But I can already feel the culture of video violence luring him back.
Nathan Grayson has a very thoughtful piece on video game violence over at Rock Paper Shotgun suggesting that the trick for both gamers and game-makers is to be more aware of the violence we encounter (or create) in video games.
The current study finds no evidence to support a long-term relationship between video game violence use and subsequent aggression.
We spent many days debating the differences between video game violence and gun violence, but today the issue takes new relevance.
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In every group, children who were exposed to more video game violence did become more aggressive over time than their peers who had less exposure.
For many years, I have taken the side of believing that those who criticize violence in video games or gratuitous violence in motion pictures and television were overstating the impact of these entertainment forms when it comes to the carrying out of violence in real life.
As a result, from a game design standpoint, the general consensus among the video gaming community is that it is acceptable to include violence, even very graphic violence, in a video game for no other reason than making the game more exciting.
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Both Spec Ops: The Line and Far Cry 3 are attempts at portraying violence in video games as bad.
Critics denounce video games for promoting violence and destruction, despite the lack of solid evidence to support such claims.
Even though the debate over violent video games and youth violence will continue, it must do so with restraint.
Whether shoot-'em-up video games can incite violence has been a long-running debate among the public as well as in clinical psychology.
Of course, violence in video games can be about more than puzzle-solving, tapping into something more primal and aggressive inside us.
The second way to think about violence in video games (as I noted in my previous post) is as a story element.
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But to say the relationship between real-world violence and video games is as solid as the one between lung cancer and smoking is drastically misleading.
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Violence in video games is often just a form of puzzle-solving.
Generally, violence in video games is used in a simplistic fashion to trigger an adrenaline rush on the part of the player, but ethically sexual violence is excluded from this category.
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Despite findings in recent research studies that conclusively refute the causal link between violence in video games and aggression in children, the speculation about such a causal link continues in the political sphere.
Perhaps they brought with them some data showing that the link between video games and real world violence is one that has yet to be proven exists.
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There is no mention of violence in the video.
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So could seeing violence in a video game be a positive developmental opportunity for children, in that they are free to play out any aggression, taking part of something that they realize is a fantasy world and not reality?
And as long as video games continue to utilize violence primarily as a game play element rather than a narrative one, there is no room to deal with acts and implications of sexual violence in a mature, narrative fashion.
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Critics are questioning the timing of the game's release Monday -- a month to the day after the December 14 shootings -- and accusing the NRA of hypocrisy because one of its leaders recently blamed video games for stoking gun violence.
Last week Mr Biden met with video game makers to discuss gun violence in popular media.
At the time, it was in reaction to a backlash against the violence and things in video games.
The reaction to this implication was significant, as most video gamers do not see sexual violence as a valid gameplay element.
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This is why I appreciated Spec Ops: The Line so much - not because I fully agree that we, the player, are complicit in the acts of violence we commit within video games.
We should demand more from our video games, even if the violence therein is often little more than a frenetic sort of puzzle-solving, and we should demand more from those who make our games in the first place, as well as from gamers whose often overly knee-jerk reaction to this sort of thing only helps to make level-headed conversation impossible.
Many studies have linked violence in TV shows and video games to violent behavior.
The front lines in the ongoing debate on whether violence in media such as video games and movies causes aggression in children seem intractably drawn.
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