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Does the playing of violent video games contribute to real life violence? The unequivocal answer has to be 'probably no'. There is evidence that violent video games can arouse feelings of anger and desensitise gamers to real life violence, that they can increase the violent behaviour of those already habitually violent, but it has not been established that video games are linked to an increase in violent acts.

Interest in the potentially violent effects of television was pioneered by the psychologist, Bandura. Founder of the highly influential Social Learning Theory, Bandura argued that people learn through observation - they copy the behaviour and attitudes of others, they model themselves on a variety of role models.

Bandura felt that television companies were responsible for desensitising viewers to violence - they described violent drama as "action and adventure", in the process glamorising violence.

In this he echoed the Frankfurt School of social criticism which, in the 1950's, argued that entertainment had become the monopoly of major companies who cynically manipulated drama to produce happy endings where good triumphed, often violently, over evil.

Bandura demonstrated that viewers could learn aggressive conduct from television, which regularly presented the world as far more violent than it really was. He extended his analysis to the playing of video games - which further amplify the perception of the world and everyday life as excessively violent. Games, he felt, divorced players from appreciating the consequences of their actions in real life.

Numerous psychological studies have failed to fully substantiate Bandura's concerns - although many have suggested that a process of desensitisation can occur. The problem, of course, is that you cannot take the video game out of the equation and ask what the gamers might have been doing had they not been playing video games.

I grew up in post-Second World War Scotland, a country where resources were scarce and memories of war abundant. The country still bore the scars of the 1914-18 war - the crippled and shattered could be seen walking its streets alongside the ghosts of hundreds of thousands of men who never grew old.

Conscription meant that every adult male would be expected to serve two years in the Armed Forces. It was a country recovering from the Korean War and Suez; the military were still fighting armed insurgency in Africa and Asia. The USA, meanwhile, would become daily more embroiled in Vietnam - the

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