Competition Considered Harmful?

This is my first post on #AltDevBlogADay and as such I had originally meant it to be an introduction of sorts. I was going to talk a lot about myself and my particular part of the game industry, building games for the military. Recently, however, I came across a study that has captured my attention and I decided to write about it instead, the effect of competition in games.

I am currently working on my dissertation at the University of Central Florida (Go Knights!). My research is focusing on a comparison of competition and cooperation in learning games. As such, the recent study published in the American Psychological Association’s (APA) Psychology of Violence journal titled, “The Effect of Video Game Competition and Violence on Aggressive Behavior: Which Characteristic Has the Greatest Influence?” captured my attention. If you’d like, you can read it here: