Harvard Study: 104 Deaths per Hour in M-Rated Games
- April 05, 2006 17:21 PM PST
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Study conducted by Harvard graduate students shows that average Mature-rated game has 104 killings per hour
A study conducted by Harvard graduate students conclude that, on average, Mature-rated games depict 104 killings per hour. It's an interesting read.
The study, what is formally know as a content analysis, was chiefly intended to "quantify the depiction of violence, blood, sexual themes, profanity, substances, and gambling" for Mature (M-rated) video games.
According to the student study, the methodology was simple: the authors created gathered up 147 M-rated games for the PS2, GameCube, and Xbox. Of those titles, the authors randomly selected 25% -- 37 titles -- as a cross-section. These 37 titles were then analyzed closely and depictions of violence, sexuality, and other mature themes recorded and analyzed.
Based on their experiences with the games, the researchers saw blood in 92% of the games, and noted that "18% of game play time depict[ed] blood." The researchers also observed 4268 "human deaths" in the 42 hours of gameplay they experienced.
Translation: on average, the researchers witnessed 104 humans deaths per hour.
Another interesting finding was that, in 29 of the 37 games surveyed, the researchers founded 45 "observations of content" that were not described on ESRB content descriptors -- a sign that the ESRB is perhaps not being stringent enough when it comes to describing in-game content on the rating box.
One thing worth noting is that this study has limited application outside of an academic sense: a sample pool of 37 is simply not a high enough number to reach the reliability rates needed to apply the figures to the world at large.
Still, it provides an intriguiging snapshot of the quantity of bloodshed present in the typical Mature-rated game, and could serve nicely as a pilot for a larger, more exhaustive study.
