Videogame Violence

Do videogames make violent children, well the answer is no. Throughout history children have done violent things and recently people have blamed those violent things on videogames. Videogames have been said to cause violent behavior in children, I will prove that they don't. There are many different things to talk about but there are three big ones, school shootings, bad or false research, and the actual risks of playing violent videogames.

There have been many school shootings in the past few years and they seem to be more and more recent. Columbine, the DC sniper, and Virginia tech shootings were all blamed, by the media, on videogames. None of it is true though, videogames had nothing to do with any of the shootings. The FBI said it was not videogames that caused the shootings at columbine" An FBI investigation concluded that Klebold was significantly depressed and suicidal, and Harris was a sociopath." The DC sniper used paper plate painted like heads to practice, not the game Halo like the news papers said. Also the FBI found that the Virginia tech shooter played no videogames at all. So the shootings have been wrongly blamed on videogames.

There have been many studies showing that videogames cause violence in children and these studies are just not true. The news agencies and government spokes people use these false and irrational studies to change people's minds about videogames. In one major study college students were asked to participate in the study were " They play a violent or nonviolent game for 15-20 minutes and then blow an air-horn or give a small electric shock to somebody in another room" . This is crazy and doesn't make sense, but this is used by many people as the basis of their argument that videogames are bad. An air-horn is a very bad measure of real world violence.

Many people have said it is more of a risk to play videogames than it is to not. This is the result of bad studies. There was a $1.5 million study that found that "boys and girls who play 15 hours of exclusively violent videogames were more prone to be in trouble at school, but boys are also more violent when they don't play any videogames at all". Higher risk doesn't mean they are going to get into trouble, I play a huge amount of M rated videogames and I haven't been in any sort of trouble since the 5th grade.

There was one story that I reacantly saw on a news website. I boy around 17 years old was addicted to halo. One day his parents took the game away from him, the boy later shot both his parents because of it. His mom died but his dad live. Now a story like this would be used a lot to say that videogames caused this violence, but he didn't shoot them because of halo. He shot them because of the addiction. He would have shot them no matter what game it was. It could have been an addiction to super Mario, because it wasn't the game it was the addiction that caused this violence.

So videogames don't cause violent behavior in children. The shootings were not caused by game violence, and the studies that say they do cause child violence don't make any sense. Although playing videogames can cause a higher risk of violence there is an even higher risk when they don't play any video games at all. So the media should stop blaming every violent act on videogames and parents should let their kids play videogame but just keep a watchful eye on the amount of playing time and violence.

now i am a bit of an achievment whore( someone who really wants achievments) but my friend is taking it to far. he buys games that have easy achievments so that he can get them. he plays game not to have fun now but so he can get the achievments. but now he has hit an all time low, i just found out that he is paying people with live cards and microsoft pionts so they can get him achievments. he payed a guy to get him all the achievments in gears of war 2. this is becoming a problem. people need to calm down about achievments. don't become that type of guy.

For a while now i have watched xplay. its a good show but now ive started to see some major flaws in the show. many reviews on the show are way of and they don't really tell why they have given a game a score. they overlook huge factors in a game and are extreenly bias towards some games. left for dead is one example. xplay loves that game gave it 5 out of 5 and don't tell why. ive played left for dead and its not a 5 out of 5. the game has a few guns a few levels and if you don't go online or do co-op it isn't fun. they also gave fable 2 game of the year. now i really like fable 2, its a great game, but it is not game of the year. xplay used to be my main scorce of reviews but now ive just stopped listning to them. they eather need to change some things or really explaine the reviewing procces to the fans, and not some crap answer like theyve done before.