Yea...lust just keep blaming the video games...

[Joetaku]

www.ketv.com/news/15249738/detail.html

[RivaOni]

To be honest with you, I've given up on rising against this sort of stuff.

Why? Well for the simple matter that the majority of scientists, journalists, MP's and Editors, or pretty much any position where you have a strong voice weren't bought up with this industry surrounding them.

By this I mean regardless of how much we speak up about it, we're not likely to see a larger amount of positive press on our past-time until today's teenagers (as scary as this seems) are in positions where they have a strong voice and can say outright "look, they didn't harm me, I'm a perfectly upstanding member of society". Because as things stand, those of us who have been gamers for a number of years, and can get our points across thoroughly are still seen as geeks and/or immature and thus not worth listening to as we're obviously biased and aren't really in a position where we can make a difference.

EDIT: You may also be interested in this

[Silver Adept]

This is the same argument that said ten years ago that violence in movies and television was harming our children and desensitizing them to it. Both of them rest on the principle that children are too young or too stupid to be able to distinguish between the violence they commit or see on the screen with the violence that they see in the real world. I want them to show me places where well-adjusted normal children pick up weaponry and start acting violently, and see if in all those cases, either the child wasn't as well-adjusted as they thought or something happened that triggered that kind of response. The idea that pixels somehow translate out into the real world is BS.

Besides, if I wanted to expose my child to high levels of people talking about and showing pictures of violence, all I have to do is turn on a nightly news broadcast.

[Tobias]

you guys pretty much said it. What I believe? If you want these problems to stop, some parents are just going to have to buckle down and teach their kids that either A: They can't play those games, or B: they give them a limit. Some kids don't have anything else to turn to but games, and parents don't really care what they play. If videogames are the problem, then restrict them in some way, but don't get rid of them as a whole. It's not their fault...it's fault based on the parents letting the children play the games who have a chemical imbalance in their head.

[Aiman]

"After they played the game for about 20 minutes, the teens said they didn't feel more violent."

I think they covered it up. Hehe.

But seriously, I remember playing Mortal Kombat when it came out and I didn't go out ripping heads off of people. I've played every GTA since GTA2 and I don't go out shooting people. For God's sake. I'm not a violent person and I'll never will be. I don't think about beating people up. Not even when I'm mad. This thing is stupid.

[RivaOni]

FOXNews again

Call of Duty supposedly the reason behind a former Marines dissappearance.

[Aiman]

"Ministers are also expected to recommend blocking mechanisms to protect children from seeing unsuitable games, emails or internet sites. Discussions have already been held with internet service providers to see if an agreement on a standardised filter can be reached."

All these stuff already exist. If parents aren't using it, that's not our fault.

And the whole thing about CoD and the Marine... Well, that's a bit more understandable. If you're wounded and have hallucinations of war, you don't really want to relive those memories again and anything can trigger some kind of effed up memory that will haunt you. But I don't feel bad. That was his own stupidity.

My dad had this neighbor who was a Vietnam veteran and he told me that he never slept at night. So he spent most of the night walking around his balcony. He was effed up... hehe.

[Ming]

I like how they never touch upon the fact that you can use violent video games as an outlet to vent frustration and anger and violent behavior. I used to do it all the time. When I was stressed out in college, I would fire up Unreal, put the bots on really easy, whip out the chainsaw, and see how many head's I could lop off. After about 20 minutes, I wasn't stressed anymore, and I could resume my normal activity with a clear head. I don't see how it's any different than going at a punching bag for a while to relieve stress, which is seen as a healthy way of de-stressing oneself.

[RivaOni]

I've said it before many times, Chixie and I used to break down arguments by playing Soul Calibur or TimeSplitters...

[Shandriz]