Video Games make you violent....

So I just saw that article gamespot had from a week or so ago about some professor that says that video games that are violent, such as GTA5, actually make people more prone to being violent in real life.

I find this complete bullshit! I started playing violent games at the age of 6 to 7, Doom, Heretic, Rise of the Triad, Blake Stone, BLOOD, any tons of others as time progressed. I've never had the urge to kill someone, or hurt someone without consciously thinking about it. I have a pretty dark personality sure, but id never just burst into a violent outrage, hurting or killing someone. The main flaw I saw in this professor's study is that most people are susceptible to things. Have you ever heard of a percentage of people being susceptible to hypnotism? Well the same thing applies for only a certain percentage of people being susceptible to violent actions from violent video games. He is acting like everyone reacts this way from violent video games, the people that do have violent behavior are most likely troubled in some way to begin with, but the argument stands...Would it be better for these people to play a game and kill people senselessly in the game or go out to their local mall and start a killing spree?

I believe Video Games are an outlet to channel, anger, frustration, depression, and violent behavior, etc. I bet that if video games were never created, there would have been alot more violence in the world. This professor obviously is blaming video games for something that went wrong, just because you dont like video games, dont ruin it for those of us who do.

Thoughts? Agree? Disagree?

for some reason comments aren't showing up in articles,or videos, etc. anyone else have this problem?

People who say video games make you violent needs to listen to Pen Jillette.

OP, society needs something to point their finger at and blame for it's problems. Quit trying to argue in favor of us having personal responsibility, jerk.

Video games don't make people violent, we're already violent by nature. If anything video games are a god send since we actually can act out our anger (if we have any) in a video game and not on someone else.

Haha kinda related:

was playing some Left 4 Dead 2 with my sister earlier. we were playing with one of our friends and a random person. other person isnt too great, but hes not too bad either. just makes lots of dumb mistakes. finally i get tired of it, put up the vote to kick. gets denied, even by my sister.

then this dudes decides to try and kick all of us. when that fails, he sends me a message calling me a "Homo lover" basically with some other obscenities and such. so we decide to just get rid of him. we kick him.

Then he decides to stalk us(my sister decided to egg him on like a dumbass) and spam my inbox with "****" and such. after about 15 or so messages, i just finally blocked him. he kept following us, until we switched to Scavenge. he joined but was on the other team. after a couple failed attempts to grab us, he missed my sister, and i dodged him while he was a Charger twice before killing him, he finally left for good.

all that shit started with an attempt to kick him. the vote didnt even go through. some people have problems.

A lot of non-gamer adults/parents think games are linear like an arcade game with a score and an simple objective. When they see a game like GTA very briefly with me hitting people, they may think I am scoring by acting violently in the game when really I'm just messing around.

When they see the art of the story and the effort put into a game that creates an emotional impact and memorable experience like you do with movies and books, they begin to see a whole new painting. It's something us gamers that need to shed a light on.

I'm not saying that I think video games make people violent, but I don't really agree with the logic of them helping matters by being a form of emotional release. That argument sort of seems to ignore habit. Do something often enough, and it becomes second nature. Lots of professionals (or hell, people in all sorts of other situations) often have to restrain their impulses or act in a particular way. That kind of repetition makes that the "normal" way to behave. This is why you don't see repressed Amish guys frequently going apeshit on a dude. If you're wondering who is more likely to kick your ass, it's probably gonna be someone who more frequently engages in violent behavior.

Or how about this...you're chilling with a few friends when everyone suddenly gets some bad anger-inducing news. Who is more likely to be dangerous? The guys who get angry but have the discipline to not act out on it, or the guy who starts cursing and screaming and breaking plates? The fact that he has the need to physically act out AT ALL tells me that I should probably keep an eye out for him. You might carry around a stress ball that you can squeeze when you get angry. But regardless of how well it works, there's a big freaking problemn if you need it at all. What do you do the next time you get pissed off, and you don't have your stress ball with you?

And that's kind of scary. A couple of months ago, an argument here revolved around piracy, and some dude argued that access to entertainment media (if if acquired illegally) is a necessity, since it is important for his emotional and mental well-being. And like...there's no argument that pop art can't provide positive stimulation. But by invoking that argument it's saying that they can't get such stimulation from anywhere else. And that's just sad. Same thing here. I'm not arguing that games CAN'T provide an emotional release so that the player doesn't just up and stab a dude. I'm saying that anyone who feels that this justifies games this way has a big freaking problem. I love violent games too, but I don't need them to take out my frustrations. I've never killed or hurt a dude because of games, but I never killed or hurt a dude because I DIDN'T have games either.

Running out of toilet paper makes me angry but it's not going to stop me using it.