[Iron Greasel]

Originally Posted by Cerek It does count, unless of course you look at all of my subsequent posts where my position changed to suggestions that manufacturers self-regulate and simply produce different games where the characters actions don't center around breaking established laws of society. But I did say "banned" at first, so let's not consider anything said after that.

You changed your position later? Sorry, the thread was too exhaustively long to re-read. I suppose Firestormalpha was right, then.

Originally Posted by Cerek This has been exhaustively addressed. Not all stores or merchants enforce the regulation system. Even if they do, there are ways around it. Since children will obviously get their hands on the games regardless of any regulations put in place, it makes sense that manufacturers should simply not produce these games to begin with. I realize that's a fantasy, but I can always hope corporations will someday develop a conscious.

But it sort of feels that you're singling out video games. Tobacco and alcohol are quite obviously harmful, more so than video games, and children have access to both. Yorick's studies mention that violence in video games has similar effects as violence in TV (I'm guessing movies, too). Eh, maybe I'm too defensive about this. Nothing wrong with self-regulation.

Originally Posted by Cerek Several studies show exposure to aggressive stimuli increases aggressive behavior and here is one example where that behavior was carried to the most tragic outcome possible. The child/young adult in this example was harmed by blurring the distinction between fantasy and reality.

I'm not sure if we should believe the taxi stealing person. He says he was influenced by the game, but that doesn't mean that the game made him do it. He might be trying to dodge blame. He might have been just looking for any excuse to do something violent.

Pekka-Eric Auvinen, the guy who shot all those people in that school in Finland a few months back, mentioned Plato and Nietzsche as influences in his murder-suicide note. There was a brief debate about whether they should be removed from school curriculum, but this was quickly waved aside as silly. Oh, and he played video games, too. The general consensus is that the kid was messed up to begin with.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that we shouldn't blame video games for murders just because the murderer says we should.