I think it's a good idea to select one or two highly popular video games. The more popular the game(s), the more interest your findings will generate among the popular audience. Furthermore, as games are incredibly complex, selecting a game that audiences are familiar with makes understanding your findings easier.

Following this, two PC games come to my mind: League of Legends and Fortnite. Both are extremely popular among adolescents and there exists academic literature about them. For example, I think your work has the potential to support the findings of Bastian Kordyaka on toxic behavior in League of Legends.

Hi! Thank you for giving your time to help us identify what kind of game to use for our research. I was thinking to use Mortal Kombat for we have seen its real concept of fighting. It shows blood where it can be considered as a violent one. We want a game which will give impact to the participants but we want to assure that the chosen game is allowed to be played by teenagers.

Anna Soska

What do you think is the best to include in the "Objective of the research" based on that topic?

Our research is all about measuring the aggression of teenage players who are not yet exposed to the chosen online game. Basically, we are going to have our participants answer the aggression test before the game start to identify their levels of aggression physically and verbally, for us to know if the participants are already aggressive or not before the game start.

After the aggression test, we will let the participants play the chosen game. During playing the game we are going to have our behavioral checklist wherein we will use it as our guide to observing their behavior during the game. After the game, we will be going to re-test the aggression that was given to them before the game started, to see if there are any changes in their Aggression level after playing the game.

The game will be an online game from PC. If you have any tips and advice for us, I would love to hear from you. Thank you so much in advance.

I think there are two aspects to consider when choosing games for your study:

First, the degree of aggression and "hostility" of the game's community (some communities might be more hostile/toxic than others) and the technical cues to convey these aggressions (e.g., some games do not have audio-visual cues, so players invent new ways of being hostile, such as moving the character in an unusual, "humiliating" way in Mortal Kombat).

Second, the degree of violence and aggression inducing factes of a specific game. For instance, although the goal of Fortnite is to kill other players, the visuals of doing so are rather unrealistic and flashy. On the contrary, Mortal Kombat is highly explicit.

I think considering these two aspects in comparison enables interesting findings. In my eyes, the hostility of players does not necessarily correlate with the realistic and graphic depiction of violence in the first place, but much rather with interpersonal factors such as competition.

Best,

Marius

Another aspect that you may want to consider in regards to Mortal Kombat is the skill level required for basic play. Fighting games usually emphasize skill that is built up over repeated play sessions. You may run into an instance where a participant who has never played before may have to spend several sessions playing to just get the hang of the game. This becomes an exacerbated issue when playing in an online setting (as opposed to single player which has difficulty settings) where there is less control over difficulty and play settings.

These issues may arise in any game genre, but fighting games are unique in their emphasis on skill mastery. This could be an interesting aspect in a study (that is frustration levels/aggression from unfamiliar game mechanics), but may not be the best option if you are interested solely in the content.

As an avid gamer in my spare time, I could recommend GTA Online(for games where players exhibit aggressive, disruptive behaviour). Listening to the Call of Duty video chat( you can record it if you play the game it's your property because it's footage of you playing) can also reveal aggressive even racist attitudes. Typically any popular multiplayer mode game with voice chat should suffice.

You can administer self administered questionnaires, and you can also do a qualitative observation and record reactions and use it as video evidence if you'd be presenting your research.

It seems like you suppose an answer to your question and are now trying to make a study to prove your point by cherry-picking a game.

Don't be suprised if the results show that kids are less aggressive in real life after playing a violent game and blowing off some steam. Mortal Kombat and later Quake worked for me in the nineties, for example. Now (at 35) I'm playing DOOM (2016) and I'm not ashamed to admit it (nor am I ashamed for playing Spyro: Reignited, for that matter)

Hard to say, however, how online games work in this case, as I don't usually play them (maybe some multiplayer Halo from time to time), but I think there isn't much difference (maybe in e-sports?) True, some player behaviors can be toxic, but that's another story, not fully related to the game itself.

As Joseph Alexander Brown said, your hypothesis is pretty bold and it seems that you are looking form something to justify it. It' kind of like looking for a rotten apple to proove that apples taste bad.

This is not the way.