Speaking of Psychology: The psychology of esports, with Shawn Doherty, PhD, and Kaitlyn Roose, MS

Russell Shilling, PhD, guest host for Speaking of Psychology and chief scientific officer for the American Psychological Association, sat down at APA2019 to talk with Shawn Doherty, PhD, and Kaitlyn Roose, MS, to discuss the psychology of esports, the benefits of gaming on higher level cognition and the culture of video games.

Shawn Doherty, PhD, is an associate professor in the department of human factors at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. His PhD is in applied experimental psychology from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. He teaches primarily human factors courses including classes on core human factors processes, research methods, automation, system safety, human-computer interaction and entertainment systems. He is a founding member of the Game-Based Education and Advanced Research Simulation (GEARS) Lab at Embry-Riddle and his current research investigates aspects of technology use and video game play involving areas such as gamification, virtual reality, engagement, cheating and ethics, and attention allocation.

Kaitlyn Roose, MS, is a PhD candidate in the Applied Cognitive Science and Human Factors program at Michigan Technological University. In the Games, Learning, and Decisions Lab, her primary research focus is studying decision making and problem solving in video games. In her MS thesis, she developed The Tracer Method, combining Cognitive Task Analysis and Eye Tracking to elicit key elements of decision making during critical moments of the task. With her passion for games, she co-founded and serves as the current President of the Esports at MTU club. She also currently supports Michigan Tech's Varsity Esports initiative. 

Kaitlin Luna : Hi, everyone, it's Kaitlin Luna, host of Speaking of Psychology. This episode was recorded live during APA 2019, our annual convention that was held in Chicago this year. I was away on maternity leave during that time. My colleague Dr. Russell Shilling was a guest host. We hope you enjoy the episode.

Dr. Russell Schilling: Welcome. This is Speaking of Psychology from the APA convention. I'm the host for this session. Russell Shilling, I'm the chief scientific officer for APA. I'll let my two guests here to introduce themselves.

Kaitlyn Roose: My name is Kaitlyn Roose. I am a fourth-year PhD student at Michigan Technological University, studying higher-level cognition and games.

Dr. Shawn Doherty: My name is Shawn Doherty. I'm an associate professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in the human factors and behavioral neuroscience department. I'm also currently the program chair for Division 21 here at APA, which is the Applied Experimental and Engineering Psychology Division.

Dr. Schilling: Today what we're going to be discussing is the psychology of Esports, why it's relevant to psychology and why we should care as psychologists about Esports. I'll start out with just asking that question of our panelists. Why should psychologists be concerned with Esports?

Roose: Psychology should be concerned with Esports for many reasons, regardless of what discipline you're a part of. We have many people or many disciplines here at APA. Whether it's the mental part, disorders, abnormal psychology, stress management, performance psychology, coming from sports psychology, development of a culture, communication, team dynamics, there are many facets of Esports that I think are fascinating if not may be confusing to a lot of psychologists and it hasn't really been delved into very much. I think it's an open field that I'm calling upon many psychologists to explore further.

Dr. Doherty: Well, it's so open, in fact, because it's relatively brand new. Just to give a little bit of context, Esports involves the use of video games in competition with other video game players. Just as in traditional sports, you may have one team competing against another one. It's the same thing for Esports but we're utilizing video games where you have one team competing against another within a video game context. That's what we're talking about here with Esports. This is a relatively new area for research in that's Esports is relatively new as a discipline itself, which means that there's not a lot of research on it which provides a lot of opportunity.

Dr. Schilling: Well, I know all three of us have been active in games. In my background, I've helped create games. I was a sound designer on a major Title. I funded at various times various educational and games for impact. Really, I've been part of the culture, a big fan of Portal, my favorite video game. We have to get that out there.

Dr. Doherty: Absolutely.

Dr. Schilling: What are the differences you see between traditional gaming in those contexts and Esports? You hit on a few of them just now. How do you see the overall differences?

Roose: I think a lot of times, there's a lot of environmental pressure coming on the side of the professionals as they are literally being paid on a stage to perform well and they are expected to perform well. They're expected to face their fans, the media with a certain professional face. They're expected to be professional; they're expected to perform both internally within the team and maybe externally if they attend events and things. I think that in and of itself, those pressures on that have given a lot of young players because the average age of Esports players is slowly rising. I say very slowly, I think it is now 24 years old.

Typically Esports players are between 18 and 28. Yes, there are people outside of that range. Players typically are very young. These pressures of maybe things that people, and other careers would experience on a day to day basis, maybe that are more mature in development. They're experiencing this in a very high-pressure situation. This may be very new to them and very difficult compared to maybe more casual players. I say casual in quotes but maybe non-professionals but there are definitely competitive players and maybe more casual players. They're not quite at the level of the Esports professionals.

Dr. Doherty: I certainly agree that there are different levels of play. You may have different views or different pressures at those different levels. If we're talking about professional players, you're talking about just like sports teams, they may be playing in front of hundreds of thousands of spectators, their performance may be streamed to people watching online, and so their performance is under scrutiny all the time, just like standard sports teams typically are. There's a lot of pressures.

While Russ, you and I may have grown up on largely solo play games, because back in our day, we didn't have multiplayer. Nowadays, there is much more integration of coordination between people and in teams in play through Esports. That's a big difference that has been growing over time.

Dr. Schilling: Well, I think a lot of our listeners to this will be familiar with some of the news items out for the professional leagues. What are we seeing in the schools? What is the overall? I know you've helped create a league. What's that like on the non-professional levels? What are we seeing out there for this?

Roose: I know a lot of universities have reported University benefits to integrating an Esports program, for example, increase in recruitment, increase in enrollment obviously, and a general increase, I believe in student well-being and happiness across campus, especially across maybe individuals who are international students, my University has many international students. In my survey that I sent out and actually Esports climate survey, many students that were international students felt it would be an excellent opportunity to integrate this program into our university because Esports is such a worldwide thing and it's such an international thing. It brings people of different countries together, different backgrounds. It doesn't matter who you are, you may identify as a gamer or part of this fan base or part of this team.

Just like we talked about the Olympics being that thing that brings the world together, obviously in competition, but to join ourselves, and that's what Esports does. From a university perspective, in my opinion, it's very attractive for a student to feel that they can find a place that they can belong and identify with. You may feel maybe you're not the greatest football player, maybe you're not a traditional athlete, and this is your thing, your game, like, this is what you're good at and this is what you identify with. It allows you to represent your university in a way that you can be proud of and you can represent in a unique way compared to traditional sports.

Dr. Schilling: Absolutely. You touched on one piece in there, which is that it provides a different avenue or culture for support for students as well. Just as we have at most universities, there are many clubs for all sorts of different kinds of interests. This is another avenue for providing a culture, a way for students to engage with one another, but it goes that one step further in the sense that now there is also a clear purpose that is gaining for the students as part of that activity.

Dr. Doherty: Well, one of the other things that I've seen, and I've had some discussions with some of the folks involved in Esports is the controversy that it's out there between gender-based leagues versus non-gender-based. The argument which I fall on the side of is that we have a level playing field in this area, and we should actually treat it as a level playing field and not really start with that gender discrimination kind of issues in sports. Do you have any?

Roose: No, absolutely. Being a female in gaming, identifying as a female in the gaming community, it is not easy and I'm sure many people have many different backgrounds and identities feel similarly. However, I will say gaming has come a long way. People realize at the end of the day, they want to win, you want to win that SR, you want to win that rank, you want to be the best. It really doesn't matter who you have on your team at the end of the day as long as you win.

I think that that's what we're striving for, especially in the professional scene, I know they are looking at trying to increase diversity, and similar to the problems that women face in STEM and other oppressed groups or minority groups in STEM where they're pushed down a little bit or they grow feeling hesitant in engaging in these environments. Opening up the community and having such a diverse and welcoming community that I know the Esports leagues are striving to do by decreasing toxicity and things like that and celebrating diversity. That's where we're going and it's coming along and we're going to get there. We're not there now. But in my experience being the female president and the only identified female and my Esports organization and the cofounder. I've had a little bit of difficulties, but I do my best as a face of an organization to try to get people and say, Hey, we're welcoming. We want you in. It doesn't matter where you come from. If you love gaming and you love to compete, we want you to be a part of this. At that point, it'll start growing once people feel that they can identify with that group.

Dr. Schilling: Very good.

Dr. Doherty: Well, the interesting thing is that it's not just e-sports that is, if you take a look at the proportion of people that play games in general, it's a basically a 50/50 split and has been for at least that I'm aware of for the last 10 years that people have been collecting data on that information. It's not just Esports, it's gaming overall has become much more balanced in terms of the people that are playing it.

Dr. Schilling: Well, let's get down to the psychologies parts. We've done our set up discussing a little bit about Esports in the culture. We've, especially lately in the news, we've been hearing a lot of the negatives that people perceive about games. We'll get to those on a little bit, but let's talk a little bit about what you see as the positives in games that we know from psychological theory and from data and where you see the research gaps in this area. Because I know right now being as new as it is, there's really not a lot of specific research in this area. What are your thoughts on this kind sort of thing?

Dr. Doherty: Again, I'm program chair for Div. 21. 21 looks at scientific research to try and understand how people interact with technology of which this certainly is a key element of that. If we want to talk about benefits, there's a really important paper that came out in 2014 in American psychologist by Granick LaBelle and Angles that outlines a very long list of benefits that come from playing video games from cognitive effects and emotional effects and social effects. For example, a one of the things that they outline is that playing video games oftentimes improves spatial awareness, understanding where things are in three dimensional space which is required for a lot of different gameplay, especially for things like a first-person shooters, knowing where you are relative to your opponent and where you need to shoot in order to take them out generates in increase in awareness of you and your surroundings and the relative nature of where things are relative to one another.

Part of the reason why this is so important is because there's also been evidence in the literature that demonstrates this increase in spatial awareness is also very highly correlated with success in STEM areas. Video games can help improve these kinds of cognitive elements. There's many more things in there, but my provider--

Dr. Schilling: Let me just do a follow-up for you. Not all of the Esports games are first-person shooters though. [inaudible 00:13:05]

Dr. Doherty: Absolutely not. There's certainly, I was just drawing that up because that's one that has been derived specifically or tied specifically to first-person shooters. Yes, there are many other genres as well that provide all other benefits from games as well.

Roose: Yes, he pointed out a lot of the research that I've read which I think is both excellent and also needs improvement. Great work by green and by VA on a lot of attentional spatial awareness. Peripheral vision, a spoiler alert, gamers are better than non-gamers at these things, but non-gamers can be trained to become just as good as gamers through hours of gameplay. For me, as a decision making researcher, I'm thinking myself, okay, but these players are making decisions on less than seconds, sometimes bases time, pressure wise. I am interested in that aspect, which that aspect has not been delved into a lot.

My research focused on trying to understand problem-solving in games and how video games can affect problem-solving skills. Now currently the study is creativity as well. What we're finding is that non-gamers actually are able to benefit very greatly from playing just 30 minutes of roller coaster tycoon, which those of you in the audience who are maybe less than 30, I'm not quite sure.

Dr. Schilling: I see them just from the audience.

Roose: We loved this game. I'm sure we all played hundreds of hours to our parents' dismay. We may have been increasing our project management problem-solving skills. Again, in my discipline, we talk about well-defined and ill-defined problems while defined problems. Are these things that maybe only have one correct solution or it's a very obvious solution. For example, a math problem. There's maybe one or two ways to do it that our math teachers trying to teach us and that's how we solve the problem.

Dr. Schilling: There is only one right answer.

Roose: Exactly.

Dr. Schilling: Correct.

Roose: In the real world I'm sure many of us experience ill-defined problems which are problems that can be approached from many different directions, have many different solutions and you can still come out with a good solution or product or outcome. In games, a lot of times players are presented with these ill-defined problems. This player is acting this way, or this situation is this way. I have this much money, I have this much territory, I have this many resources. I can do these multiple ways.

What I'm interested in is what are those different ways, what are they considering, and why they're considering those things, and how that impacts something real world like solving a problem or coming up with creative solutions. I think that area specifically of cognition. Cognition is I think a very buzz word because a lot of people have a different understanding of our opinion about what cognition is.

I would argue that this higher-level cognition is what's missing from games research and especially valuable with Esports because these are the experts that are doing these things. As I mentioned, the social aspect as well. I think there is a paper in there that's referenced in the granite paper where they say people feel that their online friendships are more valuable, and meaningful, and fruitful than their in-person friendships.

Whether that's bonding over a hobby or communicating in a different way or getting through these hard problems together. That I found was especially interesting coming out of that paper. Yes, that's an excellent paper to look at. Parents are people that want to know about what are the benefits of gaming, that's a great paper to start with.

Dr. Schilling: Yes. What about the social aspect? Again, the popular concept of a gamer is somebody who is by themselves in their bedroom with the lights out and in their gaming all night long. That's not Esports, correct?

Roose: No. [laughs] Not at all actually. [laughs] Yes, you're sitting at a computer but usually you have your team sitting right next to you and doing the same thing. You're almost having a conversation now face to face. If we were all on a team and I said, "Okay, there is a flight coming from the right." You both would hear it and you both could respond and communicate back.

Obviously, it's not a conversation we're having right now but it's a level of communication that now businesses are doing telecommunication. Maybe you can't afford to send your sales guy to China, but you can have a Skype call and that concept of virtual communication is very similar.

Dr. Doherty: Right. Part of what you were alluding to too is that we're talking about professional Esports where they may be in the same physical location. Just not necessarily oriented toward each other because they're talking through their headsets but for things like casual Esports you're still working on a team with players that may be from around the world.

It's not only communication and coordination of people for that particular purpose but oftentimes players will outside of the game themselves coordinate with one another and talk to one another about things that are going on in their life or sharing other elements which then increases things like cultural awareness. If you're talking to somebody that is from around the world, they may have a very different perspective than you are. That's something that Esports can facilitate.

Dr. Schilling: Okay. I have another question. Again, I see this as a very potentially broad area of research. Coming from my background originally as a military experimental psychologist, I'm familiar with the team training research and decision making under stress and a lot of these other research areas some of which involve simulation not necessarily games. Are we drawing on any of those concepts from these bigger other areas into our research thinking on these?

Roose: Absolutely. I know a lot of education research that's being done trying to understand learning using games, serious games or games for learning. There are many different terms for that that are being used. I know that especially in areas like military aviation has been using simulations since they were probably first made. I'm not quite sure about the history of simulations but the point is it's a form of a game.

I would argue a simulation to some degree of visual simulation can be maybe considered a game if there are objectives, if there are potentially multiple decision points, if there are other players involved. That makes the question what is considered a game? Obviously, that's a little distant from Esports. When you get in the concept of training and learning and potentially team building or leadership development that I know is very important in a military context. Those concepts are happening. They're doing that training for these players because it needs to happen. You need to maybe have that individual that is the commander, or the shot caller, is the typical term for it, that makes the decisions. They get the information and they make the decisions. They make the calls. That is a skill, arguably, that needs to be developed or worked on, depending on the dynamic of your team.

Dr. Doherty: Certainly, when you're talking about Esports, the skills that Esports players have comes from a wide array of different topic areas that can be drawn upon from preexisting literature. So things like expertise has been looked at for decades. We can draw upon that kind of literature to try and understand how somebody might become an Esports player expert.

The interesting thing though, is that, of course, Katie made the argument of games may not exactly be the same as simulation, but they're very similar, but then we also have to consider, well, what is different about video games. We have this body of literature that already exists, but you may have now with video games, something that nobody's really looked at in that way before.

There are some elements of just basic perceptual processes that we know a lot about that can apply to video games. How fast can somebody respond? How quickly can somebody see something? There are ways in which we are looking at games, ways in which games are played that haven't really been addressed before that is a wide-open area for research.

Dr. Schilling: Well, let's get down on the weeds. I'll ask you a hard one now. We'll pull out the hard questions. I've been doing technology research almost all of my career. One of my big concerns in simulation and games is that we do our research on these games or on simulations, but they're very game and simulation specific. What's the generalize ability with some of our research?

Because again, the games that we put when I was doing work 20 years ago are certainly not like the games that are out there today, and which will not be like the games that are going to be out in another even five years. What can we say across time? What generalize is on these issues, and what does it, really?

Dr. Doherty: Going back to the literature, we're talking, for example, about training literature. There's a very large body of knowledge about what trains and what doesn't and generalize ability and specificity of skills. Depends a little bit on what kind of skills you're talking about, as to the degree of generalize ability.

For example, if you learn how to play tennis, and then you start taking up badminton, well, some of the basic hand-eye coordination skills might apply, but a lot of the specifics for that game may not generalize very well. A shot that you play in badminton is certainly not going to be exactly the same one as it is in tennis. A lot of skills that we learn in playing games, some of the basic hand-eye coordination elements may transfer, but a lot of the cognition, the literature is a bit mixed on that, as to exactly how much and how well, these kinds of skills transfer.

Roose: I would agree with that. I think the T-word transfer is a big problem. The problem-solving research is our labs attempt to answer that question specifically for problem solving and creativity, the effects of games on those two abilities, and whether or not they could transfer to a "real-world situation" or a real problem. For example, we use the dunker problem. The analogical problems on the surface, they're very different. There's a medical example and then there's a military example.

The solution is exactly the same. It's a divide and conquer. You're either dividing the raise up to attack the tumor, which gives you the same intensity, but from obviously a combined angle, or you divide your troops among all of the little roads, so your men don't blow up on the minds. The answer is the same, but people get caught up on the surface features.

I think that how people are able to come at those problems and able to see past those surface features, whether that's, "I'm in a simulation, and this is what I'm being trained on. I don't see the real world transfer here," and they have that difficulty. There are people that are pushing past that and are able to see past that and say, "This is what I've learned," whether it's a mental model, whether it's a different approach to problem-solving, whether it's, "I need to consider this resource. I need to think about this resource differently." Games provide that constant change of phase, things are different. Not all features are the same. You can control for that, which makes it sometimes a really great tool for research. We all love control which is great. Also, it allows you to see how people are able to navigate the environment and really take what they've learned and transferred it over. But I think where we're lacking is how do we measure that transfer? How do you quantify, this is a transfer of decision making or this is this. My other research is focused on identifying those key cues and facets of decision making at critical points within the game and categorizing those. I've actually pulled the categorization scheme from the military-strategic, operational and tactical decisions. I found those in both football players and in overwatch players and in League Of Legends players.

These types of decisions are happening in different contexts. But the key is to note, for example, for transfer maybe is what do all of those have in common? Or what are the trends and strategies of what they're using with these different types of decisions? To solve these types of problems. Again, I think decision making is a great skill. I think it applies in different things or many different facets of it, different pressures. That also includes the perceptual motor stuff. Maybe you're tired or maybe you're realizing there's an issue with technology or yourself and you're like, I have to deal with this issue, and this is going to affect my decision making. There's a lot of things that affected. I think for my opinion is that decision making, and other similar aspects of psychology would be great to attack that transfer problem.

Dr. Schilling: Okay. Another question then actually yes, actually this should be maybe easier. Again, I've had to another couple of roles in my background. I code shared a white house committee on digital gaming for a while. I was at the department of education, but during those times, I was looking at educational games. One of the things, one of my PIS did a non-psychologist, I might add, but still a good guy. Zoran Popovic at the university of Washington who also did the folded game. A problem-solving game. He was doing work for me on doing educational games and algebra and physics and some other areas, and also being funded by the Gates foundation for this. One of the things he did, which was really interesting is he took an adapted version of DragonBox that used some of his technology. If you don't know DragonBox, DragonBox's a game that purports, you can argue about this question to teach algebra in two hours. It's a brain game. It's very engaging.

But what he did is he took the game out and he did a statewide competition for the entire state of Washington. After that, he went out for another state and then he did the country of Norway. Including the prime minister of Norway who was playing this game. Learning algebra. I mean, do you see these types of things maybe being things we should be focusing on as well down the road for or am I out of my mind? It's totally out of-

Roose: I think a lot of people-- And I mentioned this in the panel yesterday. A lot of people like consumers or educators, they want that magic pill. They want that solution to end all be all and games has a lot of promise. The drawback of that is that games take a lot of time. Games take a lot of money; games take a lot of resources to do it right. If you don't have a team or the resources, maybe you can't do that. For example, in my research, I'm looking at an off the shelf $5 on Steam game. No, exactly. If we're getting, obviously it's not meant to teach algebra or something like that, but there are games, I think it's called TI something, but it's supposed to teach the basics of programming.

Dr. Schilling: TI 100.

Roose: Yes. There you go. Thank you. He can tell how much I've played that game and my Steam library. But games like that that are more specified but are definitely on the surface, you can tell it's more of a game. I think hiding that instead of just having it be this is an educational game because people may approach that very differently than they would a more off the shelf game. But no, I don't think that-- I think games for learning and serious games, I think they're great. A lot of medical simulations are very, or medical games incorporate simulations. They're great. I mean, they're useful. They've demonstrated progress over time and teaching a certain skill maybe in two weeks to a new surgeon or whatever it is. They've shown a great success. I think if you have the research backing and you're demonstrating that whatever field it is or whatever task it is, you're demonstrating learning gains.

Dr. Schilling: [crosstalk] What was interesting about DragonBox two is for at least in the research and this was an adapted version. It was not the off the shelf version, but they were actually showing some kindergarten kids solving the challenges in the game. Slower obviously, than the older kids, but still amazing that you could actually teach them at least basic algebra concepts to kids that young. Really a lot you can do with games.

Dr. Doherty: Absolutely, the one caveat, though, is we have to be careful in how they are designed. Because certainly there's been a lot of research over the years that has demonstrated that if it's not designed in the right way, then whoever is utilizing these educational games may not actually be learning anything and they may not be motivated. Because that's one of the important elements of games is that in playing a game, there's a lot of motivation from the person playing the game, because it's fun, it's enjoyable. If they're having a lot of fun, and they're actually learning something along with the fun, then there's that added benefit.

There has to be a careful consideration in terms of the design of that education, to make sure that there is the fun driving the motivation, and the education comes along with it, as opposed to the education with just a little bit of fun. Which case, then a lot of people say you're trying to teach me something, aren't you? And they aren't going to follow through with it necessarily. Video games have a very big benefit in terms of motivation, in terms of continuing on. I'll give you one example of this.

There's a statistic that was given a number of years ago by a researcher by the name of Jane McGonigal, who argued that children in this day and age are spending just as much time if not more time, playing video games than they actually spend in school. Then the question becomes, well, what are they actually learning [crosstalk]all of this gameplay? There is potentially a lot of power In terms of the possibility for games.

Roose: Adding to that to the McGonigal argument, they're already doing it. Why would you not leverage it, to some degree, leverage it in a positive way that they can relate to and are motivated by to succeed? Another good example is the psychology of failure. Nobody likes to fail; it doesn't feel good. But an example is the Dark Souls series is notorious for being one of the hardest game series, it is punishing, you see this the text, you died, every time you died you get that reminder every single time and it sucks. But victory is like a little bit out of your reach. Once you're able to solve that problem ahead of you, you feel good, and you're like, I want to keep going.

You might die 50 more times, but you're continuously motivated you to continue to solve those problems and so similar in a learning game, obviously, maybe a little less harsh, neither you failed, I don't mean necessarily up there. But if you're able to kind of get them right above their capability level, and they can be so confident once they solve it, and they can just want to do more they will-- I saw this, I can do this, I want to learn more. That is what-- That's incorporating that into design.

Dr. Schilling: Having funded quite a few games, one of the big problems, which actually, we could use-- This is a research area in itself or psychology. It's almost impossible to create an engaging game that if you're doing it for education, that is engaging for a wide variety of students. It's very much preferential again, how do you develop a game that goes across, cultural divides, and gender divides? I have two kids with autism, you look at neurotypical kids. The gameplay the game dynamics and the themes. It's-- When you look at a game, what most people don't realize, even in the research is that these are actually very complex cultural entities in themselves.

Like studying any other complex environment in psychology. I'll tell one story, since we're talking education, and then we'll move on. I was on the America's Army video game development team back in, this was around 2001. Using a cutting edge first-person shooter, Video game engine. I was very excited I wanted to do medic training. I was a Medical Service Corps officer, I said, this is going to be great. We're going to have fully interactive; we're going to have them down in there and you're gonna be able to treat wounds, and it's going to be wonderful. The army said we want it next week.

What we ended up having to do and this is the worst use to the game platform ever, is we created a classroom and we had the players had to come into the classroom, sit down in a chair and watch PowerPoint slides of an instructor as they were giving lectures and then pass a test. It was so painful and embarrassing, but what came out of that we were-- Again this is another area of how powerful these can be. About two months after we released it, we got a letter on an email from this kid which said, "I saved my brother's life, because I had gone through your training program and we were in an accident and he was bleeding, and I was able to stop the bleeding. Even in these cases it was a wake-up call for me to see how much-- One, that you could actually get kids to go in for half an hour, an hour, and sit in a virtual classroom and watch, and I was one of the instructors, by the way, so it was my voice groaning on at them, but very like to the army and navy experience.

But they let you do that. These are very interesting things.

Roose: [laughs] Good story.

Dr. Schilling: We've talked for a while. There's usually an elephant in the room about gaming, and especially in these times when we have mass violence situations. I know some of our listeners are probably asking themselves. What are your views? We know that in 2015 the APA released a statement on video games talking about aggression. We're currently reviewing newer literature, so we'll be discussing that at a later date what will come out from that. I've been answering questions here this past week on the differences between violence and aggression, which is a psychological set of constructs the public doesn't really understand, and rightfully so. But where do you stand, how do you think Esports compare with other games, or what do you think the overall themes for games. What is your takeaway message for [unintelligible 00:36:48] ?

Roose: I think with Esports, toxicity has always been a thing in games. As Alexis from our Esports panel yesterday mentioned, we didn't invent trash talk, athletes have been doing that for decades, we just do it in a different way, I guess. I think a lot of times people perceive that level of toxicity or banter as maybe condoning violence or condoning more aggression. I think that that is an issue in Esports, is this outward aggression. They are public figures, rage directed at an individual versus rage directed at the game. In my opinion, those are very different things. As against an individual I'm not super knowledgeable about aggression studies, just specifically aggression and the correlation or the causation of actually violent acts.

To me, if you're directing it at an environment, an inanimate thing that doesn't maybe have any effects, it's one of those coping mechanisms where you go home and you have a bad day and you punch a pillow and then you feel better, or you cry, and you feel better. I think that this debate is an important one. It's a hot topic, especially for parents. I think a lot of the issue also stems from parents maybe not being as knowledgeable about the games industry and the field. The ESRV puts out ratings for a reason. A 10-year-old is not supposed to be playing counter-strike, or I think Rainbow Six is also rated, I'm not sure. But they put those out for that reason is because they're very easily influenced. To what degree they're influenced, the developmental psychologists can comment and step in.

I don't know, I think that the studies that have been done have been mixed. I think there was a great panel, I believe, yesterday, on violence and games, and the individual went through all of the studies and said, "Here's how it was designed, here's maybe a potential issue with the methods, or how they went about doing it, or their operationalization of aggression or violence.`

Dr. Schilling: As I said earlier, it's a very complex social environment.

Roose: Exactly. I think that that-- what the APA is doing right now in going through all of the studies, and being able to make a statement, I think as researchers and as people, we need to be skeptical, and we need to question those methods, and we need to say, "Okay, so you use this wide, did you justify it?" "What theory or what research is this based on?" So you can be confident in that?" But I think to the public, I think we need to be better about how we're disseminating that information, because people may only read one line and that maybe the line they remember, but that's not your takeaway line, that's not the bottom line up front, or whatever it is that you want them to remember.

It's very easy to misinterpret research especially if you're not projecting it or presenting it in a way that maybe is not able to be understood by a wide audience, or a mis interpreter. I think that as a community, maybe we need to do a better job with research being able to disseminate it more clearly with the message that they need to take away from whatever it is, an article or a paper.

Dr. Doherty: Well, in addition to that we're talking about a very complex issue, I mean it's-- But everybody wants a simple answer, right? Is there a connection between violence and video games? They are looking for yes or no. It's a lot more complicated than that and what we need-- We're talking about this as science, which needs to be tied back to empirical information that can lend support to which direction this answer comes from and then being able to convey it in a meaningful way to the public is really important. There's also issues in terms of not only the content of the games and behaviors that occur, but it's very difficult as a psychologist to measure it.

There are certainly ethical issues of looking at this kind of topic because as researchers, we can't go into somebody's house and say, "Hey, play this video game and two hours later, we'll see if you want to punch the dog." We can't do that ethically. We have to use these other measures that make it much more difficult to answer that question, but it still needs to be grounded in that research. The other thing that I find interesting too, is that oftentimes a lot of these discussions revolve around a specific genre of games, namely first-person shooters.

One of my arguments that I always make that I find interesting is that for example, I play a wide variety of games, for example, I may play a Fantasy game. If I am learning how to be violent from that, and the game is on dragons, does that mean tomorrow I'm going out there and being violent against dragons? They don't exist, so how do we map the kind of activities and behaviors that come from games onto these outcomes that are seen? It's an extraordinarily complex problem.

Dr. Schilling: I'll just end it with the caveat that some of the research we've seen does purport small increases in aggression, not a huge effect size, but we have not seen any research that actually relates games to extreme violence. I think that's the relational studies typically.

Dr. Doherty: And a [unintelligible 00:42:36] studies typically.

Roose: To that point, I think it's easy to talk about the negative varies. You talk about the negative and ignore the positive. There have been studies that I've looked at where they actually have found an increase in pro-social behavior such as interacting with individuals of different cultures going out into the community and volunteering civilian or civic activities and increase and obviously these are self-report. They're not going out stocking people but self-reported increase in these types of pro-social behaviors or attitudes or feelings.

Those types of studies need to be continued, but they're also being kind of pushed down by this-- We're in a culture of violence and a lot of hate in the world. That's very easily overshadowed. It is an issue, violence is definitely an issue, maybe even more important than potentially increasing pro-social behaviors but maybe there's a mitigating factor there. Maybe there's something we're missing that we can leverage in games that are promoting that potentially preventing some of these things that happens. But-

Dr. Schilling: I think that's a perfect place to stop. I'll ask one more question and this is a short answer essay or it's not even an essay. What's your favorite game?

Dr. Doherty: You're killing me here.

Roose: Can we just sign out? [laughs] It's going to be hard.

Dr. Doherty: Love portal, but mine's actually a tie. I'm super Metroid and Castlevania Symphony of the Night because they're the same style of gameplay.

Dr. Schilling: Okay.

Roose: Are we talking current or past?

Dr. Schilling: Your entire life.

Roose: That's not possible. That's like asking of a book reader [unintelligible 00:44:19]

Dr. Schilling: Okay. Current.

Roose: I play a lot of Heroes of the Storm. I love that game. I also love the Persona series and the Fire Emblem series. Go out and buy them. No, I'm not sponsored by any of these companies, but they're excellent games. Persona is based on psychology. Those of you that know what a Persona is, I want to know about yourself.

Dr. Schilling: There are lots of great the games that are good research platforms.

Dr. Doherty: Absolutely.

Dr. Schilling: Travel space force is often overlooked, but there's lots to be done in this area. We really encourage everybody who's listening to kind of go out learn more about these areas, not just in Esports, but games overall because there was some really fascinating

Dr. Schilling: and in research areas across the spectrum of psychology-

Dr. Doherty: Sure.

Dr. Schilling: - that you can really pursue. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your informative discussion.

Roose: Thank you for having us.

Dr. Doherty: Thank you.

Dr. Schilling: Thank you.