by Alex Ramirez

Created on: December 03, 2008   Last Updated: January 04, 2012

The gaming industry has been surprisingly quiet, in compared to previous years, in terms of lawsuits for video games and their connection to violence, so I thought this would be a good time to reflect on everything we have learned and witnessed from the crusade on games and the politicians who seek their destruction.

In the past decade or so, the gaming industry has been the target of countless lawsuits, petitions, and protests. The situations may change, but the reasons never do; the effects videogames have on our minds. With no research to completely back either side, the battle continues to go grow even more bitter with each act of defiance, and the battle becomes more about personal views and vendettas. Any hardcore gamer will tell you of their disdain for Jack Thompson and vice-versa. To gain a better understanding of where all these feelings came from you must first go back to what events may have started it all.

What is possibly the most notorious case of video games connection to violence also happened to be the worst. On April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado, two students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, went on a rampage shooting 36 people before turning the weapons on themselves. Of the 36 people, 13 were killed, 12 students and one teacher, with the other 26 being wounded. At the time, it was the third most fatal school shooting in the United States history. People immediately began to wonder what could drive these two teenagers to commit such atrocities. What was discovered about the two boys would change the gaming industry forever. Up until this point, games had only been thought to make people more irritable but never of taking someone's life.

Several psychiatrists came out after the incident and said that Harris was a clinical psychopath and Klebold was fighting with depression, but some people were still clamoring to the fact that the boys played violent video games. Some even came up with their own theories as to what caused the boys' backlash. Jerald Block, a U.S. psychiatrist, claimed that the boy's problems leading up to the attack could have been compounded by them not being able to let out their aggression on their favorite video games. For those of you that don't know, Harris and Klebold were both avid Doom and Wolfenstein 3D players. Harris even created several maps and mods for Doom, which are now widely referred to as the Harris levels. [JB1]When the boys started working on their plans for Columbine they

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