Thailand halts 'Grand Theft Auto' sales after murder

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It's not a fact...

That violent video games and imagery model behavior in people. They may desensitize people to violence, but in no way model behavior. I've grown up playing every violent video game since the days of NES and watching rated R movies since I was 10 years old, but I don't have the slightest desire to go out and kill people. Maybe because my mother raised me to know what's right and wrong and that there are consequences to my actions that I am responsible for. Why is it just in the last few years people are saying they're committing crimes because of a video game when violent games have been around for decades? It's because now people know if they go out and kill someone they can say they were influenced by GTA and the blame gets shifted. No one ever stops to think about what happens in that game series when you kill someone. The cops come after you. The only point that really needs to be made is this:

IT'S A VIDEO GAME AND IT'S NOT REAL LIFE.

You get no continues if you die.
You can't get out of jail the next day.
There is save/load or checkpoint that you can restart from if you screw up.
This is the real world with real consequences.

If you don't know the difference between a video game and real life then you need to be institutionalized because you are, for a lack of better words, f*ing nuts.

If anything I'd say playing the violent video games growing up and being desensitized to violence has worked in my favor. I was in the military and got deployed to Iraq. I didn't come back crazy like a lot of people and I saw people get blown up not twenty feet away from me. I was not affected by the violence that took place there which made it easier for me to carry out my duty. I don't have nightmares about any of it either. Oh yeah...and I had plenty of opportunities to go off and just start killing people without consequence, but guess what, I didn't. Just because I enjoy sniping people in GTA and making their heads blow up does not mean I would do it for no reason in real life even if I had permission to do so.

I've also written a few research papers for college on violence in video games and the effect if has on kids. For each paper I found quite a few studies that prove it does NOT incite violent tendencies. In fact, in most cases it lowered aggression levels in troubled kids. Take it out in the game and not in real life. I even find it to be quite satisfying AND I won't go to jail for playing a game.

Posted by: SpiderTech   Posted on: 08/06/08 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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