getting two horizontal lines to align, can lead to an improvement of 30 percent to 40 “Video games may prove to be useful treatment methods in the field of vision science.” percent in visual acuity (Li, 2010). In one experiment, 10 subjects with patches over the stronger eye played an action video game for two hours at a time for a total of 40 hours in one month. The action video game required subjects to shoot at targets, while the non-action game consisted of users having to construct things on screen. Twenty subjects participated in this study between the ages of 20 and 60. In another experiment, three people played the