The Psychological studies that have been done prove that violent video games DO increase aggressive behaviors. There is Positive correlation. (about .3 - .4 If I remember) To the degree they do so is also dependent on the personality of the gamer.

Surprisingly, Women and Girls show greater increase in aggressive behavior, than do traditionally more aggressive Men and Boys. :o

Had an interesting quote from a magazine to post. Basically it was a quote from a guy who wrote about training the military and how today's violent video games taught the skill and the will to kill better than any target practice at a shooting range.

Another article pointed out that violent video games are much more harmful to children than say watching a violent movie, largely because a child will play a video game for 60-100 hours to master it, while the same child will only watch a violent movie once or twice for and hour and half each time.

I'm interested in opinions on this subject, please share your thoughts. :)

Well children shouldn't be playing violent video games or watching violent movies anyway.

As for the rest of us, I'd assume that any activity that requires concentration can lead to frustration and anger when that cunt Mario falls down the fucking hole for the 27th time FUCK THAT FUCKING FAT PLUMBER CUNT SOMETIMES I JUST WANT TO STRANGLE HIM WITH THAT FUCKING MOUSTACHE

It's up to the parents and employees to do the right thing when it comes down to to it. Also, a colour coding classification system, without an R rating for video games, just doesn't cut it either. Why bother to read any of the stuff that's already on it when you can look at and basically become distracted by all the pretty colours.

Well, shit, if parents weren't so stupid as to buy their 7 year old child GTA then we probably wouldn't have a problem.

As for the thread title, no, they aren't, even if all you've said is true.

Man guilty of killing 17-month-old daughter over Xbox
Sometimes, yes. :no:

Meh, I wouldn't buy into these 'studies' at all. That's the first I've heard of proving them to increase aggressive behaviour; the rest all claim 'inconclusive results'. Aggressive behaviour or an aggressive self is bound to be a factor anyway, so yeah, I can see a video-game being a trigger, but not a cause. Either way, no amount of badgering from third-parties is going to break the industry anyway - far too many people get too hot under the collar to realise that.

Equally, as gamers, I think we should acknowledge the fact that kids are going to be playing mature games. C'mon, who can raise their hand here and say they didn't play a game they weren't legally allowed to when they were younger? I played GTA at 8 years old and got Vice City for my 12th or 13th birthday. Children are children. All it takes is a sympathising teenage clerk at a games shop to hand a 15 year old an 18 rated game. It's not something that's going to stop. It's like countries raising the drinking age-limit to 21 or age of consent to 18 - it ain't gonna stop anyone.

Video games are only dangerous if you don't follow two basic rules, one for the parents, and one for the gamers. For parents: read the damn rating label. It's there for a reason. Gamers aren't stupid, we know videogames are not a script for life. You can't frag the weak in the real world. You have to help them up.

Of course videogames cause aggression, most of them require concentration and focus, this naturally raises aggression levels. As Stevo's Mario example provides.

But if you play a relaxing game like Endless Ocean this isn't the case at all, since there's no concentration or focus involved its just relaxing.

But just because many games cause people to have their aggression levels raised, this doesn't mean it causes people to do horrible acts. Any raise in aggression is minor anyway. It’s pretty conclusive that if anyone goes on a rampage or whatever and they happened to also play videogames, its very very likely that they had something wrong with them in the first place, and the videogame might have set them off over the line, from a combination of other factors like stress from work/life, upbringing, mental instabilities and the like.

So no, videogames themselves are not ‘evil’ at all.

If we're going to talk about Evil videogames then this should be at the top of the list



If that doesn't make you evil, nothing will!

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Videogames are only considered evil when in the hands of a stupid person

I don't think video games are evil.... It's just the people who own them get very protective/aggressive over their games/consoles, as was shown in Drake's link

I think it should be noted that correlations are among the weakest ways to demonstrate a relationship in all psychological testing, and a result of .3-.4 is abyssmally low (it only indcates a weak relationship at best). I would be very surprised if they published that as any kind of indication that violent games were related to violent behaviour.

Violence is all around us. We have wars, terrorist attacks, school shootings, public fist fights and street fighting, the list goes on! All this is exposed to the whole world through media or happens in our streets, you can't prevent it. Humans are a violent species. I say embrace violence, make it part of YOUR life.

no, i don't think videogames are evil, they do however get my EXTREMELY FRAKKING PISSED OFF at times (i broke a ps2 controller over my knee once, had to go to the doctor's to have some plastic shards cut out)