Violence is caused by the stupidest of the human population reproducing at a rapid rate and not raising their children properly. Violent behavior is not caused by violent video games. They are two coincidentally related things caused by a greater negative source.

the need for money, food, provisioning etc etc etc cause violence also

the real issue is that violence and conflict are a natural part of existence and the refusal to acknowledge this fact is being used for censorship

edit: but yes i'd agree that watching violent scenes or experiencing them in some other way may influence you to perpetuate violence yourself

http://www.jackthompson.org/

Gross.  Dude's been disbarred, fuck Jack Thompson.

And 100% of people who eat carrots die. Correlation does not equal causation.

Anyway there are 2 possible ways for video games to be the cause of violence: 1 violent content which leads to violent behaviour; 2 intense activity causing increased adrenaline and potentially also frustration and anger because of game difficulty (the stereotypical throwing the controller at the TV in frustration).

Scenario 1 cannot be causally linked to violent behaviour unless a predilection to violence already exists and the person is somewhat already psyched up to commit violence. Thus the violent game is used as further motivation to do what was always intended. The fact that they chose video games as a psych up tool is not really relevant because people can use all sorts of mechanisms to provide that boost of courage to get them to carry through on their intentions.

Scenario 2 is more likely to lead to violence as a direct result of playing because there is no intent on violence when starting to play but events lead to an emotional state where anbexplosion of violence occurs. In this connection the presence of violence in the game is irrelevant. Any game that is hard enough can create the emotional conditions that lead to an explosion of rag,  or an explosion of tears. And it need not necessarily be the difficulty of the game. With online MP games it could be lag that causes you to mistime your action and thus lose ground at a pivotal moment.P, if this happens repeatedly over a short time then the frustration levels build up and any little thing can cause a burst of rage. I've seen it happen with my own kids, who are the essence of non-violence. They would never dare try to hurt anyone, but objects have taken the occasional beating, and only my intervention has prevented mouses and keyboards from taking irreparable damage. But is that any different to John mcenroe's outbursts when tennis line calls didn't go his way? No it isn't. So video games are not unique in causing those emotional states to build up.

There's way more than 2 possibilities how can videogames cause violence. I can think of at least 5.

1) Being a catalyst for pre-existing aggresive thoughts.
2) Serving as a trigger for aggressive thoughts that might not ever surface otherwise
3) Reinforcing the notion that violence is a good way of resolving conflict in children
4) Desentisizing to violence
5) Inspiring violent acts by glorifying and glamorizing violence and otherwise portraying it as "cool" or desirable

Note that your "possibility #2" isn't even included in this list, as I don't believe there is scientific support of a connection between short-term emotional states and long-term violent tendencies. You are right that this is asinine.

If any of these factors increase violence in a population by a statistically significant degree, it can be concluded that videogames cause violence.

Yeeeah.. I thought that too. Before I started working on this thesis... then I found out that about 90% of all studies on this do find a causal link. Of course the methodological soundness of these studies (especially the older ones) can be disputed, but saying "every time researchers come to the conclusion that video games don't cause violence" is plainly false.

To be fair they don't actually find a link between media violence and actual violence. They measure temporary increases in agression most often and that does not always equate to real life violence. When it comes to actual violence studies often show that video games have had a positive effect as people are less likely to act violently in the real world.

Are people who play violent video games more likely to do commit violent acts then those who play other video games, probably. But that would more likely indicate a correletory link rather than causal.

Japan, (used to be) land of the videogames. Safest country is the world. I'd say there's close to zero relation.

Number 1 and 2 are the same thing are they not? catalyst = trigger and pre-existing aggresive thoughts = aggressive thoughts that might not ever surface otherwise

Number 3 may apply to very young Children should not be playing realistic violent video games and this is only an issue in the case of bad parenting

Number 4 does not appear to play out in real life as far as I have seen as the studies don't focus on real act's of violence. They would have to randomly pick people for a study, get them to play violent video games and see who commit's a violent crime and analize how they react in comparisson to people who don't play violent video games, which is very hard to do as people who commit violent act's may try and scapegoat video games as has happened before.

Number 5 would require people to be mentaly deranged for this to cause anyone to commit violent acts. Mentaly unwell people are not reliable as they can react unpredictably to even benign stimuli.