Poll: 61 Percent of Britons Believe Games Cause Violence

[TwiZtah]

No shit.

Old people fear new things, and water is wet.

 

[Evil Smurf]

Hey, fuck them. I MURDERED HOOKERS BEFORE GTA.

Damn, you're so old school. You were doing it before it was cool. Are you working on bringing it back round to being underground and hipster again?

Who do you think made it cool? ;D In an earlier life I was Jack the Ripper.

 

[Terramax]

I think everyone knows its not all of briton, but it is just entertaining when smugbrits go "Hurr murica" when someone does or says something stupid in the US like it represents the whole country, to do it back at them once in awhile

Yeah, I get what you mean. But don't think that people from the UK don't put their own country down. We know how much of a pathetic waste of space our country is these days.

 

[Yopaz]

Can we all agree, fifty years from now to look back at what's going on here and not complain about kids and their holophonic mind links?

No, sadly we cant ever do that. Those of us who are aged 20-40 on this site is already complaining about teenagers and how things have changed in the 4 years since we were 18. We will also complain about how we're constantly getting dumber regardless of evidence. I doubt we'll ever stop complaining about the youth.

 

[Jockstrap]

I actually kind of agree with this poll. The way it is worded is asking if it causes Violence OR aggression. In normal life I would consider myself to be one of the most placid people you could meet however when I play a competitive multiplayer game like counterstrike, awesomenaughts or mechwarrior online, I can often find myself swearing and generally getting angry at myself and other players. (Though I never vent it over in game chat, I refuse to be one of those people)

If they had separate questions for aggression and violence then I would predict that the percentage of people saying it caused aggression would be a lot higher than the percentage of people saying it caused violence.

 

[Bug MuIdoon]

Probably the same assholes who don't abide by the rating system of games..

I had a customer today in work purchase GTA for a 5 year old. FIVE. I am sorry, no matter what side of the fence you sit, that is messed up.

Can I just ask, do you have any grounds to not serve the customer? If you were to work in a shop that sells alcohol and the customer told you that they were buying beer for a 5 year old you would, of course, refuse to sell it them. Is this not the case were you work?

No need to particularly take pot shots at the consumer when the company and even the employee are willing to sell it to them.





Capcha: I like humans. No, Capcha, I really, really do not.

 

[K12]

To be honest I'd agree with the statement as it is worded in the study.

"Video games can be a cause of real world violence and aggression" doesn't say:

"video games HAVE caused real world violence and aggression" OR
"video games are to BLAME for some real world violence" OR
"video games could be the MAIN (or even a MAJOR) cause in some real world violence" OR
"video games GENERALLY INCREASE the occurrences of real world violence and aggression enacted by players" OR
"CENSORSHIP of video games would have a positive effect in reducing real world violence"

The phrasing of the two questions means you can agree with both and believe video games have an overall approximately zero effect on aggression whilst having potentially having either effect on specific individuals (which is what I think")

There's a big difference between believing that a perfectly normal person will play, for example, GTA5 and snap and go and shoot someone compared to the possibility that GTA5 could have a negative effect on somebody who already has poor mental health.

I find it odd that they didn't even do a 5 or 7 point "strongly agree" to "strongly disagree" on this. I thought everyone did that.

 

[K12]

So at least 61% of Britons are irrational and illogical and have no idea what the words correlation and causation mean. It's sad.

Not really 61% of all Britons. Just a small handful. I mean, there are millions of us. I fail to see this statistic representing an entire country, even one as small as the UK.

But, yeah, it's pretty grim. The good news is that, with time, these people should fade out.

I think everyone knows its not all of briton, but it is just entertaining when smugbrits go "Hurr murica" when someone does or says something stupid in the US like it represents the whole country, to do it back at them once in awhile

I wouldn't take it too personally when Britons take the piss out of Americans. Mockery is sort of like breathing to us British, we often don't really mean it and we mock ourselves more than anyone else.

 

[Alcamonic]

In related news, 61% of bretons answered 'yes' when asked if magic users caused the oblivion crisis.

Aah, I had too much fun with this comment. Gamer humour at its best.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

So at least 61% of Britons are irrational and illogical and have no idea what the words correlation and causation mean. It's sad.

Not really 61% of all Britons. Just a small handful. I mean, there are millions of us. I fail to see this statistic representing an entire country, even one as small as the UK.

But, yeah, it's pretty grim. The good news is that, with time, these people should fade out.

I think everyone knows its not all of briton, but it is just entertaining when smugbrits go "Hurr murica" when someone does or says something stupid in the US like it represents the whole country, to do it back at them once in awhile

I wouldn't take it too personally when Britons take the piss out of Americans. Mockery is sort of like breathing to us British, we often don't really mean it and we mock ourselves more than anyone else.

Oh I never said it was taken personally, I just said it was fun to toss a bit back every now and then!

Hell what is the internet for if you cant take the piss out of one another?

Porn. You really had to ask?

 

[K12]

So at least 61% of Britons are irrational and illogical and have no idea what the words correlation and causation mean. It's sad.

Not really 61% of all Britons. Just a small handful. I mean, there are millions of us. I fail to see this statistic representing an entire country, even one as small as the UK.

But, yeah, it's pretty grim. The good news is that, with time, these people should fade out.

I think everyone knows its not all of briton, but it is just entertaining when smugbrits go "Hurr murica" when someone does or says something stupid in the US like it represents the whole country, to do it back at them once in awhile

I wouldn't take it too personally when Britons take the piss out of Americans. Mockery is sort of like breathing to us British, we often don't really mean it and we mock ourselves more than anyone else.

Oh I never said it was taken personally, I just said it was fun to toss a bit back every now and then!

Hell what is the internet for if you cant take the piss out of one another?

Good! When the whole "sharp tongued" Brits thing comes up it always reminds of a time I was travelling with Americans and made a few (what I considered to be) light-hearted digs at them that I would make to anyone at home and the result was that they all hated me for several days.

Since then I've always felt the need to highlight that when a Brit takes the piss it is often meant as an affectionate and friendly thing. Apparently not necessary in this case

 

[Athinira]

61% of Britons Believe Games Cause Violence - says sample size of 7.

I know that there were more people but 2000 people don't speak for the millions. My home county, nay, my small town that I live in has more than 2000 people .

If those 2000 people are selected randomly/fairly and are properly representive of the total population, then that is actually a fairly decent sample size, and quite often more than enough to give a complete picture. There are often studies that use less than that (like 500-1000).

Of course, the more the merrier, but don't discount just because of that size. I'm personally more critical of the selection process. Like i mentioned, the sample size has to be distributed randomly (or fairly) across the population, and it most often isn't that well.

 

[James Joseph Emerald]

Man, it looks like someone behind this study is trying to massage the data.
For one thing, excluding all the "I don't knows" defeats the purpose. I don't think video games cause aggression, but I'm not absolutely certain, so I would probably put down "I don't know." Especially when the statement is phrased "They can be a cause..." -- I'm sure I could imagine some scenario where video games could be a contributing factor to aggression. The amount of fights I've seen break out over Co-op Super Mario...
So really, counting the "yes" responses against the "no" ones and the neutral ones, it could be more like 20% of Brits that actually believe video games directly cause violence.

Second of all, that graph is really visually inaccurate. It starts at 30, so the proportion of responses appear weighted far more in one direction than they actually are. They manage to make 57% look over twice as much as 43%, even though it's a much smaller difference.

 

[alj]

Percentage of the 61% that read the Daily mail or The Scum (Sun) 100%

( Oh anyone wondering why i call the sun the scum see below)

http://www.anfieldroad.com/dont-buy-the-sun/

 

[Evonisia]

Oh Britain, why do you believe in such nonsense?

Well one day soon everyone over 50 will die and the percentage of "Cause Violence" will dramatically plummet.

 

[Sir Shockwave]

So at least 61% of Britons are irrational and illogical and have no idea what the words correlation and causation mean. It's sad.

It probably says a lot that England is the home of bigoted opinions these days. Also, side note - most of our population is elderly. This probably says much about how the Poll is judged.

 

[Savryc]

This would be more accurately titled "61% of 2000 British YouGov Users believe games can be a cause of violence"
But I understand, tabloid methods get more views.

Considering the UK is the largest games market in Europe and the 3rd largest in the world and that roughly 33.6 million or just over 53% of the total population play games in some form or another (with 76% of that figure preferring consoles before some brings up casual gaming) I find it hard to believe that 61% of the entire population would hold such views and I don't appreciate less than 1% of the population being used to reach such a claim.

Bad poll is bad and YouGov should feel bad.

Source for statistics http://www.newzoo.com/trend-reports/uk-games-market-2012-summary-report/
Take it as you will.

 

[Britisheagle]

Probably the same assholes who don't abide by the rating system of games..

I had a customer today in work purchase GTA for a 5 year old. FIVE. I am sorry, no matter what side of the fence you sit, that is messed up.

Can I just ask, do you have any grounds to not serve the customer? If you were to work in a shop that sells alcohol and the customer told you that they were buying beer for a 5 year old you would, of course, refuse to sell it them. Is this not the case were you work?

No need to particularly take pot shots at the consumer when the company and even the employee are willing to sell it to them.

You would think so but no. As a company we do not have the right to say no to parents buying things for their kids, you can with alcohol and ciggarettes but games only carry a prosecution charge if you sell to someone under the age without a responsible adult present.

Before the law changed this was even more lax being only a punishment within the business, not legally backed up in any way. It would sometimes lead to prosecution, but very rarely.