In a neat little coda to the videogame violence controversy stirred by the release of the Byron report last week, which culminated in news that talent agency Star Now has been actively soliciting anti-game stories from the public, a study has just been announced claiming that videogames aren’t bad for you, after all. They’re good for you. They calm you down, stop you doing something stupid, see.

Psychologists at Middlesex University monitored 292 male and female players as they ran around on ‘violent’ World of Warcraft servers, and found that they were more likely to feel calm and tired than angry after playing, although this varied depending on who was being asked, with age, sex, and ‘personality’ all cited as differentiating factors.

So, to summarise: playing WoW makes some people tired, or at least they’re tired when they stop playing; some people are calm when they log-out, and some aren’t, with the difference resting wholly on personality type. In other words, people who have the calm-after-playing-WoW personality archetype are likely to feel calm, while those with the videogames-make-me-go-into-a-blind-rage archetype are very much unaffected by the game’s soporific effects.

The study is due to be presented in full today at the British Psychological Society’s Annual Conference in Dublin. Expect shockwaves.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008 at 11:43 am by Rob Hearn
Columns & Opinion.