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This argument has been used to try and excuse the irrational behaviour of inherently bad people and to try and blame something instead of someone. The truth is that if a person is going to turn out to be violent, a murderer, a thief, or anything else, it is not determined by the computer games they play.

There may be some people, however, who are influenced by computer games and this influence is not the fault of the computer game nor the manufacturers of such games. People have free will. Some people choose to copy what they have learnt from games, possibly because they have grown up with no other teaching or because they have never been taught right from wrong. When it is young people involved then those factors are largely the fault of the parents or carers of the child. There are, of course, some people who have genuine learning difficulties and mental disabilities and may simply not understand the difference between fantasy and reality. In this case, those people need care and they need to be discouraged from playing violent games, not because the game is doing harm but because of their own mentality.

There have been stories in the news where computer violence has been condemned and blamed for some of society's ills but, for every one violent person who happens to have played a violent computer game, there are probably thousands of perfectly nice people who have played the same games.

During childhood, the time we are influenced the most by people and the world around us, it is essential that those taking care of us teach us right from wrong, fiction from reality. This is the crucial feature. Parents do not like taking the blame for the inappropriate behaviour of their children and some may blame a violent game. However, if the parent hoestly thought that a game would have so much influence then they should have forbidden the child to play it or, possibly, done a better job at teaching them that is was not real.

As we get older, we become more and more responsible for ourselves. An adult who commits a crime which is subsequently blamed on his/her use of a computer game should get psychiatric treatment if they honestly believe that it is not their fault. An adult should know the difference between fiction and reality. If they can not separate the two then there is a serious problem.

Speaking from my own personal experience, while I do not play violent video games myself, I do know people who do. None of them carry this over into real life. I have a nephew who has played games such as Grand Theft Auto and Tomb Raider since he was quite young but he has no intention of stealing cars or shooting people because he knows that it is only a game and is not acceptable in real life. I would think that this applies to the majority while the minority who do use violent video games as an excuse ought to take responsibility for their own independent actions.

So to answer the question "does violence in video games contribute to real life violence?", I would have to say, in general, a definite no unless, of course, you allow it to do so.

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