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pokoko on 19 February 2013
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timmah said:
pokoko said:
happydolphin said:
Why is it retarded to see if there isn't a link between the games he played and the events that played out?

1,2,3 go

Because it's actually meaningless unless those games are the cause of his insanity, and I'm pretty sure they are not.  What if it turned out that he was performing a scene from the bible?  What if it was a scene from a novel?  What would that mean, exactly?  What would the reactions be then?  Are they checking for those scenarios as well?  Is there a reason why they're checking for a video game link beyond complete speculation?  How are they going to be able to separate it from the influence of films, which have far, far more material to draw from?

Really, for me, this whole situation is simple:  don't let people with serious mental problems have access to violent media and, more importantly, don't give them access to guns.

It's not meaningless at all. If somebody has a predisposition to violent behavior, then violent media of any kind can certainly exacerbate the problem by feeding the violent mindset with fantasy, which then becomes 'reality' for the disturbed individual. You also need to understand the difference between a movie (where you just watch the violence) and a game (where you actually cause the violence to happen on screen), this is a huge difference to the mind of an individual who has difficulty distinguishing fantasy from reality. This type of media has a substantially different effect on a disturbed mind than it does on your mind.

Even if it is not the cause of the problem in this case, it could be one of the pieces of the puzzle. The reason they're looking specifically at the violent games is, he had a whole lot of them. If he had a massive library of violent movies and few or no games, I'm assuming they would be looking for a link to the movies.

There is no case to be made for banning violent games, but more research and awareness might lead parents of similar children to keep them away from such media, be it games, movies, books, whatever.

I'm going to need some research links for that, please, as I believe the exact opposite.  Sounds a lot like the Dungeons & Dragons bunk from a few decades ago.  Watching fake people die in videogames has never, ever affected me in near the same way as watching real human beings realisitcally depict death in films.  Not even close.  I think violent films are far more potentially damaging to children--not that they should necessarily have access to either, of course.