Racing Games Encourage Risky Driving?

By now, many have heard about a study making claims that exposure to "driving games" encourage risky behavior on the road. I can see where the effect may be real, just as the effect of violence in video games may be real, but most of these studies forget that violence itself is neutral, it is the purpose and context for violence that may be troubling. They also never seem to separate games from simulation.

As others have pointed out, there is a vast difference between a simulation and a game. I fly flight simulators (Microsoft Flight Sim, Flight Gear and X-Plane) and have done so for about ten years. You can learn a lot about flight procedures, navigation and many other elements of flight, which are modeled to a good degree of realism. You obviously can't feel the effects of turbulence. You are not likely to feel your stomach in your throat from clear air turbulence. You are not likely to feel disorientation. But the rest you can learn a lot from. I'm fairly new to racing games or simulators, but the same rule applies to racing "games" that take a simulation approach.

The object of racing is to win. You win by following The Line, or ideal course through the given track that optimizes the efficiency of running the track in order to reduce the total lap time to a minimum. To follow the line, you do not just go as fast as possible through corners, but take advantage of physics. You actually run a faster time by going slower. I've always read that in racing books, but now I know it is real. My first runs through the game/simulator were slower than than my later runs when I calmed down, tried to follow the line, braked into corners, tried to hit the apex of the curve and position myself for as early an acceleration out of the corner at the highest exit speed possible. I'm still not very good at it, but my lap times dropped considerably the better I drove.

I believe racing or driving simulators teach people how to drive well and avoid taking risks, so let's not conflate simulation and racing. You ought to get real world pilot license credit for simulation practice and I've read many reports of pilots being more quick to learn at pilot school because of their simulation experience. Real sports car enthusiasts who run the Neurburing in Germany recommend taking a few laps in the PS2 game Gran Turismo before coming to the real track. The model is pretty faithful and at least you can memorize the names, directions and characteristics of the turns. Memorizing the course is essential to racing.

The bottom line is that racing simulations require you to follow the line to achieve anything. If they model damage, they punish bad driving severely. If they model tire wear and other mechanical elements the punish hard driving.

It reminds me of A-10 Tank Killer, a game I played many years ago on the PC. While not a flight simulator, the game offered realistic military scenarios, frequently without any good solution and failure to carry out the mission or causing friendly fire (and in some occasions there was no choice) resulted in being chewed out by the commander. The game offered dilemmas such as choosing to fly to rescue a downed pilot or take out the target or both. Hard decisions have to be made in war and this game taught those lessons very well. I would _want_ my children (if I had any) to play this game. They might learn something about life. That the enemy can come out of nowhere to rip your wings off in a second from a hidden truck mounted anti-aircraft gun; that war is chaotic, that it is difficult to tell who is friend and foe, that you must make life and death decisions and no matter what you decide you may be wrong. We need more "games" like that, we need young people to play them. One rarely hears in the media how science has found evidence that games can help, such as showing that surgeons who play video games show improved dexterity. Or that medical simulation helps surgeons to practice without endangering patients. I believe from personal experience that first person shooter games can improve soldiers performance on the battlefield, that people who have never been exposed to warfare can probably pick up a lot about tactics and warfare from playing them, perhaps too much, but that is something for society to worry about, the game is not the problem. They are not "murder simulators" by any means...they may mean raw recruits who have played them come with a few qualities helpful to the soldier, such as the understanding that in warfare one must move forward into the face of fire, use cover, organize into fireteams, etc. Games are a powerful way human beings can learn, give us new ways to play, relieve stress, compete, keep our minds sharp and simulators are their older, wiser brothers who can help us to learn to avoid mistakes by allowing us to fail at tasks that are deadly when mistakes are made.

Driving games like Burnout, I tend to take a different view of, they are intended to be absurd fun, like many good games, they allow you to do crazy-fun things that are enjoyable, such as the wild drives in Halo's Warthog I've done or blowing yourself into the sky on a pile of grenades. Does that make me want to drive off a cliff or sit on a pile of grenades in real life? No, I can't believe any sensible person would take such games any differently. I think if people can keep perspective, we also need games like these to maintain a sense of the absurd and to do those things we know we'd never do in real life. One would have to be malicious or delusional to take these activities into real life.