by Caren Hannon

Created on: April 08, 2008   Last Updated: December 11, 2008

If I were to tell you that I've been playing Doom II since I was 7, severely beating up people through fighting games like Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter, using glorious weapons to slay down enemies and watch the gushing blood sprinkle out in too many games to count, and specifically gone on killing sprees just for fun in Halo 3, what would you think?

That I'm probably some violent psychopath with a lot of issues, and a neglected childhood.

Well you thought wrong.
I'm just a nice girl with many friends who has never gotten in a physical fight, and rarely -if ever- uses curse words in verbal fights.
Now does that sound like a person whose violent impulses were perversed by violent video games?

I'm not going to say it's impossible for a game to increase violence. It can but ONLY if the player doesn't have the ability to tell the difference between reality and real life. That's why the ESRB ratings are so important: while most people develop some sense of distinction when they are young (8-12ish), some will not fully develop this ability until their adolescent years. Are we really going to say that most violent gamers will have violent personalities just because some people aren't mature enough to use good judgment? It doesn't seem fair. After all if my 12 year old cousin wants to play a Mature game, and he's very mature and quite able to separate games from real life, I'm not going to stop him on the premise that "there's an extremely small-nearly-non-existent chance that he'll become more violent."

As far as studies show, video games do not make people more violent in real life. Yes, the person will have more violent urges while he or she is playing. (Hence why it's likely a person will yell at you if you're bothering them while playing). But once game time is over and the person has a 5 minute cooling off time, the behavior ceases. So unless you're playing video games while you're having a fight in the real world, I can't possibly see how they can affect you.

Those people who end up doing violent deeds after playing video games are people who aren't stable to begin with. So, maybe families of mentally troubled people should confiscate violent games. However for the rest of us (all 99% of gamers....) please, just leave us alone?

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