Asbjørnsen og blod

Jeg har såvidt begynt å se på dataspillforskning (innmari moro).

Det begynte med at jeg lånte Digital culture, play, and identity på biblioteket - en bok om World of Warcraft. Så langt har jeg bare lest et par kapitler; Scott Rettberg som ser WoW som et "kapitalistisk eventyr", Hilde G. Corneliussen om kjønnsroller i spillet, og Torill Elvira Mortensens kapittel om hvordan WoW-spillere prioriterer andre aktiviteter i spillet enn hva designerne hadde i tankene (dette kapitlet likte jeg spesielt godt - det hun skriver om deviant strategies minner en del om intrinsic motivation).

Et av de viktige spørsmålene handler om hvilke effekter voldelige og engasjerende spill har på barn. Da er Grand Theft Auto-serien spesielt aktuell. Kiri Miller har skrevet en del om dette. I artikkelen "Grove Street Grimm" sammenlikner hun GTA San Andreas med brødrene Grimm-eventyr - en sammenlikning som i grunn ikke er så dum.

Hun skriver:

My colleague David Kaminsky inspired the Grimm comparison with this gloss on some of my early San Andreas work: he wrote, “Violent and engaging stories for children that teach them modern myths and how to understand and fear the world around them. Very Brothers Grimm” (e-mail communication, April 2006). (...) 

CJ goes on a series of journeys in the course of his missions, during which he “helps needy creatures” and “obtains gifts from strange but helpful people”— defining traits of a Grimm plot (Zipes 2002:63).  (...) In typical Grimm fashion, he is “the wandering protagonist [who] always leaveshome to reconstitute home” (Zipes 2006:70). But this initial happy ending is followed by a textbook “third act,” in which “the final trial the hero must endure is motivated by the reappearance of the fraternal rivals who vexed the hero in his earlier, preheroic days” (Tatar 2003:90). After CJ has passed many tests of skill and character, achieving wealth and respect, his brother denigrates his accomplishments and insists that he come back to his old neighborhood to rid it of drug dealers. 

Sjekk også Millers The Accidental Carjack, som blant annet trekker sammenlikningen mellom dataspill og turisme.

Jeg forsøker dessuten å finne en versjon av denne artikkelen: High art/Low life: The Art of Playing Grand Theft Auto - så langt uten hell. Andre tips mottas med takk!

Mannen: fotball og vold

Her er sammendraget av et ferskt working paper fra IZA: Family Violence and Football: The Effect of Unexpected Emotional Cues on Violent Behavior, skrevet av David Card og Gordon B. Dahl (UC Berkeley & San Diego):

We study the link between family violence and the emotional cues associated with wins and losses by local professional football teams. We hypothesize that the risk of violence is affected by the ‘gain-loss’ utility of game outcomes around a rationally expected reference point. Our empirical analysis uses police reports of violent incidents on Sundays during the professional football season. Controlling for the pre-game point spread and the size of the local viewing audience, we find that upset losses (defeats when the home team was predicted to win by 4 or more points) lead to a 10 percent increase in the rate of at-home violence by men against their wives and girlfriends. In contrast, losses when the game was expected to be close have small and insignificant effects. Upset wins (when the home team was predicted to lose) also have little impact on violence, consistent with asymmetry in the gain-loss utility function. The rise in violence after an upset loss is concentrated in a narrow time window near the end of the game, and is larger for more important games. We find no evidence for reference point updating based on the halftime score.

Altså: når det lokale fotball-laget går på overraskende tap (tap når laget var ventet å vinne med fire poeng eller mer), øker den rapporterte familievolden med 10 prosent. Dette er menn som slår sine kjærester/koner.

Forskerne finner dessuten at familievolden øker både ved høytider og i varmere vær.

Til slutt en sentence to ponder fra diskusjonen (side 27, min utheving):

We view the magnitude of the cueing effect attributable to an upset loss as rather large, considering that only a fraction of the population are serious football fans, and that our sample largely excludes the cities in which the NFL teams are located.

Jaha. Her var det altså andelen menn som er fotballfans som var interessant. Ikke andelen menn som slår. Litt overrasket.