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Games Entertainment

Videogame Mythbusting 70

Posted by Zonk from the without-the-head-injury dept.
AsiNisiMasa writes "MIT professor Henry Jenkins has an essay over at pbs.org that debunks eight common myths about videogames. It covers not only the topic of violence, but gender and expression as well. This is what happens when reasonable people with an education tackle the subject objectively." From the article: "1. The availability of video games has led to an epidemic of youth violence. - According to federal crime statistics, the rate of juvenile violent crime in the United States is at a 30-year low. Researchers find that people serving time for violent crimes typically consume less media before committing their crimes than the average person in the general population. It's true that young offenders who have committed school shootings in America have also been game players. But young people in general are more likely to be gamers -- 90 percent of boys and 40 percent of girls play."
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Videogame Mythbusting More

Videogame Mythbusting

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  • OMG Violent Youth Play Video Games! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Kelson ( 129150 ) * on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @02:02PM (#14248235) Homepage Journal
    This argument always struck me as being as intellectually honest as claims that Dihydrogen Monoxide was frequently found in terminal cancer tumors. Once you realize that they're talking about water -- which is found in normal tissue -- you realize it's a meaningless claim. Similarly, if you actually think about the fact that most teenagers (or at least most teenage boys) play video games without shooting down their classmates, you start to realize that the games->violence claims are similarly bogus.

    It's nice to see someone actually looking at the issue and noting that gaming and violence actually show an inverse correlation. I've always thought I'd rather someone go home and blow off steam playing Doom, Quake, GTA whatever instead of getting into fights or bottling it up until they do something drastic.
    • There is a group think enforcement on places like /. where we mod up the posts that say what we want to hear and mod down those who do not.

      This story tells us what we want to hear. It may even be true but that does not mean we do not have to ask wether certain games cross the line. Take the games you mention. I would say that there is a huge difference between doom/quake and GTA. In doom and quake your a hero, a marine who is going to safe the world from being taking over by the legions of hell.

      In GTA you

  • Violent game laws (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Roj Blake ( 931541 )
    This seems like a well thought out and logical article. But unfortunately it will probably fall on deaf ears for those who support Hillary Clinton's cause to ban games she doesn't personally approve of.

    • Re:Violent game laws (Score:2, Insightful)

      by kailoran ( 887304 )
      Yeah, it's like the Slashdot crowd mods TFA '+5 (Insightful)', but H.C. just says '-1 (Offtopic)' since it doesn't fit her point of view.
    • This seems like a well thought out and logical article. But unfortunately it will probably fall on deaf ears for those who support Hillary Clinton's cause to ban games she doesn't personally approve of

      The political focus remains on the marketing and sale of adult content to minors and the integrity of the ratings system:

      "I have developed legislation that will empower parents by making sure their kids can't walk into a store and buy a video game that has graphic, violent and pornographic content." Hill [www.cbc.ca]

      • The political focus remains on the marketing and sale of adult content to minors and the integrity of the ratings system:

        Which is all fine until you get into specifics. What constitutes graphic violent content? The titles that are already rated Mature? Why center on video games, and not movies or TV? Because Hollywood helps pay your bills, and the games industry doesn't?

        Most retailers refuse to sell AO rated games already (I don't know of a major chain that sells them, and none of the smaller stores
    • support Hillary Clinton's cause to ban games she doesn't personally approve of

      It's doubtful that this is really her cause, or that she particularly dislikes those games.

      Instead, Hillary has made a political judgement that borderline-Republican voters might be attracted enough by these proposals to get her into higher office, to fight for the things she REALLY thinks are important (health care, tax rate, nation-building, pollution, abortion, etc). The game thing is just a smoke screen.

      Her recent support for
      • It's doubtful that this is really her cause, or that she particularly dislikes those games.

        Instead, Hillary has made a political judgement that borderline-Republican voters might be attracted enough by these proposals to get her into higher office, to fight for the things she REALLY thinks are important (health care, tax rate, nation-building, pollution, abortion, etc). The game thing is just a smoke screen.

        Her recent support for criminalizing flag-burning is similar: a transparent bid to trade some o
        • And as a result, some Democrats will stop supporting her (like me).

          I wonder which state you live in. If it's a "Blue" state (instead of Red or Purple), then she didn't need you anyhow. The Democratic candidate will have a virtual lock on places like CA, MA, and NY. Fewer than 20% of voters reside someplace in any doubt.

          This is why the Democrats have done so poorly in recent years: they don't stand for anything

          The Republicans don't stand for anything either- they just manage to sound more sincere when the
  • I hate all one-sided arguments, even when I agree with them. Yeah, everyone here knows that "video games linked to violent behavior" really means "violent people enjoy violent games too" (this is just an assumption, but cannibals probably enjoy steaks)

    But what's the line-by-line rebuttle for all this? This article has no place on slashdot because it tells us things we already knew. What are the contradictions to this: the things we don't neccessarily know?

    • Re:Post rebuttle here. (Score:4, Funny)

      by Red Flayer ( 890720 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @02:35PM (#14248541) Journal
      "This article has no place on slashdot because it tells us things we already knew. "

      You must be new here.

      Seriously, though, this is an article that you would do well to send on to people who may not be avid readers of slashdot. There is so much FUD from the other side going around, it's important that people are aware that so much of what they are hearing is just FUD propaganda.

      And it doesn't hurt that HJ is an MIT Professor -- his opinions will carry more weight with Joe Parent than mine or yours.
    • How about this instead?

      I hate all one-sided arguments, [even] especially when I agree with them.

      For us it's just unnerving to agree with an argument that's weak and malformed because it doesn't face any real criticism or opposition. For an awful lot of people, though, it's comforting to resort to a news source that reinforces their own biases and presents opposing views disingenuously as "straw men." Rupert Murdoch has made his empire by pandering to those who can't stomach anything like open discourse

    • I am an avid pc gamer, I do not like games like GTA SA because I think it goes to far, it takes the fun out of being a baddy. Kinda like if Close Combat had a victory screen for the german side were you are congratualated for having gassed X more people at auswitch.
      1. The availability of video games has led to an epidemic of youth violence.

        H.J. FBI statistics show that youth crime is at an all time low.

        Counterclaim. Statistics can show anything. Can this be accounted for by A: judging minors as adults and

      • Wish I could moderate my own thread. Thank you.
      • I'm not sure why you think that anything you make up and/or pull out of your ass is very important. You commit every single sin you accuse the author of, without any proof that the author actually committed them. You have not one single concrete point or link to evidence here, and you dismiss evidence cited by the author with handwaving. Your assertions about the juvenile crime rate are especially egregious, because you claim that his statistics should be discounted because your made-up conditions might dis
      • Counter-counter claims

        1. "Statistics lie" is a pretty weak argument. Even weaker is the fallacy of possibility for probability. It's also possible that the statistics cited are a complete aberration due to the influence of a martian mystery cult. It's not probable though. In any case, as a refutation, all H.J. needs to do is disprove the claim of the other. By claiming "Well, crime statistics don't prove anything", you've destroyed the basis for the claim as well (games lead to violence). The burden of p
      • The availability of video games has led to an epidemic of youth violence.


        H.J. FBI statistics show that youth crime is at an all time low.


        Counterclaim. Statistics can show anything. Can this be accounted for by A: judging minors as adults and therefore getting some serious crime out of the statistics B: things like abortion being legalized C: things like stealing CD/records dropping because piracy makes it physical stealing no longer worth it.

        The university of illinois conducted a study. You can do a google

    • I have to agree - however, given that this article is basically intended as a rebuttal to all the anti-video game stuff you see in the media, you have to expect it to be one-sided. The implication is that the other side of the argument has already been presented, in countless newspaper articles and CNN interviews.

      Of course, knowing some of Henry Jenkins' work (which I do really like) and having taken a class from him, I think that he does tend to be a little one-sided overall on this issue, not just in th

    • "redundant" eh? someone isnt sorting correctly.

  • Objective? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TheWanderingHermit ( 513872 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @02:16PM (#14248354)
    This is what happens when reasonable people with an education tackle the subject objectively.

    In other words, "This is my opinion, and I think I'm intelligent and well educated and reasonable, so, of course, I don't see any bias when I say that is what ALL reasonable and educated people should think. It's reasonable and educated because it agrees with my point of view."

    While there aer good points, there are good points for other points of views. Just because this article says what you want to hear does not mean that other opposing points of views aren't also help and supported by reasonable and educated people.

    There's always at least two sides to any discussion and if you think there is only one valid side, then perhaps you missed something in your education.

    • Re:Objective? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by thatguywhoiam ( 524290 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @04:46PM (#14250029)
      There's always at least two sides to any discussion and if you think there is only one valid side, then perhaps you missed something in your education.

      NO. No no no no. There are not always two sides. By that statement no one is ever right. You've been watching too much cable news.

      While there aer good points, there are good points for other points of views. Just because this article says what you want to hear does not mean that other opposing points of views aren't also help and supported by reasonable and educated people.

      True enough; but in the absence of compelling (researched, fact-checked) counter-argument, the opinion stands. So you telling me to not take the article at face value, while offering nothing in response, leaves me where I started.

      • True enough; but in the absence of compelling (researched, fact-checked) counter-argument, the opinion stands. So you telling me to not take the article at face value, while offering nothing in response, leaves me where I started.

        But hey, if you do take a lazy and baseless but oppositional position in slashdot, then you'll get modded up for being insightful!

      • There are not always two sides. By that statement no one is ever right.

        Where did you get the idea someone has to be right? There is room for understanding and different viewpoints in much more than you think.

        You've been watching too much cable news.

        No, I've just learned it from life experience and watching and working with people over and over.

        Oh, and realizing that you can't blame one source (like cable news) for facts or ideas you don't like, don't believe, don't want to hear, or don't know how to cope w
        • Where did you get the idea someone has to be right? There is room for understanding and different viewpoints in much more than you think.

          At first I didn't know how to respond to this at all. What do you know about how I think?
          anything? Now thats some powerful relativism. (I kid. Sorta.)

          If we are to use the example given in the article, the MIT professor who is mostly defending video games against the alleged harmful effects, he would be 'right' if put in opposition to someone like Jack Thompson [stopkill.com]. Mr. T

      • NO. No no no no. There are not always two sides. By that statement no one is ever right. You've been watching too much cable news.

        You know the story about the blind guys describing an elephant. One guy touches a leg and says it's like a tree, another the trunk and says its a snake and so on. Well, all of them are right.

        The same applies to this subject. People ARE affected by the media they ingest, to what degree and how much of a problem it is are yet undefined. Some video game content has the player emulat
        • Now, according to your argument, two of these groups are wrong. There is no way to make that call here without injecting your perspective as a fact. Every one of these camps has "fact" to back up their argument and counter arguments for the other two positions. There is no clear and absolute truth of the matter as far as we know.

          I disagree, vehemently. Because we are not talking about what these groups of people think of the games, what their opinion is. We are talking about the alleged behavioural/socia

          • Having said all that, where do you stop? If someone is standing there and literally telling me the sky is red, and I'm saying Ok, In Your World Its Red, is that not just basic intellectual dishonesty?

            I think I may have misinterpreted your original statement. I agree whole heartedly that sometimes there are undeniable facts that define an absolute. In these cases, to capitulate to arguments that are obviously ignorant or misinformed is a ridiculous exercise. That having been said, I agree with the clarificat
            • Child wellness, government regulation, self gratification, and an emerging media format combine to form a really confusing issue. Other subjects approaching child wellness are easier to deal with. Alcohol and drugs stymie proper development, guns can lead to early death, TV can result in mimictry - which is more rude than culturally shifting in my opinion. The interactivity of this medium adds a new twist that is not easily quantifiable.

              Well said - we are in agreement. And really, you nailed it there - i

        • I just think it's more important to find the truth than to "be right".

          In debate, the person who presents the truth is the person who's right.

  • I guess... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    /. readers hate commenting on things if they can't argue about it

  • Huh? (Score:4, Funny)

    by tsa ( 15680 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @02:45PM (#14248643) Homepage
    90 percent of boys and 40 percent of girls play.

    Is he sure he doesn't mean something else?
    • If you mean that 90+40 == 130 percent then you are misunderstanding him. He means that out of a 100 boys 90 of them play games and that out of 100 girls 40 play. Meaning that 60% if girls do not play games and 10% of boys do not. Wether this is true? Who knows. Trust it like any statistic.

  • Really? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by hal2814 ( 725639 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @02:50PM (#14248721)
    "62 percent of the console market and 66 percent of the PC market is age 18 or older."

    yet

    "One quarter of children ages 11 to 16 identify an M-Rated (Mature Content) game as among their favorites."

    Do you really think that the folks in marketing aren't aware that their M-rated games are popular among young teens? Do you think they don't go out of their way to cater to that 11 to 16 audience? Sure they'd never come out and say something like that directly, but I'd imagine that a lot of the marketing done for those 18 and older is really targeted at this 11 to 16 crowd.

    Marketing Guy: No, the friendly cartoon camel is supposed to appeal to 18 year olds. It's not supposed to encourage kids to smoke!

    • Re:Really? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by UnidentifiedCoward ( 606296 )
      "Do you really think that the folks in marketing aren't aware that their M-rated games are popular among young teens? Do you think they don't go out of their way to cater to that 11 to 16 audience? Sure they'd never come out and say something like that directly, but I'd imagine that a lot of the marketing done for those 18 and older is really targeted at this 11 to 16 crowd."

      That does not change the fact that parents and not legislators, companies, sales guys and ad people are responsible for integrity
      • I'm not laying blame here. I'm not even suggesting that anything be changed. I'm just pointing out that a lot of content labelled 18 and older is targeted towards consumers much younger than that.

        BTW, I used the cigarette example because that was a clearcut case where the cigarette company claimed to be marketing toward adults but some whistleblowers prodvided enough evidence to show otherwise.
    • Actually, yes. The fact of the matter is that kids don't have any money. Once or twice a year, maybe a little more, they can convince their parents to spend $50 on a videogame for them.

      18-35 year olds, on the other hand, buy new games every week, potentially. They have a lot of disposable income, and so they're a better target.
  • What an odd idea, I wish the idea of consuming media would go away in terms of play and playback. Maybe when tapes and LPs would wear or degrade very slightly with every use, playing new media, when treated properly, won't degrade with each use.

  • It's trivially obvious that we acquire our... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Darius Jedburgh ( 920018 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @03:27PM (#14249102)
    ...values from the culture around us. That includes sources like our parents, our peers and what is presented on TV. I see no reason at all why video games are different and why kids wouldn't acquire values from them. Given the number of kids who seem to be brought up on GTA it seems highly likely that there are many people around whose values have been informed by this game.

  • "Busted", or just "old and tired"? (Score:3, Informative)

    by drmarcj ( 807884 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @04:50PM (#14250067)
    2. Scientific evidence links violent game play with youth aggression. Claims like this are based on the work of researchers who represent one relatively narrow school of research, "media effects." The author is quick to dismiss what turns out to be a large body of well-designed, peer-reviewed studies. For instance, he suggests studies are flawed because they are either correlation-based (looking at whether two behaviours co-occur, not whether one causes the other), because they happen in a laboratory, or because the subjects aren't always "real" video game players. As a counterpoint, allow me to point out an article that came out in the November issue of Psychological Science (a highly regarded journal in Psychology) by Carnagey & Anderson at Iowa State University. They had college age adults play 3 versions of a violent driving game (Carmageddon 2) where they were either a) rewarded for violent behaviour; b) punished for it; or c) played a nonviolent version where killing pedestrian & other players wasn't possible. Afterwards they received a set of objective measures of physiological and psychological aggression, they found that subjects who played the version that rewarded violent behaviours (running over pedestrians) showed increased hostility and aggression. Note that since subjects were randomly assigned to conditions one can safely assume a causal model in which playing a game that rewards violent behaviour does lead to hostile/aggressive behaviour. Now, I am not saying that this means kids who play GTA will go out and kill pedestrians. But I also think it's ignorant to set aside scientific evidence that violence in media has no effect on people's behaviour. It does, both in kids and adults, and both in males and females. If gamers are going to defend themselves against overly zealous politicians, it makes sense to educate oneself about the science. By flippantly setting it all aside, this article does nothing to address it.
    • Did the experiment check for long term effects, or only immediately after play? One of the weaknesses of such experiments that I know of is the concentration on doing tests during play or immediately after play (checking only short term effects) and the lack of follow up studies (not checking long term effects).

      Secondly, "Afterwards they received a set of objective measures of physiological and psychological aggression, they found that subjects who played the version that rewarded violent behaviours (runn

      • Indeed. One of the studies recently that was purporting to show some kind of bad reaction to violent video games based on brain scans I think pretty clearly showed the exactly opposite of what it was being painted as. (It was saying that "violent" video games caused a decrease in emotional processing and an increase in cognitive processing. Which is sort of what one would expect during complex problem solving; it would have worried me if they'd seen the opposite result, that the gamer stopped thinking intel
    • Now, I am not saying that this means kids who play GTA will go out and kill pedestrians. But I also think it's ignorant to set aside scientific evidence that violence in media has no effect on people's behaviour. It does, both in kids and adults, and both in males and females. If gamers are going to defend themselves against overly zealous politicians, it makes sense to educate oneself about the science. By flippantly setting it all aside, this article does nothing to address it.

      Man, I'm glad someone else a
    • Whether the subjects showed signs of aggression within an hour after playing the game is trivial in comparison to whether they showed these signs, say, a week (or more) after playing it.

  • Article has a point in myth #8... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Turken ( 139591 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @04:58PM (#14250156)
    From the article: "Here's where the media effects research, which often uses punching rubber dolls as a marker of real-world aggression, becomes problematic."

    When I read this, I couldn't help but smile at how right the article author is... why? because of a story my mom told me:

    Way back in the day -- before videogames ever existed -- and my mom was a little girl, her mother volunteered to let her (my mom) be a subject in a study on child behavior. So, my mom is placed in a room with all sorts of toys. One thing that catches her eye though, is a clown bop-bag... you know, the inflatable punching bags that are weighted to stand back up after you knock them over. My mom had played with dolls and kitchen sets and many of the other toys at home, but she had never seen one of these punching bags, and she was fascinated. She poked it, and it wobbled. She hit it, and it tipped, but stood back up. So, being a curious child, she hit harder and harder, trying to see if she could make it stay down. The researchers were horrified at the "violent behavior" that this girl was showing... Surely, she must have deep psychological issues, intense hatred of clowns, or must have been brought up wrong. But no, as my mom distinctly remembers, it was simply curiosity in testing the limits of a new toy. She has since grown up and had no psychological problems or aggressive tendancies at all, despite the fears of the "researchers."

    Anyway, I think that many parallels could be drawn between this story and the points made by the article author. Particularly that trying to make conclusions on what a child will become or policies to govern her based on a few minutes of observation is at best flawed, and at worst, more detrimental to society than the unsupervised child would ever be.
    • your mom is the reason why the research is always inconclusive. As you said she was just curious about something she had never seen before, wanted to see what all it could do.

      samething happens with me and violent games, when Vice city first came out I spent the first 20 minutes just seeing what they changed in the game, seeing what I could do now that I couldn't before. Once that was done I played the game (and I still have yet to kill 1 innocent person on perpouse while playing the game as normal).

      wh
    • I agree with this 100%.

      I would like to add examples of times we have all probably been physically goofing around with our friends, perhaps wrestling or something like that.

      It was all fun and games, and then someone might get hurt accidently. All of a sudden, play stops, and everybody checks in on the injured person, and the appropriate care level is reached.

      A good example to build off of yours would be, while your mom was expirmenting hitting the clown, another person in the room was struck by the clown and
    • "Surely, she must have deep psychological issues, intense hatred of clowns, or must have been brought up wrong. [...] She has since grown up and had no psychological problems or aggressive tendancies at all,"


      She's just lucky she hasn't had any close encounters with clowns!

      I'm telling you, if she gets into an elevator with a clown she's going to snap and go haywire!

  • This isn't news - we've already read this! (Score:3, Informative)

    by kingsmedley ( 796795 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @05:05PM (#14250263)

    Criminy. You should have all read this over a year ago! This essay is on a web page for a mediocre PBS gamin documentary. Here's the first Slashdot post [slashdot.org] about the show, and here's the http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/16/ 191253&tid=129&tid=10 [slashdot.org]>dupe posted 12 days later.

    I'm not saying it isn't an interesting page, or that it isn't worth a look, just that we should all be WELL AWARE of this page's existence by now. Sheesh.

  • I think I have more sense than my cat does. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by some guy on slashdot ( 914343 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @05:19PM (#14250402)
    TFA brought up an excellent point, and one that I think bears repeating to those that think video games can "bleed" into real world behavior. All mammals distinguish between play and actual violence. TFA mentions primates, but I don't know about primates, so I'll talk about kittens.

    Kittens fight. They kick and bite each other, pounce and paw with this wild look in their eyes. It looks like they're trying to kill each other, but this is how kittens play. They intentionally avoid injuring each other, and they have signs to tell the other kittens to stop if they actually get hurt. Yes, this play simulates a real catfight, as that's exactly what it's meant to prepare them for. Yet a kitten knows the difference between play fighting and real conflict.

    Some people see kittens fighting, and instinctively jump in to stop them because they might hurt each other. Even more so because they're kittens - supposedly soft and sweet and helpless. I've seen humans peg the kitten who initiates play as "bad" because he is "bullying" the other kittens. Most people don't understand that the kittens are just playing.

    I guess my point is, if a cat, an animal with a brain the size of a lemon, can figure out the difference between play and real, surely our own children can. We could at least give them that much benefit of the doubt.

  • Consider This... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by youshoulduseunix ( 938606 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @06:30PM (#14251248)
    I didn't see any claims that the opposing extremes of these myths were entirely accurate. In other words, he was simply debunking extremist claims of the negative impact of violent video games on children. He was NOT claiming that video games have no impact on children. Unfortunately, regulators have a habit of "picking up the torch" on issues like these. Then, they blindly run with it as though the existence of this torch is evidence enough of its superior integrity. This is, unfortunately, a common theme in society in general. The fact is, there needs to be some middle ground, which doesn't *completely* restrict the video game market or its users. As the author of the article states, "parents need to share some of the responsibility for making decisions about what is appropriate for their children." Herein lies the true root of the problem. While you can restrict the legal age for purchase of these games, law cannot entirely make up for a lack of proper parenting. However, there is one advantage to creating laws that restrict the sale of mature content to minors: namely, parents will be more likely to realize the necessity of preventing their children from playing such games if there is a hard legal opposition to it. For this reason, I encourage such laws. However, as with any law that restricts the sale of a particular product, there will be a necessary market shift. As with the tobacco industry, the video game industry will have to change its advertising techniques to correlate with correct legal practices. The author of this article obviously agrees: "Clearly, more should be done to restrict advertising and marketing that targets young consumers with mature content [...]" That being said, we should remember that the goal of such restrictive law is to force parents into the decision-making process, rather than to completely dispense of the consumer's right to choose its media for entertainment.
  • As much as I like debunking fraudulent 'studies' against videogames, this one is just as weak.

    "1. The availability of video games has led to an epidemic of youth violence.
    According to federal crime statistics, the rate of juvenile violent crime in the United States is at a 30-year low. Researchers find that people serving time for violent crimes typically consume less media before committing their crimes than the average person in the general population. It's true that young offenders who have committed sch
    • TFA uses primarily correlational studies, yes, but that's acceptable since all it's trying to do is demonstrate that the opposing arguments, which do rely on causal arguments, are false.

      He's presenting a rebuttal. The opposing viewpoint states that the presence of Foo causes Bar to increase; TFA disproves it by demonstrating that Foo is up and Bar is down. It's not asserting that the presence of Foo causes Bar to decrease. It's asserting that the presence of Foo does not case Bar to increase. There's a subt

    • First of all, who said it was a "study"? This is an article.

      - The overwhelming majority of kids who play don't commit antisocial acts. Well, yeah, the overwhelming majority of kids who DON'T play don't commit such acts, neither does the majority of kids that eat donuts, or kids who get their hair cut, or kids with blue eyes. Pointless statistic.

      Yes, that's the whole point of the article. Not to decisively say that videogames don't cause violence, but that the statistics which say they do are pointless, an
  • I'm a gamer, and I've played almost every violent video game in history. Ranging from Mortal Kombat (ah, the memories) to the Doom series (where the hell did that come from?!), and I've never had the urge to kill someone simply because I could.

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