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In Aristotle's Poetics, the ancient Greek philosopher emits the theory that the viewing of certain drama pieces that confer the viewer strong emotions such as sorrow, fear, pity or hatred will deliver the viewer from these emotions and will ultimately render him more adept at facing these emotions when they resurface in common life. He calls this process "Catharsis" which in a literal translation means "purge". The ancient Greeks believed that by viewing dramatic theatre where strong emotions are lived the viewer finds himself purged of that same emotion.

Violence is part of video games, and thus gamers who are constantly exposed to this type of material, will also be exposed with violence. Some believe that when you see something repetitively, you are more likely to replicate it in real life. This notion is not without logic, and accordingly those same believers will think that violence in video games contribute to real life violence.

I, for one disagree, following the philosophy of Aristotle and Catharsis, we can come to the conclusion that the violence in video games will not lead to actual real life violence and will actually contribute to diminish it. A person keeps on killing zombies over and over, when he is confronted with the same situation in real life, except this time with a human, he might feel hatred, the fact that he has felt fear an acute number of times will permit him to "zone out" this hatred as something he has already experienced too much times before, thus it will have less influence on his decisions and he is then less likely prone to violence.

An example can be taken from eating spicy, when someone has spicy foods regularly in his diet he will eventually grow accustomed to the taste. His taste buds will be less impacted by a spicy food, compared to someone who never took spices in his life who takes the same spice will feel a much more penetrating sensation.

For violence in video games it is the same, the act of violence itself is not what will prone someone to violence, it is rather the emotion behind it. when someone is faced repeatedly with the same emotion, that emotion will have a "washed out" feeling and he will be less influenced by it.

Another thing we have to differentiate is the actual influence of video games and the people who play it. It might be that some who play these type of video games are mentally-imbalanced and are more prone to violence than others, in that case video games have nothing to do with the violence as the cause is mostly in the mental instability of the player. A "normal" person playing such a game will not be feel the urge to commit violence, he will rather get the "purging" feeling, and the realization of what violence really is.

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