Study after study claim that there is a correlation between violent video games and violent people.First of all, duh. No crystal ball is needed to see that surrounding someone with violently suggestive input will ultimately cause that person to act more violently. If I surround myself with walls painted in angry color tones and patterns, or listen to angry music (rock 'n' roll or, hey, even opera), then yes, I will become angrier. No revelation there. Perhaps then we should shield children from every possible violent thing - that would be the safe thing to do - or maybe we should teach children about how to deal with violence and anger instead.But the kicker is that aggression (of which violent video games are just a small contributinb fraction) and "exposure to violent television" rank quite low on the list of factors that contribute to violent behavior. Some of the many more important factors are overcrowding. poor education, and economic status - all of which partly explain the relatively high crime rates in some city neighborhoods. So don't come to me about wrong ESRB labels when there are antisocial parents and people being male. Don't come to me with another "violence is violent" study when the news media increases its coverage (in some areas by 30%) on murders, shootings, and a text-scroll-assisted collage of other violent events when crime rates in America have actually gone down (by 30% in those same areas).If concerned parents and caring politicians truly care about preventing violence in children, then they should spend their time on these more signficant factors - rather than spending time writing and rewriting law proposals that monitor violent video games, in an industry that already has the means to monitor itself (ESRB) and knows far more about video games than how these some of these bills have been written. One bill wants every game to be played to its fullest extent before given a rating. The amount of time this would take can be infinite - and my time (no, our time) has already been wasted enough.
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Genj - March 21, 2007 (10:14 AM) Don't these creepy politician types know if violent video games were really to blame then we'd just go Blood inspired psycho on them instead of angrily shaking our collective fists at them through blogs?! Oh yes, and I would hate to hear news like "Ninja Gaiden faces delays. ESRB stuck on 5th Chapter." ![]() |