Can playing violent video games be addictive- and harmful? There is a continuous controversy on the harmful effect of violent video games. In this paper, I will address the pros (successes) and cons (failures/consequences) of this subject.

Violent video games have been the subject of argument between the video companies and the consumers (parents, teacher and government officials). Debates often focus on topics such as video game graphic violence, virtual sex, violent and gory scenes, partial or full nudity, protrayal of criminal behavior or other provocative and objectionable material. Video games have been studied for links between addiction and aggression and several studies found that video games do not contribute to these problems(1). Several groups have argued that there are few if any scientifically proven studies to back up these claims, and that the video game industry has become an easy target for the media to blame for many modern day problems (2).

Several researches have proposed potential positive effects of video games on aspects of social and cognitive development and psychological well-being (3). It has been shown that action video game players have better hand-eye coordination and visual-motor skills, such as their resistance to distraction, their sensitivity to information in the peripheral vision and their ability to count briefly presented objects, than non-players (4).

As video games have increased in popularity over the years, politicians around the country have tried to outlaw the sale of some violent games to children because it is strongly believed, especially by parents and educators, that there is a link between aggression and violent video games. To date, all efforts to block the sale of some violent games to children have failed. Some retailers do require the permission of the parent before some violent video games are sold to children.

Federal judges, citing the Constitution's protection of free speech, have rejected attempts by groups to regulate the sale of video games in eight cities and states since 2001 (Courts Block Laws on Vidoe Game Violence) (5). In Oklahoma, a judge has temporarily blocked a law pending a final decision. There are no laws upholding such laws. All attempts by politicians, including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, to appeal the ruling of judge's interpretation of the First Amendment, have failed. Ronald Collins, a scholar at the First Amendment Center in Washington, said: "It's more than a trend; it seems the cases are moving uniformly down the same track and that is that such laws are unconstitutional. Such uniformity in declaring a category of laws unconstitutional is very rare." (6)

Video games are a new medium, and while people are used to scary stuff in the movies, they aren't used to having scary stuff in interactive media, so there is political value in passing these laws even if they are ultimately rejected by the courts, said Paul M. Smith, Jenner and Block law firm (7). The United States Supreme Court has interpreted the Constitution as allowing states broad leeway in regulating minor's access to sexually explicit material, which is why it is illegal around the country to sell pornography to children. Courts have not, however, said that states have a similar right to regulate media based on violence for children. Most of the city and state video game laws, as mentioned above, that have been struck down in recent years have tried to ban the sale or rental of certain violent games to minor. In most of the cases, states and cities tried to apply the legal rules for pornography into the interpretation of regulating violent video games.

The opinion in the first major video game was written in 2001 by Judge Richard A. Posner of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. He wrote that exposure to imaginary violence – whether in "the Odyssey," "War and Peace" or Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3" – can play an important role in the development of a child's moral, social and political outlook (8).

Most politicians see regulating games not as a First Amendment matter but as a public health and safety issue, using the argument that we prohibit children from smoking; we regulate driver's licenses; we prohibit alcohol; we prohibit lots of things from children, and we think it's logical that kids should not be able to purchase violent video games. New York decided to take a different approach; under the bill passed in June 2010 by the Assembly, it would become a felony in New York to sell or rent to a child any game that includes both pornographic images and egregious violence (9).

After students Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris shot 20 people and killed 13 in their Colorado high school in 1999, the media reported that Harris and Klebold played a lot of violent video games, including Wolfenstein 3D, "Doom," and "Mortal Kombat." One of the widowers, whose husband was killed at Columbine, filed a lawsuit, naming multiple video game publishers, including Sony and Nintendo, in the suit as well as Time Warner and Palm Pictures because the shooters had also watched "The Basketball Diaries," in which a character uses a shotgun to kill students at his high school. With the amount of violence in the media, especially, video games, which are played an average of 4 to 5 hours a day by most teens, there is an ongoing debate of violence in the media (10).

According to the National Institute of Media and the Family, as of 2001, approximately 79 percent of America's youth play video games, many of them for at least eight hours a week (11). In addition to the obvious concern with the lack of physical activity, i.e. riding bikes or playing basketball, concerned citizens, parents and politicians are wondering how this type of exposure to violence as an adolescent affects social behavior. Some social scientists link the dramatic rise in violent shootings by teenagers, many of whom apparently played violent video games, which translates into real world situations. But other people are not convinced and insist that video games are a scapegoat for a shocking social trend that has people scared and looking to place blame.

Video games as we know them are only about 20 years old, so there is not a lot of research on this subject for or against their violent effect. So what exactly does science have to say about violent video games? Is there any evidence that shows a cause-effect relationship between shooting people in a game and shooting people in real life?

Studies on Video Game Violence

In 2006, an 18-year old named Devin Moore was arrested in Alabama on suspicion of car theft. The police officers brought him into the station and started booking him without any trouble. Minutes later Moore attacked one police officer, stole his gun, shot him and another officer and then fled down the hall and shot a 9-1-1 dispatcher in the head. He then grabbed a set of car keys on his way out the back door, got in a police car and drove away.

Moore had no criminal history. According to the lawsuit filed against video game companies after the incident, Moore had been playing a lot of "Grand Theft Auto" before the killings (12). One can easily see the possible connection between one playing a lot of the video game "Grand Auto Theft" and someone later stealing a car, but this would not explain the senseless shootings.

The basic claim in the video game controversy is that video games are even more likely to affect people's behavior than TV because they're immersive. People don't just watch video games as they do TV; they interact with them. The games are also repetitive and based on a rewards system. Repetition and rewards are primary components of classical conditioning, a proven psychological concept in which behavioral learning takes place as a result of rewarding (or punishing ) particular behaviors (13). Because the brains of children and teens are still developing, they would in theory be even more susceptible to this type of training (14).

In a 2001 study, Psychological Science analyzed 35 individual studies on video games violence. It found several common conclusions:

Children who play violent video games experience an increase in physiological signs of aggression. According to the authors, when young people are playing a violent video game, their blood pressure and heart rate increased. They experience the same hormones like adrenaline flood to the brain as in a real fight.

Children who play violent video games experience an increase in aggressive actions. (15)

One of the most recent studies conducted in 2006, scanned the brains of 44 kids immediately after they played video games. Half of the kids played "Need for Speed: Undergroup," an action racing game that doesn't have a violent component. The other played "Medal of Honor: Frontline," an action game that includes violent first person shooter activity. The brain scans of the kids who played the violent game showed increased activity in the amygdala, which stimulates emotions, and decreased activity in the prefrontal lobe, which regulates inhibition, self-control and concentration. These activity changes did not show up on the brain scans of the kids playing "Need for Speed." 16)

If so much evidence points to a relationship between virtual aggression and real world aggression, why are impressionable kids still playing "Medal of Honor" and why aren't our society (politicians) not doing anything to regulate the selling of violent video games to our youth, as it does for cigarettes, alcohol, and pornography?

As stated earlier, lawsuits against video game companies for distributing violent content have been thrown out. In the Columbine tragedy lawsuit, the judge found that neither Nintendo nor Sony could have anticipated the shocking actions of Harris and Klebold. The First Amendment fully protects the companies' right to distribute games, even with violent content.(17)

David Walsh, National Institute of Media and Family, disagrees, writing that in some noted analytical studies, children who were determined to be inherently non-hostile actually showed a greater increase in real-world aggression than their hostile counterparts. Other arguments against cause-effect relationship between game violence and real-life violence focus on much wider trends than the occasional horrific school shootings. Some experts point to the fact that while violent video games sales are on the increase, violent crime rates in the United States are going down. (18)

This debate is far from over. Concern over the potential anti-social effects of violent games is not affecting sales or at least not in the direction activists might hope. The Associated Press reported in March 2009 that video games sales (hardware and software) reached 1.33 billion, for the month of February (19) .

CONCLUSION

According to recent conducted survey on crime and violence in America, violent crime is down. In recent months (October to December), there have been several horrific crimes involving the murder of children and women by their parents and spouses/boyfriends respectfully. In each of these cases there was no attempt to link these murders to playing violent video games. As an avid gamer, who has played most of the games mentioned in this paper, there has not been any noticeable change in my level of aggression or desire to commit any violent acts. If you asked my mom, she was say that I am still my "little lovely self."

Medal of Honor is back and looks better then ever. EA is bringing the franchise to modern day Afghan. With an all new single player this game is definitely going to be bashing skulls with CoD: Black Ops. The multiplayer is being designed by Dice and it looks like it is going to surpass Battlefield Bad Company 2′s even though its using the same game engine (Frostbit 2.0).

It is all most the end on 2010 and no year can end with out at least one video game controversy. Last year Activsion took a beat down with the "No Russian". This year EA is sending Medal of Honor to the batting plate. All I can say is play ball.

During the finally days of summer the Medal of Honor beta for the PS3 and PC arrived. The multiplayer features to faction: the Tier 1 Ops (main characters of the game) and the infamous Taliban. I bet you can guess what the controversy is. The game will randomly put you on one to the two teams. Each team is give a set of weapons to choose for depending on their faction.

I first heard about this from Destruction.com. Hamza Aziz wrote wrote an article about the game letting you play as "Al Qaeda" and the game personally affected him because his family was from Afghan. It was later released that it was the Taliban that you could play as not Al Qaeda. My reaction to the playable Taliban in Medal of Honor was "Oh great. Fox News is going to have a field day with this." And of course I was right. In early August Fox News brought a mother who's son died in the war. Karen Meredith said "War is not a game, period". Uh, duh. I think even Sarah Palin could figure that out. Karen went on "The fact that they've already done games about World War 2 … that's far removed from our current history, people aren't dying in World War 2 any more." Looks like someone has a little case of Double Stander Fever.

The game later was under fire from the UK Defense Secretary. Liam Fox made the uneducated statement "It's hard to believe any citizen of our country would wish to buy such a thoroughly un-British game" Un-British . Really. Ever heard of Modern Warfare . He continued to say "to show their support for our armed forces and ban this tasteless product." Isn't banning the game kind of extreme. Canada tried taking a whack at it. "Canadian forces, our allies, aid workers and innocent Afghans are being shot at and sometimes killed by the Taliban. This is reality. I find it wrong to have anyone, children in particular, playing the role of the Taliban," said Peter MacKay. And on Sep 1 New Zealand entered the "debate" as well. "Terrorist acts have caused the deaths of several New Zealanders" said New Zealand's Minister of Research, Science and Technology "his game undermines the values of our nation, and the dedicated service of our men and women in uniform.Hundreds of New Zealand servicemen and women have put their lives on the line in Afghanistan to combat terrorism, and this month Lieutenant Tim O'Donnell died in action over there." Now the game is anti New Zealand. Wow.

Reading all of this I have realized that not one of these politicians or the "gold star mom" has even read the Medal of Honor blog let only be to the website. I've also noticed the when it come to video game people are able to make statements about the subject with ever even playing Pac Man.

I'm I the only one that remembers the game.. um. I think it was called Call of Duty: 4 Modern Warfare. Yes that was the name. It feature the Tali.. oh sorry. The group that looked like the Taliban, sounded like the Taliban, and were in the same region but weren't the Taliban. I think they were called OpFor.

The truth is that multiplayer has no storyline. It no different then Team Red vs Team Blue. Hamza is really the only one the really did his research. All the others are just making up lies for some idiotic reason. Fox needs to play Call of Duty 4 before he starts calling something un-British. I believ I remember that you could play as the SAS.

Also I think we should be going after Al Qaeda. Don't they have Osama Bin Laden. Didn't they do the 9/11 attack. The Taliban is really a secondary objective. It seems to me that today people can't keep their eyes on the prize. The Taliban aren't fight with Al Qaeda, I think.

Also both EA and Activsion do a lot of research when doing the game. They call in Military Advisers like Hank Keirsey and people who have actual been in the war such as the Tier 1 Ops.So there is no way their games are "disrespectful". Both Hank and myself it that if you what to win this war you have to get into your enemies' state of mind. And if you what the truth about the war you have to look at it from both your point of view and you enemies. As for me, I'm getting ready for Halo Reach.

Inception is the newest movie by Christopher Nolan. Unless if you've been living in a bunker for last few weeks, Inception is loved by all famous critics.

When you first see the trailer you really have a hard time figure out what its about. All I could tell was that it had something to do with dreams. Yes, Inception was definitely something odd at first. But Christopher Nolan definitely delivered.

Inception take place in modern day. The main character, Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), is washed up on a beach. He is taken by to guards. Dom meets an old man. The old man is the owner of the island. In front of the old man are two items: a gun, and Dom's totem. The old man talks about how he has seen one of these before. (He's talking about the totem.) He then asks if Dom has come to kill him. The scene changes to Dom and his sidekick, Arthur. hey are making a deal with a business man named Saito. aito asks Dom to help him take out a competing business. Dom is a master of extracting. Extracting is the art of going into people dreams and stealing information in their heads. Oh I get it now. Now Dom must create a "dream" team to change the mind of Robert Fischer.

The main characters are:

Dom Cobb aka The Extractor.
Mal aka The Shade.
Eames aka The Forger

Ariadne aka The Architect

Robert Fischer aka The Mark

Arthur aka The Point Man

Saito aka The Tourist

Yusuf aka The Chemist

The begin of the movie was confusing . But it gradually started to make sense. Overall it I must say its one of the best movies I've seen. My favorite scene was the snow/zero gravity. It at the end of the movie but you know what they say "save the best for last". The scene had a nice shootout, explosions, and zero gravity fighting. The zero gravity was the best. The movie was complex. Chris said that he had been thinking about the movie for 10 years. It was long which was good because it keep me away from my girlfriend for 4 1/2 hours. The the movie was only 3. She realized that no movie lasts for 4 1/2 hours. I'm giving Inception a 5/5.

See the Halo series is "the **** But I thought that this movie could have had better stories in it. Homecoming: Because this is the first story of Halo Legends the begin of it should grasp your mind. We call this a hook. But the hook in the story just wasn't good enough. It started with a group of marines fighting Covenant troops. And then a Spartan come a kill theme all with a shotgun and an assault rifle. WTF. I never seen this "Red Spartan" in any Halo games before. Well, was she in a book? No. Then who the hell is she? Then there are these clips of there origins. And there as a clone on all the kidnapped recruits. At the moment I became confused. The "Red Spartan" and the remaining marines are trying to make it to the pickup point to get picked. On their way they run into a group of Covenant. A grunt fires a needle at the marine but Daisy aka The Red Spartan pushes him out of the way a gets hit instead. The impact wasn't even like the game because the on single needle blew a chunk of her armor off. The two other marines make it to the ship but refuse to leave Daisy behind. The stupidity caused them to get blown up with the ship and Daisy dies as well. Damn. The writer got me confused because there was a girl in a bed in a hospital who died. And her parents were crying over her bed. I couldn't tell if the was Daisy of her clone. **** It followed up with Spartan 117 aka Master Chief checked to see if she was dead. Daisy had a key chain that broke off her armor. Spartan 117 closed Daisy's eyes, put her arms over her heart and placed her key chain on her hands. How noble. Then there was Daisy riding in a UNSC truck with her best friend. WTF.

The other day I was reading an article about the best game for the PC. I noticed that Crysis was on that list and I had also seen the game on other lists. My natural instinct caused me to check the review of the game on GameSpot. They gave the game a 9.5 for the following reasons; Dynamic, emergent shooter gameplay Unparalleled visuals with destructible environments High level of replayability Power struggle makes for huge multiplayer battles An amazing accomplishment overall. After reading the review and 30 minutes of thinking I decided to download the game from Steam. The next morning I checked my started up me game. The menu of the game was great because it fitted the "Sci-Fi" theme very well. But when I started the game voicing was f***ed up. I deiced to ignore that for now. In the begin of Crysis you jump of an airplane at down it to an island. But for some reason when I was jumping out of the plane the video keep freezing and stopping. Then all of a sudden the video continued on at regular speed. This problem continued on for the rest of my playing of the game causing my to die over and over because it was hard for me to access me invisibility cloak. I gave up on the game, but then I remembered that I had the same problem with Dragon Age: Origins and Left 4 Dead 2. This lead me to believe that there wasn't a problem with the game but a problem with my Laptop. When I "Goggled" my problem I clicked on the yahoo.answers link. The reason was that there was most likely a problem with my graphic card. But I had a 2009 Asus Gaming Laptop. Let me repeat. 2009 Gaming. WTF. Apparently my current Ge Force 9800m Gs 912 MB was out of date and I had to get a new graphic card. What the hell. That what they said the last time. God Dammit ! They killed Kenny. You bastards. Note that Kenny is the name of my laptop.