Public Perceptions of a Violent Video Game X-Men Origins: Wolverine (August 2009)
There are a lot of debates going on over violent content in video games and how much it may influence people's behaviours and attitudes. The game used in the research was X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which was classified by the Classification Office as R18 contains violence. In this report you will find information on how adult gamers and non-gamers felt about the violence they saw in the video game.
This research used two methodologies
This research used the Perception Analyser (where participants show their opinion by turning a dial), and focus groups to explore people's opinions of a violent video game.
The Perception Analyser allowed us to see people's opinions on a graph
Participants watched pre-recorded clips of game-play. Each had a hand-held unit which had a dial. As they watched the clips, participants were asked to turn the dial up and down depending on how they felt about what they were seeing and hearing. Turning it up meant they were uncomfortable with the game content. This dialling produced graphs which showed which points in the clips participants were most uncomfortable with.
Main findings from the Perception Analyser
- Participants were particularly uncomfortable with a full motion sequence of Wolverine beheading an enemy solider in the blades of a helicopter
- Parents tended to be slightly more uncomfortable with the violence than non-parents
- After watching the clips, six participants assigned it an R16 classification and 14 classified it as R18
- 50% of participants thought the game would be an appropriate present for an 18 year old
- 33% of participants thought the game would be an appropriate present for a 16 year old
- None of the participants thought the game would be an appropriate present for a 13 or 10 year old
See the results of the Perception Analyser exercise (PDF v7.0, 3.11MB)
Focus groups gave people the opportunity to discuss their thoughts on the game
After the Perception Analyser exercise, the Chief Censor explained the classification criteria to the participants and invited them to share their opinions of the video game content they had just seen.
Main findings from the focus group discussion
- All participants were uncomfortable with the idea of young people playing a game with content similar to what they had just seen
- Some felt there was a link between violence in video games and an increase in violence in society
- Some felt there was no link and that people are responsible for their own actions
- The violence in this game was Wolverine fighting off enemies and was part of the game's story. Participants felt this was different from games where the violence has no point and is gratuitous
- Participants talked about how advances in technology are changing how realistic the violence in video games is
- There was concern that the more realistic the violence is, the easier it might be for some people to imitate it
- All participants felt that younger players were more likely to be influenced by the game's content than older players
- After the discussion, ten participants assigned it an R16 classification and nine classified it as R18
Read the research report of the focus group findings (PDF v 7.0, 487KB)
