Here’s a well-written explanation for why most of the media-effects studies really don’t tell us anything:

WHY VIDEO GAME RESEARCH IS FLAWED

By CHRIS LAVIGNE

Studies that spread the idea that video games are harmful to children are conducted by researchers whose knowledge about video games is embarrassingly poor.

May 25, 2009

Read the whole article here

SHEESH!

I get a lot of papers to review in Game Studies; Serious Games; Educational Games., etc.

I used to learn a lot from reading these papers.

Not anymore.

Not only is much of what I read “old news” (i.e. it’s been done or discussed and mostly published before), but FAR too many of the papers I read now don’t even cite the other works. What’s going on?

I am finding more and more submissions (journals, conferences, etc.) from authors who have not done a thorough lit review. Many papers I’ve read appear to come from authors who are relatively new to the field, did a quicky lit. search (1st 2 screens in google scholar, or for many of the Education papers I see, it looks as though they simply went to 2 or 3 education websites (AERA, AACE, AECT) and searched a subset of the journals there. This leaves people with a fairly restricted view of what’s been done and what is known.

What’s the problem? Do people not know how to perform a lit. review anymore? Do they not care? Are they naive enough to believe they’re the first ones who thought of this?

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