Editor's Note:

This week FoxNews.com ran an article entitled " Is Bulletstorm the Worst Video Game in the World? " The piece quickly made its way around gaming circles, and we began fielding questions about it from non-gamers, too. We found some of the contents of the article confusing, inflammatory and misleading, so we asked Nicholaus Noles to write a response to the piece. Noles is a researcher at the University of Michigan and received his Ph.D. in psychology from Yale University. He studies the effects of children's social experiences on their thinking and reasoning. Disclosure: IGN Entertainment and Fox News are both subsidiaries of News Corp.

“ Crude+or+sexual+jokes+and+innuendo+are+mainstays+of+television+programs.+Images+of+men+being+hit+in+the+crotch+are+a+staple+of+the+family-friendly+America's+Funniest+Home+Videos.

The article "Is Bulletstorm the Worst Video Game in the World?" is not actually an assessment of Bulletstorm Electronic Arts and Epic Games. Rather, it describes the mature content depicted in the game, and suggests that it is inappropriate for children and that too little is being done to regulate children's access to video games with mature content. Although it is reasonable for FoxNews.com to present these opinions, there are a number of inconsistencies and inaccuracies in FoxNews.com's story.Bulletstorm's pairing of violence with off-color humor is highlighted at the start, but things take a startling twist when the author reports that Dr. Carol Lieberman, a self-described "media psychiatrist," said that "the increase in rapes can be attributed in large part to the playing out of [sexual] scenes in video games." Researchers have battled over the connections between video games and ADHD, aggression, stereotyping of sex roles, and other important topics, but I am not aware of any published evidence linking sexual scenes in video games to increases in the prevalence or incidence of rape. Incidentally, sexual scenes are not depicted in Bulletstorm, with the exception of images of exposed enemy buttocks.The rape quote is representative of a broader problem in the piece. The sources interviewed are experts in topics such as women's health, peer interactions, conflict resolution, education, terrorism, romantic relationships, and moral development. However, with the exception of a video game industry analyst and Dr. Melanie Killen, a psychologist who has assisted in the development of educational video games to teach children peaceful conflict resolution techniques, these experts do not study video games.In the context of children's entertainment, I think that we can all agree that depictions of violence and ribald humor do not convey particularly positive messages to kids. One of the central ideas presented in the piece is that exposing children to innuendo and sexual comments is particularly problematic. However, these comments do not take into account the pervasiveness of gross-out humor in modern media. Crude or sexual jokes and innuendo are mainstays of television programs. Images of men being hit in the crotch and individuals of both sexes inadvertently losing their clothes are a staple of the family-friendly America's Funniest Home Videos.Teen comedies, such as Superbad and American Pie, are full of violence and sexual scenes and innuendo, and the same is true for their PG-13-rated counterparts, Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Weird Science. Even literary classics, notably the works of William Shakespeare, are littered with naughty wordplay. Although it is fair to suspect that the interactive nature of video games might change how depictions of violence influence viewers, there is nothing special about video games that makes crude humor especially problematic.