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my ancestors when they grew up handling swords and bows and guns, and used them careless of any legal restraint.

You can't measure the violent contribution of video games because we have no baseline of violence. Are we supposed to be more civilised now? There's actually plenty of evidence that violent crime in the West has been decreasing for years - despite cinema, television, or video games.

Males have been bred to be dangerous, and it's impossible to reverse millions of years of evolution with a plea to the spirit of liberal democracy to make us more tolerant. It's a dangerous world and we remain dangerous people, with or without video games.

I cite the example of a small town in Scotland, but similar lessons could be drawn from virtually any nation in the world. Switzerland is one of the few which has escaped war for any real span of time. The rest of Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia, even the newest of worlds in Australia, have a significant history of warfare and civil conflict.

Video games replay real war and portray fantasy war. The fans of video games spend a lot of money buying the equipment, so it can be argued they're likely to be purposeful and motivated, that they invest a lot of energy and emotion in playing their games.

But their dominant motivation seems to be social. Gamers like to beat friends. And games offer a more level playing field than sport - you don't have to be over six foot tall to be a winner.

Game play appears to be highly social - it's not an isolating activity, it actually enables people to make friends and compete with friends. Perhaps they do become more aroused when playing - they certainly become more competitive - and there may be some desensitisation to violence in the immediate aftermath of playing a game, but you cannot make a direct leap from that evidence to claim that video games cause an increase in violent conduct.

To do so, you would have to prove that had they not been playing video games the gamers would have been involved in other activities which had fewer consequences for potential violence. Suppose, instead of sitting at home playing games they went out to hang around street corners and come into contact with other males?

Because we cannot create a blank slate, we cannot prove the effects of video games are any different from alternative activities. The media and entertainment industries sensationalise violence and feed us a constant diet of crime and war. But go back two thousand years and the popular traditions of storytelling, drama, poetry and song delivered a similar diet.

Little has changed in recorded history, save perhaps our expectations that we act in a more 'civilised' manner - and our 'civilised' nature can be called into account by the likes of Pinkville or Abu Graibh, the British experience in Ireland, never mind genocide in Nazi Germany.

Does the playing of violent video games contribute to real life violence? There can be no objective evidence to prove the case. Do video games lead to a more violent society? Unlikely.

Our expectations that we can live in peace and tranquillity have certainly increased over the last century. Medicine has reduced the toll of disease, most of us in the West have access to tapped drinking water and plentiful food, we seem to assume that we can produce a more rational society in which other dangers are minimised although drug use has increased dramatically.

Violence and aggression have been crucial for human survival since the dawn of mankind. They are not going to be eradicated simply by the aspirations of liberal democracies to create a tolerant and just society, and we do not create a more violent world by playing games.

Learn more about this author, Budge Burgess.
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