I'm still baffled on the amount of shootings in countries where they legalise the use of arms. There are people who don't know Obama is president of the USA (at least so I've heard... as I'm from Europe), but are allowed to weild a gun. The following might be a little harsh, but it's based on research and newspaper articles on a subject currently in debate in the Netherlands: Lower educated people should be told what to do A LOT. This sounds weird, but I get my statement as a conclusion on a discussion on health care. Research shows people with lower education have more health problems and cost the society more in healthcare. Moreover, in the Netherlands health insurance for them is even cheaper than for those who have a higher education (actually it's based on income, but those two are more often than not related). Higher educated people not only pay more, but they often have a healthier lifestyle: they eat healthier (less fastfood, more vegetables, etc.) and they smoke less. Right now the debate is on if it's right to raise the insurance for higher-risk groups (as is the case with car insurances) or adopt another solution (as to raise taxes on unhealthy food).

To relate this to the shootings, there's just incompetent people out there and access to guns is way too easy. Everyone can buy one and a lot of people do. Not to bash on lower educated people, but when the government here is worried about what those people eat, why should they, on the other side of the ocean (where obesitas is a far bigger problem) be allowed to have guns? Not to say higher educated should be allowed to have guns, but when you ask me I'd rather have someone more intelligent or someone with a special education and priviliges (e.g. police officers) carry a gun than someone with half a brain.

http://www.statisticbrain.com/gun-ownership-statistics-demographics/ Gun ownership is a lot higher as educational level is lower, and that's in percentages. Take into account that there's a lot more lower educated people...

I don't know how the virtual goods thing is going to play out, but that is that and this is this.

Video games don't make people snarky anymore than a football game. I think those people were like that to start with.  In other words, if you are a violent person and play video games and then go do violent things, its not that games fault.

That's not "putting blinders on" over my hobby. Its logic.

Swear I have seen the my Government trying to pin violence in video games over and over and have never brought up a shred of proof backing it otther then a someone who is paid to say these things. Never once over the past 20 oe o years since I started playing games have I ever had a thought to go out and commit mass violence.

It has nothing to do with games it is all about how peoples brains are wired but as an American I feel the higher ups are just too stupid and old to understand this.

Originally posted by Terranah

There's been many studies regarding violent video games relative to gun violence, and no link has been established.  I have killed many npc's and players over the years.  If I was going to guess, I'd say the number's are up in the 1 million range.  Yet I never murdered anyone.  In fact, I've saved quite a few lives over the years.  Just gave cpr to someone who coded last week and she lived, so chalk another +1 in the save category.

 

Hitler, Stalin and Mao never played video games as children, yet they collectively killed over a hundred million people. 

 

There is a greater link between mental illness and mass killing, but no one wants to have that conversation because it doesn't fit with the politics of the day.

Sorry to get off topic, but I have to disagree on the last statement, there's very little link between mental illness and voilence, people whom are mentally ill are no more or less prone to commit such acts (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1525086/). If you examine all the mass killings, the majority of them were male and of a certain age.  Last I checked, women suffer from mental illness as well and it's almost unheard of that that particular gender participates in large scale shooting sprees. Even if the perpetrators in these shootings were mentally ill, no one bothered to check what sort of medication or substance they had been inducing. Many legal pharmaceutical medications for mental illness, of the sides effects, one of them is psychotic/violent behavior (SSRIs falling in that category).

Stop discussing the issue of gun control and violent video games.  Seriously, stop.  Don't get involved in the conversations in your daily lives or on news media sites.

Instead, do everything you can to shift the attention back to what really matters:  the budget.  Two weeks ago, we were facing a fiscal cliff and the problems related.  That problem didn't go away just because the politics of the day changed.  As Americans, we should be ashamed that the media can so easily influence our discussions and distract us from the issues that really matter.

If you want to change the discussion, you can't keep discussing gun control and video games.  Bring back the discussion about the budget.  Post on your social media site of choice and post on news sites.

Yes of course, it's violent video games that are the problem, not the fact that you can buy semi automatic weapons from local gun stores and bullets from local supermarkets or that you can buy hand guns, rifles or shotguns from most sporting goods store or even pawn shops in the U.S. and let's not even mention the black market where the sale of unregistered weapons is rife, no it must be video games that cause these murders and robberies, remember guns don't kill people, people kill people except where video games are concerned then it's video games kill people, because that's much more a convenient answer to the problem than standing up to U.S. gun manufactures and lobbyists, far easier to put the blame on an industy that is far more popular and successful.

America, ...how not surprising of you.

Cyberpunk 2077

"Bullet" by Archive

Agreed. Video games don't kill. Bad parenting kills.

I have a feeling Pokket is going to be a pretty badass gamer mom in the future.

I love how that picture shows a little kid wearing a snoopy shirt, holding a gun. HAHA!

But yea, I did the same working at Walmart. It started to get sickening to see all the parents blindly buying the worst games for their kids.

But of course. No one wants to take responsibility for their own actions and if you bring it up YOU become the bad guy for "telling them how to raise their kids"...It's sad to be honest.

Whats most disgusting are the people who are pushing their agenda off of these tragedies.

I think this is over all a much deeper issue, a social and economic issue, than just video games and or bad parenting. And that takes it too far off into the out-field  to say on topic, so I wont go there.

Entertainment software needs a lobbyest group to defend itself from government attack.

Beyond that, no comment.  If I spoke my mind I'd cross the line on a TOS violation.

The NRA blames the gaming community and yet the put out a shooting game of their own : http://kotaku.com/5975910/the-nras-new-shooting-game-is-for-ages-four-and-up  (hypocrites)

The gov blames the gaming community and yet the us gov puts out a fps shooter of their own (hypocrites)

I think Stephen Colbert say's it all:  http://kotaku.com/5976156/watch-stephen-colbert-point-out-how-absurd-it-is-to-blame-video-games-for-violence

Since no one wants to say it.... I will.  Illuminati, Illuminati, Illuminati, Illuminati.  (New World Order) control is their agenda.

Stoping violents in video games is not the true intent here, our government is using video games as one of the examples to take away your right to bear arms its not a First Amendment issue but a 2nd Amendment issue, once they have taking this right away, our governmnet controlled by Illuminati will push their true agenda by controlling everything (food, banking and property etc.) no one will be able to fight back. I know this is hard to believe, but knowing the truth will set you free.

For the short: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbytYvBO_9E

I felt this article (just like every other gaming journalist commentary) was poorly researched and made no attempt whatsoever to try and understand the issues.  Instead it just blanketly defends the video game industry to video gamers who support the video game industry.  IT would be interesting for a Devil's Advocate to do this article simply because you might geta better more rounded picture.

Anyway, yes video game violence is bad for kids.  Although yes there are some studies that show video game violence has no effect on children the vast majority of them say there is.  According to the APA (http://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2003/10/anderson.aspx) there is 40 years worth of data on the topic and the metastudy indicates video game violence is bad for children.

How does our brain work in regards to emotions?

Quite complicated as it seems.  The dumbed down version of it goes like this.

You receive information from the world.  It transforms into data your body understands called "chemicals."  Chemicals when combined form chemical reactions and form new compounds.  The new compound is excreted in the form of an emotional reaction.

Often you hear people talk about "stored emotions."  It's a simple way of explaining the byproducts (AB+CD=AC+BD in which BD is the byproduct).  These byproducts are stored until an appropriate situation occurs in which the body can create a new chemical reaction to use these byproducts up.

In the mean time your unused emotions sit in your body waiting for the day they can be used.

In the mean time as you receive new emotional data your body will be doing more and more reactions and these stored emotions will change.

It is in this way that we can make the claim that certain activities or feelings can evolve into disorders.  Violence in video games has been tracked in the development of oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), ADHD, anxiety disorders and a few other dozen lesser known disorders.  Each of these disorders in kind evolve in their own way to form something worse.

It's no coincidence at all that in all 21 school shootings since Columbine the shooter was suffering from some developmental disorder.

Yes you can play video games and not end up with these disorders.  Guess what, you can also smoke your whole life and not get cancer.  But this doesn't mean you're going to up and deny the link between cancer and smoking right?

That's specifically the reason why video gamers do not want to own up to the fact that violent video games are bad for kids.  They remember that time they went to an arcade and played Mortal Kombat and chopped off their buddies head and they say HEY I'M FINE ERGO VIDEO GAMES ARE FINE FOR KIDS!

Just because there is a rating system out there doesn't mean it's all that useful.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/440/

This is Team Fortress 2, perhaps you've heard about it.  It's also rated M for mature.  If you look at that website there is absolutely no rating on the game.  Valve will be releasing a Steam-based console soon and no doubt a TF2 console version will become available.  Valve is one of the most respected developers in the world... and they don't even require ratings be placed on the largest distribution platform on the planet.

TF2 is also a very cartoony game and you'd never be able to tell from the advertising material that this game isn't for kids.

On top of that if you look at the video game box the rating on it is pretty small.  The M logo will only represent 2% of the total box.  If it was doubled to 4% it would be highly visible, 8% it would be hard to miss, 16% and you would not be able to miss it.

It's fine to just sit there and say ZOMG BAD PARENTS.  But that's not a real solution.  There will always be bad parents who need their hands held by the government in these regards.  Whose to say that your (future) kid doesn't go to the friend's house and they play all this stuff you forbid there?

In the end the response from pretty well all video game media outlets is exactly the same, protect the industry at all costs.  Children represent less than 10% of all video game sales.  It would have a very little effect on the sales of those violent games.

It would show dignity for members of the video game industry to stand together and take a stand against children playing violent video games.  These companies need to work on branding and distribution errors.

No ones saying ban all video games and no one should play video games.

Also video games causing prostituion is a stupid red herring.  It's a red herring because NOBODY of any value is saying prostitution is rooted in video games.