How the Industry Can Change the "Games Are Bad" Narrative

[Music] hello and welcome to this talk how the industry can change the games or bad narrative i am dr rachel cohert i am the research director for take this for those who are not familiar with take this we are the first mental health nonprofit to form serving the gaming industry and the gaming community we seek to destigmatize mental health challenges and provide mental health information and resources my role at take this is in research and education i'm a research psychologist by trade i'm also a science content creator on youtube zeitgeist where i talk about the science of game studies i speak there and on virtual stages like this on a range of topics relating to the uses and effects of digital games and specifically their impact on physical social and psychological well-being as you can imagine i've spoken a lot about the narratives in and around games but never directly to the industry

itself and that is what brings me here today i'm here today to discuss the discrepancies between what we know in the research community about the uses and effects of games and the narratives that we are told by the world around us about the uses and effects of games now one thing that's often missing from discussions like this is the role of the industry in the creation and sustainment of these narratives specifically how research collaborations between academia and the video game industry have the potential to catalyze societal shifts away from the inaccurate negatives we receive from society and accurate narratives we receive from society the what about the children and towards more accurate and nuanced discussions that reflect scientific reality the utility and fun and joy of video games common discourse in and around games has been fueled by moral panic uh for certainly as long as i can remember for those who are unfamiliar with the term

moral panic a moral panic is in a rational approach to observable and quantifiable phenomena that can best be understood as separate from subjective evaluations this definition is clearly the academic in me but i will clarify so moral panics are rational approaches to a problem because at their core they're about ascribing a easy solution to a complex problem that can best be understood as separate from subjective evaluations refers to the fact that moral panics are ascribing an easy solution without taking the time to try and understand the issue from a more subjective approach a subjective evaluation now video games are certainly not the first new technology to face moral panic we've seen these kinds of panics come and go we've seen it with dungeons and dragons and comic books and elvis hips but what sets the moral panic about video games apart is the fact that it's the longest standing moral panic of our time the moral panic around video games started to pick up steam in the early

1970s well the late 1970s really when people were concerned about the weird activities that were happening in dimly lit arcades that were gaining in popularity across the globe flash forward 50 years 5-0 years later and the moral panic about video games remains strong and we can see this in the way that video games continue to be represented in pop culture for example the classic episode of south park about world of warcraft or more recently poor unhealthy thor playing video games in avengers end game you see the pizza box and the energy drinks and he's quite aggressive when he's playing in the movie the stereotype and the representation of pop culture hasn't really changed much over the last 50 years but perhaps more striking and ubiquitous is the prominence of moral panic in and around games within the news media now there's no shortage of examples i could draw from uh to from the news media but here are just a couple to kind of show you the range of what we see about games in the news from the

generally innocuous kind of blanket statement video games are bad to the more specific and ever pervasive narratives like the link between video game violence and specifically video games and mass shootings particularly when it comes to young male offenders now this is classic moral panic ascribing an easy solution to a complex problem that doesn't consider subjective evaluations for example with the violence and video game narrative not considering the role of frustration tolerance or previous exposure to violence or peer delinquency all of which have been found to contribute to real world violent behaviors unlike video games which for the record have not been linked to real world violence and there have been hundreds if not thousands of studies examining its potential contribution now that's just one discrepancy between science and society when it comes to the narratives around games and perhaps the most pervasive example of the moral panic

driven driving the games or bad narrative here's another example in january 2021 i made some waves when i took to twitter with this moral panic fueled headline that was printed on the literal front page of the new york times if you had a physical copy the title is children's screen time has sworn in the pandemic alarming parents and researchers i mean those parents look disappointed look at the expressions on their faces now this article did focus on screen time generally but games had a starring role because of course they did as with all articles that came before it it was far more moral panic than actual science this article was particularly upsetting to myself as a researcher because it was specifically discussing increased video game play during the first part of the coven 19 pandemic lockdown when many researchers were preaching about the potential of not just social screen time but video

classic moral gamepl you see here at the bottom the cost will be borne by families because increased online use is associated with anxiety depression obesity aggression and addiction to the medium itself again for the record none of these claims are strongly supported by the scientific literature when we're talking about games specifically and i wish i had more time to go into that because that's my jam but as i mentioned earlier i have an entire youtube channel uh dedicated to that if you're interested more in the science of games and their uses and effects another quote is the negative framing of escapism which is classic we see here dr radeski said the mingling of all these functions not only gives children a chance to multitask it also allows young people to escape from any uncomfortable moment they may face if they're doing schoolwork that bores them she said they can easily move into a pleasure cocoon by watching youtube chatting with friends or playing a game i personally

love the idea of a pleasure cocoon i found my pleasure cocoon of choice on netflix recently and i know i'm not the only one but we see she's talking more generally about screen time here now historically video games have been specifically singled out as a negative escape because no one really ever has anything bad to say about escaping into a good book or even an old netflix binge right this is really kind of an old hats when paired with video games and another consequence of moral panic in the media research has found that games youtube videos books netflix anything with henry cavill are cathartic forms of escapism associated with stress reduction and mood management this was my favorite part of the article so i had to mention it um what are you going to do when you're married and stressed tell your wife you need to play xbox i feel like if this was a live event i would pause for laughter here because yes games are fantastic stress relievers which i'm sure many of you watching here today can attest to um i

know for me nothing gets my stress and frustration out like saving a town heroically or toiling away on my stardew valley farm and again the research supports this so why am i belaboring this point i'm sure you're all very familiar with the reputation that games have in popular media and culture the reason i'm bringing this up today is because you may not be aware that researchers have been actively working to combat this moral panic and misinformation about games for the last 50 years and despite the wealth of information we have generated as a research community we have largely failed to make any significant long-term change to the public discourse case in point the continued link between violent video games and real world violence despite a lack of scientific support and to be honest if anything the moral panic in and around games has continued to intensify over the last five decades alongside its continued rise in popularity so why is this the case well there are several reasons first the moral panic

plays into our human nature to be cognitive misers or lazy thinkers we want an easy solution to a complex problem and that's really at the heart of the moral panic but also games researchers are not the best at reaching out to the public first in terms of having access to press and public relations but also being able to express scientific information in relatable and understandable ways you did see my definition of moral panic earlier wasn't particularly relatable or understandable but perhaps more foundationally the moral panic narrative has failed to change because our research simply isn't good enough the narrative remains at least partially due to limitations in our ability as a research community to dispel many of these myths in systematic ways but the good news is that many of these limitations we face as researchers could be overcome through collaborative efforts with industry partners there are several players at hand when it comes to shaping our understanding of what games are and what they are not and

consequently the public discourse or narratives that we have in and around games there's the public there's researchers and there's the industry information that derives from and is largely discussed within the public sphere comes from stereotypes pop culture news media personal experience and anecdotal evidence this is why we have that south park episode and why often times when i'm interviewed at least one question starts with well i know someone who and it's a question about violence or addiction now some of these sources of information in the public sphere are informed by the work of researchers through academic work and press and general advocacy perhaps lesson forms than i would like them to be and of course as we noted before it tends to focus more on the negative than the positive but someone informed them the last some information gets through now the industry is another contributing voice to the narratives around games the work of the industry is more insular far more so than what we see in academia

which is saying something because you know academics like to live in their ivory tower the industry's primary potential contribution to the narratives and discussions about video game uses and effects with things like user research and other proprietary work however this kind of research remains exclusively within the particular walls of any particular studio and doesn't really trickle out to either researchers or the general public there are some exceptions to the insular nature of the industry work like the occasional general advocacy and outreach for example what we see with the raising good gamers initiatives established by games for change to catalyze positive change in the culture and climate of online gaming they have several industry representatives that serve on the advisory board for this initiative who actively contribute their expertise in data this is a great example but these kind of collaborations are really rare now apart from collaborations like raising good gamers the only other exception that i could find to the insular nature

of the industry's contribution to the narrative about games is the ever elusive practice of data sharing now i know that made everyone sit up straighter uh start sweating or both so what do i mean by data sharing sharing information about a game whether it's about in-game actions transactions or player information that is collected from the developer publisher of any particular game and shared with researchers from outside the particular developer or studio researchers from universities or organizations why is data sharing important because high quality data is the greatest limitation that researchers face in game studies and the most significant roadblock to combating moral panic thinking and the games or bad narratives the work of researchers is limited by the resources we have access to and our greatest limitation is access to representative and robust data

lack of access to high quality data creates a range of challenges and limitations firstly it impacts our research designs the vast majority of the work in game studies assesses a snapshot of players for instance it collects information from a singular moment in time rather than following the same player's overtime which would allow for a better assessment of change over time and examine potential cause and effect relationships a lack of direct access to players limits our scope of work representative samples of players are difficult to come by in the wild and typically we have to rely on what we call snowball sampling which is posting a request to participate on social media and hope that other players share in their networks and the recruiting efforts snowball this kind of method tends to recruit the most keen players the most active players rather than representative variation and player samples which is part of the reason why so much work in game studies has focused on the extremes the most involved players because that's what we're most able to recruit lack of players access also impacts the number of participants we can recruit

sample sizes are consideration if i'm lucky i get 200 300 maybe respondents to the work that i do uh and it's hard to draw robust conclusions about you know like two and a half billion gamers uh from a sample of 300. there's also the impact on data that we can even collect for example researchers have to rely heavily on self-reported data of time played rather than server log data this is the difference between asking how many hours a week do you play games versus knowing how many hours somebody logged in overwatch last week uh this is less than ideal particularly as we are terrible estimators um of the amount of time we spend doing anything having active collaboration with industry partners could remedy all of these limitations access to representative samples of players heaps of them access to gameplay data and strengthen the ability for us as researchers to generate more cohesive and accurate narratives about the uses and effects of games now the next question that i'm sure you

have in your mind is why should the industry bother working with outside researchers we don't have these limitations as as members of the industry this is a you problem right you might also say you know outside researchers are kind of annoying or terrible at time management and have different goals and no money uh first of all harsh second of all i have excellent time management skills uh but the truth is researchers from the outside bring objectivity to the table which is key for informing public discourse of course game companies can write a white paper and say games are great that's to be expected but working together with outside objective research partners that can make independent evaluations you know from academia or from non-profit organizations for instance that's where the real power lies it's about working collaboratively with researchers who can make independent evaluations with the support and resources of the industry behind it it's about working together to understand the uses and effects of games

as digital social interactive media working collaboratively through data sharing it's how we go from this to this it's how the networks become integrated our friends united are triforce completed that was a missed opportunity to use a triforce reference um it's also how the dialogue starts to shift so i'm going to give you a couple of examples first an illustration of how limitations in the work of researchers have led to an accurate narrative this 2020 paper looked at the estimation of iphone use um in the abstract it says among a sample of 325 iphone users i told you sample sizes would be small they're hard to come by big big sample sizes we found that participants mis-estimated their weekly overall iphone use by 19 hours and social media use about 12 hours correlations between estimated use and well-being variables were stronger than the correlations between actual use and well-being variables and the degree

of inaccuracy in estimated use was associated with levels of participant well-being and amount of use what does this mean first we're terrible estimators of time over estimating almost 20 hours a week of iphone use now keep in mind almost all studies in technology use but game studies specifically use this methodology of recalling how much time that you you spent doing it and that estimated use was associated with negative well-being outcomes bit actual screen time wasn't tldr self-report data can be widely inaccurate and skew the findings and narratives towards the negative perpetuating the moral panic in society about well-being and technology and yes the same has been found when it comes to games which i'm going to talk about in a minute now what happens when you have hundreds of papers using this methodology of self-reflection finding negative relationships between wellbeing and technology whether it be iphones or games you find someone compiles them into a very popular book that fuels a new wave of moral panic

which then gets passed on to popular culture news media ingrained in the public and the cycle continues and as i mentioned yes the same can be said for games and this has put us in a position where we're playing catch-up to these very ingrained skewed and inaccurate negatives it's narratives not negatives it's an uphill battle but not one that can be overcome in isolation because we've been trying for 50 years now i know the proof is in the pudding so here is your dessert this paper was released in 2020 and this paper johannes and colleagues assess the relationship between video game play and well-being in a unique way they analyzed players actual play behavior through a collaboration and data sharing collaboration with electronic arts and nintendo of america in this study they surveyed players at plans for zombies battle for nieberville and animal crossing new horizons for their well-being and play motivations during play and merge their responses with logged gameplay data provided by

the companies what did they find on average players overestimated their gameplay just like we saw with iphone use by two hours further supporting the idea we're terrible estimators of time when it came to looking at the relationships between video gameplay and well-being the researchers found a positive relationship between play time and well-being was significant and it was positive using the server data but when they used the self-reported estimates the same positive relationships only remain for players of animal crossing and not plans for zombies highlighting the importance of objective rather than subjective playtime data so contrary to the fire and brimstone we often hear when it comes to the impact of video games on well-being the researchers found a positive relationship between gameplay and well-being they found that players who objectively played more over the last two weeks also experienced greater well-being as discussed in an interview one of the researchers on the team andy schabilski

noticed if you look at the bottom three sentences here if you play animal crossing for four hours a day every single day you're likely to feel significantly happier than someone who doesn't this doesn't mean animal crossing by itself makes you happy he added 40 years of previous research has suggested the longer people played the more unhappy they were that's not even the best part because they were provided with objective play data the researchers were able to look objectively at the relationships between well-being and play time and ended their paper with this nugget of goodness although our data do not support causal claims they do speak to the broader conversation surrounding the idea of video game addiction the discussion about video games has focused on fears for a large part of players becoming addicted given their widespread popularity many policy makers are concerned about the negative effects of gameplay on well-being our results challenge that view the relation between playtime and well-being was positive in two large samples large samples because they had access to players from

the companies therefore our study speaks against an immediate need to regulate video games as a preventative measure to limit video game addiction if anything our results suggest that play could be an activity that relates positively to people's mental health and regulating games could withhold those benefits from players the magic word regulation right this singular paper powered by collaboration with the industry contributed more robust evidence in the last 10 years of research done in isolation against regulating games as a safeguard for players it also got an incredible amount of pr this study was lauded by the press i mean look at these headlines did you ever dream you would see so many headlines about video games with the word good in them these headlines were only possible excuse me were only possible because of the industry collaboration with research partners outside of their four walls data sharing allowed for independent evaluation of the data from researchers from the oxford internet institute to

demonstrate strong evidence between the link between play and mental health having industry support also brought weight and clout and more legitimacy to the strength of the paper and the findings discussed within it which in no doubt contributed to the increased press coverage around it the industry has such an opportunity when working together with researchers outside their four walls to change and rehabilitate the narratives in and around games and these headlines are case in point having active industry research partners is key to moving beyond this moral panic now by not partnering with external researchers the industry is limiting their ability to craft a more accurate not moral panic driven narrative in and around video game effects within broader societal contexts aren't you tired of the games in violent old hats i am and there's also a whole other range of things to explore like games in mental health and games and learning and

games and social connection working together is how we get from alarmist headlines like the one from the new york times to more nuanced and accurate headlines like we see here in relation to the oxford study that reflect the utility and reality that the role that games play in our everyday lives whether it's about our well-being or games and learning or social connection or family connection my hopes with the example here was to highlight how critical of a component the industry is for creating more balanced and informed narratives around games and how collaboration can start to pivot conversations about video games away from moral panic fears and towards a more accurate understanding of what games are and what they are not to be clear this is more than just about good pr um the repercussions of having the power of industry behind this work will have wide-ranging effects for both science and society

for science providing researchers with industry collected data allows them to produce more robust research with higher external validity that more accurately reflects the uses and effects of games this has a range of effects for society having more robust research consequently more press about the research will start to shift the games or bad narratives from the bottom up to more accurately informed public opinions another societal consequence well-designed and executed research is the foundation for political and policy debates around games which we didn't touch so much on today but is equally rooted in moral panic this is from 2021 gta blame for recent surge in car draftings in chicago as i'm sure many of you are aware this headline was discussing a recently proposed singles ban on violent video games because of of links presumed links between simulated violence and games and rural violence which i mentioned briefly is not

something supported by the scientific research this policy decision putting a sales ban uh bill up for debate or vote over fart god i don't think it got very far this time was based on bad science researchers and industries share the same goal when it comes to promoting well-informed evidence-based decision-making and working together we can create a strong foundation for it as we saw from that closing quote in the johannes article but to do that we have to be more engaged in independent research with outside organizations this is how together we advance a more active advocacy agenda which benefits us all and is clearly needed games are tools and pretty freaking great ones at that tools for fun tools for connection tools for learning and not tools for carjackings but not working together the industry is missing the opportunity to be a proactive partner in shifting the narrative away from moral panic and towards a more accurate and nuanced

discussion that reflects scientific reality it's about advancing an advocacy agenda based on good science based on the best science that we can produce and we do that by joining together like coffee and a donut we are better together and we must join together if we're going to rehabilitate the narrative of games think on the coffee in this analogy because i feel like games have to be the donut because everyone loves a donut right thank you guys so much for coming to this talk if you are interested in reaching out if you have any questions or comments or now inspired to start some research collaborations please do reach out this is my email my twitter the url to the zeitgeist youtube channel if you want to learn more about the science of games and of course if you want to learn more about take this and all that we do are looking for mental health information and resources please visit takethis.org thank you [Music]