This week's editorial/opinion roundup takes us to Canton, Ohio and San Francisco.

In the Canton Republic columnist Tom Martin writes, "When I was a kid, spinach was good for you and video games included neither murder nor sex. What a difference a few decades make."

"...I had Pong. I knew Pong. Pong was a friend of mine... I know Ms. Pac-Man ate a lot of those gremlin things... but as far as I know she didn't pop a cap in somebody's keister."

"I've seldom been one to wax poetic about yesteryear. Yesteryear often comes back to us with the blemishes airbrushed out... playing Pong didnt make me aspire to play pingpong, tennis or another racket game in the real world. So maybe no one will want to join a street gang after playing 'The Warriors.' But making sport out of theft, murder, prostitution and senseless destruction seems wrong on every level. Maybe our spinach isn't the only thing tainted"

Inside Bay Area columnist Tom Leupold writes about the public perception of games:

"...despite evidence to the contrary, games are still seen as the sole providence of teenage boys, at least by the mainstream media. I asked (Prof. Dmitri) Williams (seen at left) why..."
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We've all heard people sneer at multiplayer online games, making comments like: "They're not real friends..." and "Virtual friendships only cause depression."

But is that really true? Is the enjoyment of massively multiplayer online games (MMO's) such as World of Warcraft and Everquest 2 really that much of a delusional, self-destructive endeavor?

Maybe not, so cheer up and keep grinding for those epic items in WoW.

A study conducted jointly by the University of Wisconsin and the University of Illinois defies conventional wisdom about the nature and quality of virtual friendships. As GameDaily BIZ reports, the academic research suggests that MMO's can promote sociability and expose players to new worldviews.

It's certainly true that WoW guilds, for example, can become highly organized social structures. Cooperation and communication - often using voice communication apps such as Ventrilo - are keys to success in high-level raids and instances.
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While many gamers chafe about stereotypes and the non-gaming public's perception of who we are and what we are all about, oddly enough there has been little serious study done concerning gamer demographics.

Jason Rockwood, a recent graduate of the University of Illinois hopes to change all that. Under the supervision of Professor Dmitri Williams (author of a game violence study often cited by the ESA), Rockwood has designed a survey which examines the sexual diversity of gamers and how sexual orientation affects their gaming tastes and concerns.

Rockwood provided insight about his project during an interview with GP Correspondent Andrew Eisen:

AE: Tell us a little bit about yourself and why you decided to conduct this study?

JR: I'm interested in studying convergence: technological, economic, cultural, etc. The rate at which scientific innovations are occurring is accelerating, and I want to research how the human experience will change as a result. Though I am not a gamer myself, I became fascinated with video game culture when I realized the impact gaming has had (and will continue to have) on assimilating emerging technologies into society. Video gamers are the avant-garde, though I think they couldn't care less about that. Still, the media paint a very one-dimensional picture of video game culture, focusing on the heterosexual teenage male. My experience of gaming culture is that it is incredibly diverse and socially progressive. I designed this survey to attempt to quantify that diversity.
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Professor Dmitri Williams of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Chamaign was kind enough to alert GP to transcripts of witness testimony from Wednesday's Brownback subcommittee hearing. Dr. Williams expects full transcripts of the subcommittee's questioning of the various witnesses to be available in a few weeks.

Prof. Williams is the author of an influential longitudinal study which found that playing a violent online game (Asheron's Call 2) did not cause substantial increases in real-world aggression.

Meanwhile, the always-excellent Terra Nova blog, devoted to MMO issues, has a report on Prof. Williams' Senate appearance.

The video game/political axis shifts back to Washington, D.C. on Wednesday as a subcommittee of the powerful Senate Judiciary holds a hearing titled What's in a Game? State Regulation of Violent Video Games and the First Amendment

Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) chairs the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Property Rights and will gavel the hearing to order at 2:00 P.M. Brownback, rumored to have 2008 presidential aspirations, is no stranger to video game content issues. As reported on GamePolitics last Decemeber, the conservative senator raised game industry eyebrows by urging retailers to display video game ratings, including ratings other than those of the ESRB.

Brownback is also a co-sponsor of Sen. Hillary Clinton's Children and Media Research Advancement Act (CAMRA), which calls upon the Center for Disease Control (CDC) to undertake a massive study of the effects of media on children. CAMRA was approved by the Senate's Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions earlier this month.

Witnesses for the hearing are a varied lot and include speakers both pro and con with respect to video game content and First Amendment issues. They include:

Reverend Steve Strickland, brother of Fayette, Alabama Police Officer Arnold Strickland, who was murdered by "GTA killer" Devin Moore in 2003. Strickland is a plaintiff in an ongoing lawsuit against Sony, Take-Two, Wal-Mart and GameStop.

Elizabeth Carll, Ph.D., Chair of Interactive Media Committee, Media Psychology Division, American Psychological Association.

Dmitri Williams, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Speech Communication University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

David Bickham, Ph.D., Research Scientist, Center on Media and Child Health, Harvard Medical School

Patricia Vance, President, ESRB

Rep. Jeff Johnson, Assistant Majority Leader, Minnesota House of Representatives

Attorney Paul Smith, partner, Jenner & Block LLP (has represented the industry in recent state-level First Amendment cases)

Kevin Saunders, J.D., Ph.D., Professor of Law, Michigan State University

California Assembly Speaker Leland Yee, whose appearance at the Game Developers Conference sparked controversy in recent days, was originally scheduled to testify at today's hearing, but an aide told GamePolitics that Yee was required for Assembly businss in Sacramento and will submit written testimony to the subcommittee instead.

In today's New York Times, health columnist Anahad O'Connor looks at a pair of well-publicized recent studies on game violence, concluding:

"THE BOTTOM LINE: Studies generally show that violent video games can have short-term, or momentary, effects on children, but there is little evidence of long-term changes."

O'Connor is contrasting the study released by the American Psychiatric Association last month with another released around the same time by a researcher from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The APA's Dr. Elizabeth Carll summarized her group's report, saying, "Showing violent acts without consequences teach youth that violence is an effective means of resolving conflict...Violence in video games appear to have similar negative effects as viewing violence on TV, but may be more harmful because of the interactive nature of video games..."

On the other side of the debate, Dr. Dmitri Williams (seen at left) of the University of Illinois at Champagne-Urbana found no strong link between video game violence and real-world aggression.

"I'm not saying some games don't lead to aggression, but I am saying the data are not there yet," Williams said. "Until we have more long-term studies, I don't think we should make strong predictions about long-term effects, especially given this finding."

While Williams did allow that games are becoming increasingly violent, he says that the positive effects of games are not well understood.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Amen!

"If the content, context, and play length have some bearing on the effects, policy-makers should seek a greater understanding of the games they are debating. It may be that both the attackers and defenders of the industry's products are operating without enough information, and are instead both arguing for blanket approaches to what is likely a more complicated phenomenon."

"Based on my research, some of the potential gains are in meeting a lot of new people and crossing social boundaries. That's important in a society where we are increasingly insulated from one another...Some video game researchers also feel that playing leads to significant advances in learning teamwork, managing groups and most importantly, problem solving.

"How often can someone direct and coordinate a group of eight or 40 real people to accomplish a complex task, as they do in these role-playing games? That's a real skill...Games are about solving problems, and it should tell us something that kids race home from school where they are often bored to get on games and solve problems. Clearly we need to capture that lightning in a bottle."