Game Studies - Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Broadly speaking, the social scientific approach has concerned itself with the question of “What do games do to people?” Using tools and methods such as surveys and controlled laboratory experiments, researchers have investigated both the positive and negative impacts that playing games could have on people.

Among the possible negative effects of gameplay, perhaps the one most commonly raised by media and the general public has to do with violence in videogames. What are the possible effects that playing videogames, in particular those that feature aggressive or violent elements, might have on children and youth? Social learning theory (e.g., Bandura, 1986) suggests that playing aggressive videogames would stimulate aggressive behavior in players in particular because the player is an active participant (as opposed to a passive observer as the case of aggression in film and television). On the other hand, catharsis theory (e.g., Feshbach and Singer, 1971) implies that playing aggressive videogames would have the opposite effect by channeling latent aggression, resulting in a positive effect on players. Numerous reviews of existing literature have been written and there isn’t a clear scientific evidence of the effects that playing violent videogames might have (Griffiths, 1999; Sherry, 2001).

As for positive effects, educators and learning scientists have also debated how to leverage the motivation students had for playing games as well as exploring the medium of videogames for educational and pedagogical purposes. Malone explored the intrinsically motivating qualities that games have and how they might be useful in designing educational games (Malone, 1980; Malone, 1981). Malone and Lepper (1987) recommended four main heuristics namely challenge, fantasy, curiosity, and control for game designers and researchers to improve the user interaction interface. Kafai had schoolchildren design games to learn computer programming concepts and mathematics (Kafai, 1995; Kafai, 1996). Similarly, Squire has explored the use of commercial games as a means for engaging disenfranchised students in school (Squire, 2005), while Gerber has explored how video games shape students' peripheral literacy activities; mainly reading and writing in both online and offline spaces (Gerber, 2009; Gerber & Price, 2011). In addition to their motivational factors, Gee and Shaffer have argued that certain qualities present in the medium of videogames provide valuable opportunities for learning (Gee, 2003; Shaffer, 2006). In her book Life on the Screen, Sherry Turkle explored how people who participated in online multiplayer games such as MUDs, used their experiences with the game to explore personal issues of identity (Turkle, 1995). In her book Play Between Worlds, T. L. Taylor recounts her experience playing the massively multiplayer online game, Everquest. In doing so, she seeks to understand “the nuanced border relationship that exists between MMOG players and the (game) worlds they inhabit”.

Finally, economists have also begun studying games, in particular massively multiplayer online games (MMOs), to understand human behavior better. The economic activity in these games is being studied as one would study the economy of a nation, such as Russia or Bulgaria (Castronova, 2001). Different theories, such as coordination game theory, can be put to the test because games can produce contexts for natural experiments, a high number of participants as well as tightly controlled experimental conditions (Castronova, 2006). From this perspective, games provide a unique context in which human activity may be explored and better understood. For example, it has been suggested that the very popular MMO World of Warcraft could be used to study the dissemination of infectious diseases because of the accidental spread of a plague-like disease in the gameworld.