[Zyx]

Or we can just keep illogically railing on a few video games while we ignore most of the other causes.

Those who claim that only video games have influence on violence among adolescents and adults are not my allies. However this speech about how video games should remain as violent as they are or even become more violent (though unsaid here) is irrational and degenerate and that is what I speak against.

I do not claim that only video games should be monitored, however many are claiming that video games should not be monitored/targeted and this I can not stand by.

Rally against all poor sources of violence and rally against poor education and misinformation but include video games in this rally.

[Lightman]

I personally don't think that video games cause violence. Perhaps there are other problems associated with them, such as contributing to the obesity impedimec, but so does reading, watching TV, etc.

But that's not the point. We've got real people who are suffering in our nation, we've got real people who are oppressed, and we care about the effect of a few pixels on the mind. We've got a Senator who voted for the war in Iraq championing the anti-video gaming cause.

Doesn't anything seem wrong with that?

[vero]

Is it a question of psychoses relating to tolerance and language/imagery?

I think so... let's be honest and say that every human being is a paranoid, schizophrenic, bi-polar psychotic - in fact, let's say that existence is psychotic. We can definately say that language is a psychosis for it is disconnected from reality, it is totally surreal, as is logic. We can also say that one's perception is disconnected from reality also - for the translation into brain material from sensory perception is the disconnection (like for example the reversal of light, and translation into image that the eye/brain mnaifests).

So what with existence being psychotic (every cell/atom operates via nuclei which perceive - hypothetically at least) any kind of influence would cause some degree of effect, supposedly variant affection in a system of cause and effect. Now the tolerance part; sometimes we tolerate (as in reject) influences, like drugs they don't affect us - for example a toddler screaming "sex" on a bus doesn't give me an erection, however, if I were 13 and busy dreaming then it's likely that it might, so I can safely say that my tolerance of toddlers word games has improved, I am now more tolerant of sexual instigation, at least slightly.

However, obviously, this has a catch - let's say that violence causes a desire for satisfaction just like sex does. So the instigation of violent ideas is the cause of a desire for some kind of satisfaction. Now we have a conspiracy whereby the video game preaching "wasted" has caused me to be hungry for x (thing). That's advertising.

Now then, let's ban advertising, and with it trickery - my psychosis as a human being is delicate, I have an innate degree of care for my 'psychosis' (read 'personality' if you will), and instinctively I nurture it. Language is a kind of psychosis, a shared one; a chosis that people can adopt and learn. If somebody ill affects a linguistic psychosis then they are also ill affecting every single user of that language, which is a human rights violation.

Do you reckon that this would succesfully ban advertising?... or do I need to say that waste is unhealthy, thus shite is illegal, thus influences to cause excessive consumption are illegal thus all advertising is banned from non-consenting individual access?

Yes video games cause violence, so does sex, and alcohol, and language, and politics is the biggest cause of murder ever, practically. I agree that video games cause violent ideas, however behaviour is the real question. Are there any statistics for the rates of violence in places of high levels of video-gaming compared to those without? Perhaps video games influence people to have outbursts when normally they wouldn't, however they also provide an outlet for normally violent people whose violence decreases via video-gaming. I think video games are lesser compared to the massive atrocity that alot of advertising/language/religion is.

"It is equally likely that more aggressive people seek out violent entertainment," Sternheimer said.

It would be nice to have some statistics, for it is an attractive opinion that they cease violence because of using entertainment.

[Verv]

There is n odoubt in my mind that videogame violence is irrelevent.

I got into a few fist fights in 2006 due to alcoholism and general disregard of everything... And I will tell you that all of the boxing games I played did not make it easy, nor did all of the violent videogames make me more inclined to hurt others.

Before you attack another person, before you lay hands on them, there is a certain something inside of you that does not want to do it because you realize the immorality of the action -- a videogame is an entirely different universe. You have no responsibility and no one is actually dying. In now ay can it desensitize you to your basic moral values that you harbor.

Disconnecting yourself in a videogame is a far cry from the actual, literal violence of real life.

[Zyx]

There is n odoubt in my mind that videogame violence is irrelevent.

For everyone videogame violence is irrelevant?

I think if someone can pick up a language from a video game someone can pick up an idea from a video game.

[Verv]

For everyone videogame violence is irrelevant?

I think if someone can pick up a language from a video game someone can pick up an idea from a video game.

Ideas? Of course.

But can one become entirely morally divorced from reality through a videogame? I doubt it.

If I play violent videogames for 5 years suddenly if you put a gun in my hand and tell me to shoot someone will I shoot them? I doubt it.

I played 'violent' videogames all my youth yet I've avoided fighting people who directly insult me and I doubt I could ever feel morally right doing so. I do not think that a videogame can desensitize a person to violence on that level.

[Citizen J]

And yet you admit to having gotten into fights and alcoholism all with a "don't care" attitude. Were you in any way divorced from reality?

No one is arguing that video games are the sun source of all violence in any particular individual. Indeed, some arguments here, like mine, make it clear that there are many influences upon such behavior. Human behavior is not like that of a light switch. Many factors, both positive and negative exert small modifications upon our thoughts, feelings, and consequently, our actions. But to say that any one thing has no inluence at all is like simply denying it even exists.

All things we experience influence us.

[Verv]

And yet you admit to having gotten into fights and alcoholism all with a "don't care" attitude. Were you in any way divorced from reality?

No one is arguing that video games are the sun source of all violence in any particular individual. Indeed, some arguments here, like mine, make it clear that there are many influences upon such behavior. Human behavior is not like that of a light switch. Many factors, both positive and negative exert small modifications upon our thoughts, feelings, and consequently, our actions. But to say that any one thing has no inluence at all is like simply denying it even exists.

All things we experience influence us.

Only in an intoxicated state could I decide to hit another human -- it would come after a lot of mental prep nonetheless and it is still such a weird thing to do. It seems so unnatural to desire to hit another person with the goal of hurting them.

I grew up with video games like any other kid... Still, I really believe that it is so difficult to act violently; I need a controlled substance (or a hell of a good reason) to do it.

[Slayer of Cliffracers]

Really though, every civilization must find ways to give it's young men basic lessons in violence. For most of history, this took the form of detailed stories in which people's brains get bashed out, aswell as very real staged violence like Mediveal Tournaments or Gladiator Fights.

Really though, shooting defenseless civilians in a game, really gets boring for most people pretty soon, they prefer to fight entities who can fight back.

So really all people are bieng trained in is warfare, not really mass-murder. Such skills might come in handy one day even.

[soron]

To me, it seems, the knowledge of procedures can induce the thoughts for inventions. If violent media is allowed to bear witness to the knowledge of how to kill someone then the mind, and especially the weak willed mind, can conspire to invent a means to kill someone.

Well I'm fairly certain that reloading my handgun by walking over an ammo box won't do the trick, neither will mouse acrobatics enable you to hit something with a handgun at 25 meters.
On the other hand games like the Wrestlemania you named wouldn't even appear on the radar screen because those are not "killer games" but "sports games". On the other hand a game like "Hitman" would certainly be a target while at the same time that game will reward you for NOT going on a rampage. During the perfect mission you would for example sneak into a house, place a 10 cm³ GPS locator inside a toxic fugu fish filet and have it served to your target person by someone else so by the time he bites the dust you're already at the exit. Again I'm fairly certain that putting a fist sized object into a fish isn't an overly realistic "how-to" manual.

[Wellsy]

Video games clearly aren't causal to violence but the debate on whether violent media correlates with violent outcomes isn't as solidly debunked.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2704015/

One valid remaining question is whether the size of this effect is large enough that one should consider it to be a public health threat. The answer seems to be “yes.” Two calculations support this conclusion. First, according to the best meta-analyses [18, 19] the long term size of the effect of exposure to media violence in childhood on later aggressive or violent behavior is about equivalent to a correlation of .20 to .30. While some might argue that this explains only 4% to 9% of the individual variation in aggressive behavior, as several scholars have pointed out [39, 40], percent variance explained is not a good statistic to use when predicting low probability events with high social costs. For example, a correlation of 0.3 with aggression translates into a change in the odds of aggression from 50/50 to 65/35 -- not a trivial change when one is dealing with life threatening behavior[40].

Secondly, the effect size of media violence is the same or larger than the effect size of many other recognized threats to public health. In Figure 1 from Bushman and Huesmann [41], the effect sizes for many common threats to public health are compared with the effect that media violence has on aggression. The only effect slightly larger than the effect of media violence on aggression is that of cigarette smoking on lung cancer.

In summary, exposure to electronic media violence increases the risk of children and adults behaving aggressively in the short-run and of children behaving aggressively in the long-run. It increases the risk significantly, and it increases it as much as many other factors that are considered public health threats. As with many other public health threats, not every child who is exposed to this threat will acquire the affliction of violent behavior, and many will acquire the affliction who are not exposed to the threat. However, that does not diminish the need to address the threat.

http://www.aic.gov.au/media_library/conferences/violence/sheehan.pdf
http://www.aic.gov.au/media_library/publications/tandi_pdf/tandi055.pdf

Numerous research studies identify an association between exposure to violence in entertainment and violent behaviour, but do not prove that exposure causes violent behaviour. Rather, there is a risk that exposure to media violence will increase the likelihood of subsequent aggressive behaviour.

So it's not causal, but if one was of a vulnerable demographic based on identified factors, then based on the research, it's expected a person would have increasingly violent outcomes than if they had not been exposed to violent media.
And because these sort of issue get conflated with supporting bans or what ever, such results aren't necessarily enough to diminish video games in their sale or creation. Though it could be enough to speculate as to whether there is a reasonable avenue to take on protecting the vulnerable demographics or improving upon the factors that makes one vulnerable.

Pegging violence on a single cause in regards to human behaviour is certainly naive, it's more typical to explain complex phenomenon based on multifaceted models of causation.

[alaust]

i never agree with this because i grown up and played game a lot and im not a violent person

[Godstud]

I played Grand Theft Auto once, then immediately went outside, stole a car, drove over some people, then shot a cop. Good thing I saved!

edit: spelling error

[Bulaba Khan Jones]

Whenever you play fantasy MMOs Godstud is it really hard not to craft a battleaxe and go look for mobs to kill IRL?

[Hong Wu]

I think one of the arguments here is that violence is serious and should be treated seriously. Unfortunately, such an argument is probably a non-sequitur to many people today. Proving the connection (whether we call it a correlation or not; the C word has somehow become politicized) won't mean much compared against the general public's entertainment. Although, as media options expand, parents might gain greater control over what their children are exposed to.

[Godstud]

True, but even in our day, when we had Superman and Looney Tunes, we had stupid kids who would dress in a superman outfit and jump off the roof of a garage and break their leg. Stupid people exist.

As such, there are always going to be people who try to act out their idiocy, and not having tv or games will just make them use some other medium for inspiration.

[Scheherazade]

Focusing specifically on 'video games' is myopic - better to focus on broader sociological and anthropological issues.

For example, off the top of my head studies have linked sociopathic behavior to one's environment or "role models", while this doesn't prove that 'video games cause violence' per se, one can logically assume that if a person, especially a young person without strong role models, spends too much time using video games or entertainment of a negative moral worldview, it could influence their outlook on life in negative ways, even if not directly causing violence.

Likewise simply because 'measurable violence' allegedly decreases, doesn't mean that the video games don't have negative influences in more subtler ways, for example influencing aggression or general life apathy, even if not to such an extreme that crime or violence is committed.

[Wellsy]

I disregard examples in which one resorts to examples of extreme violence, its similar to say someone saying that they're not influenced by advertising/marketing because they're not diagnosed as a shopaholic who is in significant debt. A lack of an extreme effect doesn't in itself negate whether there is a significant effect to consider.

And I think the emphasis beyond just effect needs to be a clear understanding of what we understand as causality.
In regards to video game violence, it's suggested that we move from:

causation where x is a deterministic cause of y if and only if (i) x is temporally prior to y and (ii) the occurrence of x is sufficient for the occurrence of y.

to

x is a cause of y if and only if (i) x occurs earlier than y and (ii) the probability of the occurrence of y is greater, given the occurrence of x, than the probability of the occurrence of y given not-x. That is, x bears positive statistical relevance to y in the sense that the occurrence of x makes the occurrence of y more likely.56
An important feature of this conception of causation is that it admits of degrees: causes can be more or less effective, and one measures the effectiveness of a cause by how much it raises the probability of the effects.

(p. 696-7)

This is how we came to see smoking as harmful, after years of cigarette companies trying to reduce the matter to the prior form of causality to deny significant plausibility of risk of harm.
See work from Alexander Spirkin for greater detail on conception of causation.

The uni-linear determinist type of causality is useful for hard sciences, but not when it comes to social matters with subjects.
Such causality breaks down quite significantly.
See '2.3.3 Determinism and a Field/Network Approach to Causality.' p. 38