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Let’s face it this topic is one of the most controversial in recent years and it affects gamers to one extent or another. There are two sides to this topic.

One side (usually doctors and other scientists) feel that the violence portrayed in video games can psychologically affect the way a young developing mind perceives the world and can indefinably damage it permanently making the person believe that it’s alright to go “GTA style” and murder people Willy Nilly in the streets.
The second side, generally our side, the gamers side. For years we have been trying to express our side of the story and that we as gamers are not out there with our crowbars hunting fictional head crabs. But the powers that be, cannot be influenced by our strangled cries.

So lets look at how much violence is actually in games across the spectrum. From MA15+ (Or in American E – AO).
Let’s start off at the AO section. This typically contains games like Leisure Suit Larry. Games generally most of us don’t touch because they are plain idiotic. These games contain explicit scenes of pixilated characters having pixilated intercourse.
Now move slightly down the list to M. Almost every game that contains shooting and a high gore factor is placed here (even Conker the N64 hit was placed in this category).
Teen, this category usually contains a lower amount of gore yet still has violence. The games that usually reside here are not your Doom 3’s or Half life 2’s they are tamer games like Command and Conquer.
Finally E rating.
This rating should be void of all violence. This is the rating that should be associated with the wonders of nature and your fluffy poodle, Clarence. But this category still contains violence.
Why you may ask (if you’re from the first side) are six year olds playing violent video games?
The truth is that most of us have played games at that age and those of you out there who have had children have played games with your children or allow your children to play them. The reasons being video games are entirely fictional. Your 8 year old knows that Santa doesn’t exist and can distinguish fiction from reality. So we reason harmless.

The adolescents who get into trouble with the police know where to place the blame. The video game made me do it. Yet a child half the age is not performing these acts of depravity. It makes you wonder.

Looking at it from the doctors’ side there is a grey area, which is usual from 1 – 8 years (depending on how mentally mature your child is) in which the child has trouble distinguishing fiction from reality. Letting your three-year-old son or daughter play a first person shooter is not a good idea because these years of their lives are the ones that plant the seeds for their personality.




But most of these children who run into trouble with the law.
Have loving and caring parents who have set good ground morals for their children to grow up in a loving and caring environment. A good example of this is this comment on Penny Arcade http://www.penny-arcade.com/2007/02/21 entitled “A rare opportunity”. Even though the “step mother (or whatever)” and father were doing everything for this child he thought it would be a good idea to go and kill someone http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/02/19/homeless.attacks/index.html

So in conclusion it’s the child’s choice to do what he/she does. In life we all have the choice or multiple choices to do one thing or many things. It is essentially up to us what we make of ourselves and if we want to throw it away over some impulse however strong that’s our choice.