How Narratives in Video Games Affect Children and Adolescents
As the video game industry grows, so does the need to understand its consumers and investigate its content on those consumers. Research suggests that over 90% of children and adolescents in America play video games and that the frequency of video gaming increases around age 18, peaking in an individual’s twenties.
Video games offer insight into individual characteristics and judgment alongside offering advantages in learning environments and social education as they expose players to modeling techniques through rehearsal and reinforcement of social behaviors found through the games’ narratives. These themes can vary greatly from game to game and their content has been shown to impact our cognition and behavior.
Adventuring has a powerful effect on individuals’ perspectives and psyche. Games teach us morals and allow us to explore aspects of ourselves that would otherwise be unexplored.
“A sword wields no strength unless the hand that holds it has courage.”
Allowing players the ability to project certain aspects of their psychological attributes to their avatars allows them to become the hero and experience themselves in a world where they can achieve feats beyond what is possible in their real lives. This allows a sort of power of resilience within a player without them being aware of the positive cognitive effects that are occurring as they triumph through lands and save the world from utter disaster.
Many video games are essentially moving narratives where the player gets to make decisions about what a character does next in the game. This essentially creates a virtual reality where players can learn from mistakes made in the game or learn more about themselves through the character they bring to life. Some games have fixed narratives, but increasingly, games are allowing for a more autonomous and whole version of the characters in their games. Games like “Skyrim” and “World of Warcraft” allow players to decide throughout the game whether to take a virtuous path of heroism, or a darker path of thievery, or assassination, along with other characteristics.
Basically, these games allow you to play someone you never could be in real life and this element of choice is what makes video games such an intriguing form of media. I believe Grizzard et al. 2014 said it best: “In narrative media, viewers simply watch moral decisions being made by others, but in video games, players often make the decision to be moral (or immoral).” It is also what makes researching them so complicated and intertwined. Researchers have found that individuals who engage in prosocial gameplay tend to have more prosocial thoughts and behaviors and that individuals who play more violent narratives tend to have an increase of aggressive and hostile behavior and thoughts. Ambiguous games present a unique problem and discussion for researchers.
Morality and Character Content
Narrative content is important to gameplay and to the outside implications of thoughts and actions caused by video games. Not all games are complicated narratives per se and in researching the direct effects of video games on individuals it is hard to have them play a game with a fully immersive and detailed world. So, equally important to narrative content is the character being played in the game. Research has found that the context in which you play a specific character can have direct effects on empathy and general affect.
Morality presents a different viewpoint on aggression and violence within video games. Questions of morality can be intense, and our actions can divide us. Morality asks us if it is okay to kill one to save the many. It asks if violence is acceptable to save an innocent. It also makes video games with protagonists that engage in aggressive behaviors to save the world a question of morality that we should allow individuals to consume. Could it be that a moral high ground and virtuous narrative could mitigate the effects of hostile and antisocial intent?
In fact, research has shown that prosocial concepts can mitigate the effects of violence in video games. Studies have shown that video games could be an important outlet for reflection based upon moral decisions rehearsed in the game and that oftentimes the feeling of guilt can mediate between violent video gameplay and the overall salience of a player.
Essentially, this means that while moral violations occurred through violence, there was no increase in hostile behavior or aggressive thinking shown after the violent video game was played. This could be due to the idea that we justify the violence in the name of moral high ground or simply that the context provided more access to prosocial thought (saving the world) and thus negated access to antisocial and aggressive thoughts.
All of this information can be used by both parents and content creators alike to make smart choices for their kids and reflect on the games we all love and play.
Actionable Insights
Here are Actionable Insights for Parents and Video Game Narratives:
Read the synopsis of a game before gifting a game to a child/teen (check the ratings as well).
Have discussions with your child about the actions their characters take in each game and investigate the moral dilemmas that might appear. Question the motives of each character including NPCs.
Encourage playing games with diverse characters and prosocial narratives.
Here are Actionable Insights for Content Creators of Video Games:
Develop a variety of characters with diverse positions within games and question the motives of each of your characters.
Develop stories with narratives that help users question the world.
Ask yourself:
What is the purpose of this character?
What is my audience/age range for this character?
Do my characters represent the diverse population of my audience?
Michelle Leccese, MA Psychology