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Video games

Scene from video game Rocket League with a car hitting the ball
Winter 2022

Wide world of esports

In a thrilling finish to the tournament, Team “Candy Shop,” composed of students from Washington State University’s Tri-Cities and Vancouver campuses, came back from a 0-2 deficit to defeat a Pullman-based team 3-2 in the tournament’s final round.

But this game took place not on turf or court, but in a Rocket League video game in the first-ever WSU Global Gauntlet. The March and April 2022 event launched WSU’s esports through Global Campus.

Esports, alternatively known as competitive video gaming, allows students to compete remotely in a wide variety of video games and gaming platforms. The … » More …

Grand Theft Auto 5 screenshot of man looking at two women in short skirts
Fall 2019

The evidence that video game violence leads to real-world aggression

A 2018 meta-analysis found that there is a small increase in real-world physical aggression among adolescents and pre-teens who play violent video games. Led by Jay Hull, a social psychologist at Dartmouth College, the study team pooled data from 24 previous studies in an attempt to avoid some of the problems that have made the question of a connection between gaming and aggression controversial.

Many previous studies, according to a story in Scientific American, have been criticized by “a small but vocal cadre of researchers [who] have argued much of the work implicating video games has serious flaws in that, among other things, it measures … » More …