#reasarch

Mentions something of a ritual involving the four elements-

(Maybe I’ll do a mix of both, or use it to like where certain groups do different aspects or some only follow one)-

It’s fun learning crap that could possibly be totally wrong because you know-

THE FUCKING SPANISH ASSHATS AND THEIR SHIPS-

Not to mention thanks to certain fanfics I know a FEW THINGS ALREADY like the skirt tying crap-

Tuesday we had more character design as a lecture, The Tuesday was spent looking over character designs as a whole suck as posture, the colour even the way they are designed. This strengthened my case study for Harley Quinn as her character was practically made for this type of evaluation.

In this lecture we mainly focused on the how we evaluate our character, as we need to demonstrate critical thinking skills and show we can analyse a character. We were told we can focus on any episode or scene we want to regarding posture, the way they stand, any aesthetic choices and so on. We were also told a valuable bit of information that we need to know about the character inside out as Lynsey recommended that we find out about the creators as well. She recommended we watch interviews, by the people who made it, voice actors as well as find out when it was made, why that style, why 2D or 3D. I will be looking into this over the next coming days as I have a character in mind. I will also be looking in the Library to see if there is any analog accounts of my possible character, Harley Quinn.

Lynsey Also suggested we do a 2 page summery. Page 1 would contain everything I know about the character as well as page 2 contain everything I can think of that I will need to find out and possibly methods of doing so. I can’t say it’s a method I have ever used before so I’m quite hesitant and wonder if this will actually help me, but I will give it a go.

When using online sources, I have to look out for the following things. If the sources are cited, date of publication, author or host of the website and to NOT USE WIKI, as that can be edited by anyone. When starting to write my essay, I should avoid the cliché statements like “I think” or “I feel” as secondary school use them. I should word my arguments like “It could be suggested” which is perfectly reasonable.

But the most important thing to include:

1 - The Character design and the animation style

2 - The characters walk cycle

3 - Behavioral patterns in the character.

4 - The colour palette of said character.

As well as other details but these 4 are the main ones to include. I also need to look at the mise en scène of each scene I look. Which I’m glad we where reminded because I took a 2 year gap between college and uni, I had completely forgotten want mise en scène even meant. However I can only refer to  mise en scène if it’s appropriate in establishing and revealing the personality of said character.

In the final part of the lecture, we were introduced to 9 archetypes, and they were: Hero, Shadow, Shapeshifter, Mentor, Threashold Guardian, Herald, Allies, Trickster and Shadow. All these are different character and hold different traits. When writing my essay about this character I will have to have a think about where my character falls into

A Dutch study on connection between video games and real violence.

From conclusions:

Media violence exposure does not lead to an increase in aggression over time for all adolescents.

Effects of media violence on increased aggression do exist for some adolescents: They are more pronounced for youth growing up in negative social contexts.

For adolescents in neutral or positive social environments, media violence may lead to less aggression.

There is a study about gaming supposedly causing sexism. I took a look into it.

As a possible mediator, we measured masculine beliefs. We used 12 items (e.g., “Boys should be encouraged to find a means of demonstrating physical prowess” and “It is OK for a guy to use any and all means to ‘convince’ a girl to have sex”; 1 = completely disagree to 7 = completely agree) from the revised Male Role Norms Inventory (MRNI-R; Cronbach α = .78) [27] Levant, Rankin, Williams, Hasan, & Smalley, 2010).

In other words, they put statements like “men should be strong” and “it’s ok for men to rape women” into one category to measure. So if you gave 7 to "men should be strong” and 1 to "boys can rape girls”, you score 4 in a set of believes that includes “boys can rape girls”.

Difference (HSD) test indicated that participants who played a violent game identified with the character more than did participants who played a neutral game (d = 0.62, p = .003) or a violent-sexist game (d = 0.57, p = .04). No differences were found between the neutral and the violent-sexist games (p = .67).

Their violent-sexist games are GTA San Andreas and GTA Vice City, violent games are Half Life 1 and Half Life 2, neutral games are Dream Pinball 3D and Q.U.B.E. 2.

Dream Pinball 3D is a pinball simulator where the only thing players can identify with is the camera. Q.U.B.E. 2. isn’t released yet, unless they mean the alpha version. Or they just mix it with original Q.U.B.E. I don’t think that ps4 alpha has any character in player’s avatar. Q.U.B.E. focuses on puzzles and doesn’t have a playable named character, unless they played the Director’s Cut version. But they don’t specify this, they claim it’s somehow not yet released Q.U.B.E. 2. 

So it’s confirmed that one of their neutral games has no character (in terms of the player avatar having anything that can be called “character”), and the other possibly also has no character.

In other words, the study proves that players identify with characters of a violent-sexist game as much as they identify with player-avatars that have no character. 

Knowing this all about their terminology, let’s look at the results.

It seems that neutral games, which shouldn’t make people more violent/sexists, aren’t different in terms of empathy results with violent-sexists ones. Violent games actually have better empathy results. It seems that violence and sexism in games has no negative impact on people, and games such as Half-Life series have a positive one.

In other words the study doesn’t prove that the type of a game has any negative impact on empathy.

Researches states that when it comes to the difference between males and females, male empathy and masculine believes (reminder, set of believes that includes “strength is good” and “rape is good”) are greater affected by violent-sexists games. Somehow, they don’t post any simple table of results like they did for both genders, instead they use their statistic jargon to mass with the casual readers.

As first support of our moderated mediational hypothesis, we found a significant indirect effect of the type of video game on empathy for female violence victims via increased masculine beliefs for males [-0.1846 (95% CI = -0.3984 to -0.0410)] but not for females [-0.0406 (95% CI = -0.1318 to 0.0097)] who played with a violent-sexist game.  

Then they say that there was no such effect for violent-only and non-violent games.

Further, conditional indirect effects of type of video game on empathy for female violence victims were significant only for males in the violent-sexist game condition at values of identification with the game character greater than 4.2583 [-0.1920 (95% CI = -0.4668 to -0.0492] (see Fig 2).

In other words the study proves that you have less empathy towards female victims if you are a man that identifies with a criminal that is the player character of GTA.

Let me repeat:

The study proves that if you identify with a criminal, you have less empathy.

Only and only then the results were significant.

It would be pretty logical to reach such conclusion and call it a day, but right away the authors state:

These results suggest that violent-sexist games decreased empathy for female violence victims for boys who strongly identified with the violent game character, and did so by increasing masculine beliefs.

In others words the study only assumed that the game makes men less empathetic when they already identify with criminals. And they ran to the media with this assumption as a headline.

There is no confirmation that GTA made men identify with criminals, and there is no confirmation that GTA affected the empathy they had in the first place. This is only assumed.

But you don’t have to trust the word of me, a random blogger. There is already a comment to this study that says the same.

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/comment?id=info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fannotation%2F41a35f0a-fe57-42be-9f10-449417892f6d

In short, the authors have correctly identified in their text that there is no significant total effect of game on empathy (Results, Primary Results, paragraph 4). Instead, they have a significant moderated-mediation process model. While I understand that a significant indirect effect does not require a significant total effect, it would seem to suggest a delicate and nuanced interpretation of results is necessary. The specificity of this double-moderated indirect effect, given that there is no significant total effect, suggests that care might be taken in the discussion. At times the authors are appropriately careful, saying that "This research] address[es ...] who is most likely to be harmed by violent-sexist video games." But at other times, the authors seem to speak too broadly, as though a total effect were found. "The present research shows that violent-sexist video games such as GTA reduce empathy for female violence victims, at least in the short term." The press release also runs the headline "Sexist video games decrease empathy for female violence victims", again suggesting that a total effect was found, despite the null result. Furthermore, I am concerned as to the possibility of confounding in this study's causal arguments. Is it possible that those who are already low in empathy are more likely to identify with Grand Theft Auto's protagonist? And could a similar process not be responsible for differences in masculine beliefs? It is not clear to me that this can be ruled out. If it can be, I would be glad to learn how.

The media like Times are already taking for granted a study that manipulates the result for the sake of causing moral panic. In the conclusion the authors don’t even bother to hide what they aim to prove.

Unfortunately, it appears that GTA might make the world a worse place for females.