The main question I asked in my research was, what effect do Video Games have on people, mentally and physically.
This source studied the effect that video games had on the brain and body, video games were reported to make people less reserved about their emotions, people would physically hurt each other in competitive gaming or damage the controller or gaming system when playing alone, this behavior was also seen in public at arcades, which indicates that not only are gamers more aggressive, but they also have less ability to retrain themselves even in public.
I've seen some of this behavior personally but I think the basis of this behavior is frustration, which can be experienced towards almost anything, if you get frustrated to a certain point you won't care if you're in public. If people could restrain their frustration before then there wouldn't be any fights. Video games don't invent frustration, although they do increase it, this behavior isn't invented by video games, but the difficulty of them makes frustration more common.
This source specifies the differences between violent and non-violent video games. The violent video game decreased brain function in the areas of self control, focus and concentration, whereas these functions in the brain of someone who played a non-violent game weren't effected.
In my own experience of playing violent games, very rarely will these games make you think, most of the time they rely on aiming skills ( as most of these are first person shooters) and quick reaction time, neither of which requires any thought. While there are some violent games that force players to think, mostly in the stealth action or strategy genre, most violent games are based on war, where the player assumes the role of a soldier who follows orders and doesn't think about what they're doing. This article listed "Call of Duty" as the game used in this experiment, had they chosen a strategy game that was still violent they would have gotten more brain stimulation in the thinking and logic areas.
This site listed the positives and negatives of violent video games and being immersed in virtual realities. Like the two previous sources, it said that violent games made people more aggressive, it also stated that the risk in violent video games of death stimulated the "'fight or flight' response" and gave the gamer an increase in adrenaline, much like real life risking situations. The article stated that being immersed in a virtual world caused people to do poorly in school and gain weight, since they aren't moving. It listed positives for video games included social interaction and enjoyment, some games increased problem solving abilities and mental stimulation in gamers and increased hand-eye coordination.
I think all of these things are true but video games can't be broken up into just violent and non-violent, they should be studied according to genre, as I said before violent video games contain more than just the shooter genre, they can consist of stealth action, strategy, role playing, fighting and adventure games. People tend to just use violent video games as a scapegoat, but not all of these games are mindless killing sprees, some require thought and strategy. The gamer becoming immersed in these violent worlds isn't the fault of the game of itself, but the fault of the gamer who may not have a great life in the real world, or the parents who ignore their children and let this kind of behavior happen.
This source is a blog that lists positive effects video games have on gamers. It listed benefits like creative stimulation, hand-eye coordination, empathy for other players and more accurate vision. The blog cited a study that tested the dexterity and hand eye coordination of surgeons who played video games and surgeons who don't, the surgeons who did had better hand eye coordination and performed more successful surgeries.
This blog gave evidence that video games offer some sort of physical health benefit through coordination, meaning that all video games, not just the wii, have some sort of health benefit in the form of hand eye coordination.
I agree with some of these ideas, but most of the articles I've seen have cited experiments and tests that use the basic grouping of violent and non-violent, I'd like to see these tests done with a wider variety of genres and games tested. I'd also like to see the effects on different subjects, who have a variety of different physical activities they pursue and social lives in and out of these digital worlds.
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