"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music."

I found this quote floating around on the internet and found it funny and of course, relevant. I'm not saying that video games don't affect kids at all, but in regards to teaching kids to be violent in real life, I think the effect is minimal.

In my (very humble) opinion, I think that violence in video games do not make the players commit violent acts in real life.
How do people imagine this comes about?
That one day someone who loves grand theft auto is walking down the street and suddenly he thinks "you know what will be a great idea?? If I steal a car! And beat up a prostitute! I think that'd be fun. It worked so well in the game!" ?
Surely they don't think this is the case!?
It is as if there is an assumption that game players can't differentiate between the real world and the game world.

and the argument that video games trains teenagers to be violent? That's even more absurd. Just because you're good at a first person shooter doesn't mean you know how to work a real gun! It doesn't really do an adequate job of teaching you either! In the same strain, does it mean that flight simulator is adequate training for people to fly planes? Aditionally, playing hours of street fighter doesn't train you to fight, it trains you to press forward, down, forward, L1, L2 really really quickly.
I wish street fighter taught me to fight.

I think the idea of 'violent play only leads to more violent play' is important and rings very true. While people are playing the game, they know it's a game and operate within the boundaries of that world. I thinbk that a lot of the time, people say "oh they like that game so much and play it so much that it seems real to them" seems like a gross overexaggeration.


Of course, I'm not saying that it's good for children to constnatly be exposed to violence but that video games are the lesser of many evils.

_