A movie is fairly brief in duration compared to a videogame though ...

I don't know if you remember the release of Soldier of Fortune for the PC several years ago. Even though (by today's standards) the graphics were cheezy, the game allowed for fully "deformable" human bodies. 5 years from now, hardware will be powerful enough to offer very realistic damage to people's bodies. If you take this to the ultimate sadistic level, and give people "rewards" in multiplayer depending on how violent they are, a teenager could virtually perform more ultra-violent acts in 1 week then the most violent people in histroy have performed in their lifetime.

What kind of impact does this have?

Once again, I'm not saying violent videogames should be banned, but I think people are right for being concerned.

I would argue that the impact of movies and other media is far worse than videogames.  For example hate propaganda is spread mainly through videos and other media, not by videogames, simply because videogames don't have the same impact.  The vast majority of people can differentiate between reality and a videogame but when it comes to movies and other media that may not be the case.  The same for the news, disturbing videos (Iraq War, violent crime, etc) get people far more upset and angry than videogames (from what I have seen in forum postings, etc).

As for games it's hard to believe games like Grand Theft Auto for example fuel gang violence or auto theft as opposed to drugs, poverty, and peer pressure.  It's hard to believe someone is going to play Soldier of Fortune and because of that game they're going to go out and shoot people.  The real reasons are almost always due to something else (emotional breakup, bullying at school, social isolation, drugs, etc).  I think part of the problem is that banning videogames is a simple knee jerk reaction to trying to solve a complex problem rather than having to actually put the hard work and possibly a lot of money into the real reasons for a lot of the violence we're seeing.

None. It's been shown that while violent games may lead to a very short term increase in aggression, no long term effects have ever been proven to occur. Teenagers have no trouble distinguishing between real and fictional violence unless there's already something wrong with them. If they're already violent they'll obviously be drawn to more violent video games. This doesn't mean that the game caused it though.

Lets hope gaming becomes mainstream enough that ordinary people understand and defend it. Not just us who post all day long in forums.

Both result in the death of the industry as we know it. But I would argue that Clinton's stance is actually the more extreme of the two. At least Thompson wants it done on a case by case basis, Clinton just wants to make it untennable for retailers to sell M-rated games period.

I came in this thread and saw all these loose goats running around and was like "lol wtf"

And then I started reading the thread. Escaped goats eh?