Following on from my article on game censorship we have some common sense at last.
It is good to see that the review panel at Virginia Tech have concluded (obviously) that video games were not a factor in the tragedy there. Contrary to what the idiots in the popular press were saying at the time. Don’t expect them to apologise any time soon for misleading the public so badly.
All the masses of research on gaming shows that gamers have superior social skills. This mass murderer was obviously a sociopath and playing games would probably have made him less likely to do what he did. Try telling the Daily Mail that.
So do you think video games lead people to commit great crimes? Or do you think the opposite, that they can be a catharsis and a socialising force? Use the comments button to let us know.
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According to a family member the shooter had autism. Even if he didn’t have this serious disorder– one that can cause severe impairment to communication skills and social interactions–he was socially poorly adjusted (to put it lightly). And he was mentally ill.
Autistic behavior does not make one violent, but without professional help and family support (neither of which he seemed to be getting) it doesn’t take a psychologist to imagine the level of frustration and anger an autistic person might feel as they try to navigate a socially complex world that continually baffles and rejects them. Think of what your school/college experience would be like if you weren’t able to process emotional information from the people around you. Hell, just ask an engineering student–preferably a computer science major 🙂
Now, does this antecedent, when mixed with violent video game playing, produce a more dangerous individual? As a gamer, I don’t want to believe it. But perhaps some games shouldn’t be played by a certain subset of individuals.
Well, Cho of course was never much of a gamer. But even if he was, it was his access to firearms that allowed him to kill so many people. How violent video games catch more heat than lax gun laws is just beyond me…
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Thanks Pony,
What gets me is that the press never look at what violent books these people have read or what violent films they have watched. In both these media violence is seen as art yet both of them are anti social media.
But everytime there is an atrocity the popular press blame it on video games despite gaming being the most social media and proven to be so in much research. The press just don’t know what they are writing about so what they report is complete rubbish.
So in this case an independent review panel looked at all the facts and said that it definitely was not games. The press should be forced to report this with the same prominence that they reported their original lies.
As to access to guns, the gun lobby are saying that if there had been more guns around he would have been stopped sooner!