Violence in Games
Violence in games has been a widespread controversy as the media has used this to blame games for violent crimes throughout the years; it has always been the norm to blame games such as Grand Theft Auto (GTA) for violent acts in different countries, as a result of this these games have been banned in those countries. This has always been a sensitive argument with gaming companies as they believe that games are not the blame for this but in fact they believe games can be therapeutic for people with problems.
In a magazine a couple of years ago I read that a drug addict was trying to get off drugs and found this very hard mainly because of the boredom of sitting at home watching TV and constantly feeling the need to get up and find some drugs, the drug addict began playing GTA on the Xbox 360, thus being a violent game of drug use and other violent acts, the addict began using all his time in the day playing this game, he said that it helped him take his mind off doing drugs thus games being very therapeutic to him. Therefore games can be helpful to a person. It seems that when blame has to be shifted to someone it always seems to be an easy target by blaming the gaming industry. In fact scientist began taking an interest in this and began doing tests to see was there any clear links to games being the cause of this, they said "Psychological studies purporting to show a connection between exposure to violent video games and harmful effects on children do not prove that such exposure causes minors to act aggressively."
Famous acts of violence around the world have put a bad name on violence from reports like that shooter Lee Boyd Malvo played the game Halo before his sniper attacks around Washington, D.C., and that Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold loved Doom. In conclusion though Better research is needed to understand whether some kids are more vulnerable to video-game violence, and how exposure interacts with other risk factors for aggression like poverty, psychological disorders, and a history of abuse. These factors are very important to the gaming industry as they need to be examined to see is there any links at all. It seems that people with psychological problems are the ones that use games as a somewhat training program to help them carry out the act of violence. All in all games will always be a target for blame no matter what.