Gamers play, blamers point a finger

Do violent video games really make some people snap and embark on violent crime sprees?

That was the debate on Nov. 6 between Miami-based lawyer Jack Thompson, a leading advocate for video game manufacturer accountability, and David Kushner, a journalist who has written for Spin Magazine, Wired, Reader's Digest, and The New York Times. He has also written the book Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture.

"I'm here to suggest that there is a problem with some children playing violent video games hours a day when they should be filling their days and their lives and their hearts and their heads with something else," Thompson said.

Thompson said that violent video games such as Doom and Grand Theft Auto III are nothing more than "killing simulators" that train kids to kill and desensitize them to killing in reality. He cited the school shootings in Paducah, Ky., and Columbine High School, and said there are "dozens" of other examples, as proof that Doom and other first-person shooter games inspire violence. He also talked about the Beltway-sniper shootings from last summer in which a man and a youth committed several sniper-style killings in and around Washington, D.C.

"Lee Malvo's (the youth charged in the sniper case) defense will be that Mohamed (the man charged in the case), along with training him with a real rifle, made Malvo play the game Halo on X-Box in order to commit these crimes," Thompson said. "There is no way that any reasonable person could suggest that shooting a gun against a giant alien bug in Halo would enable you to pick up a real gun and shoot a real person," Kushner said. "You've got to be out of your mind, and a game is not going to make you take that leap."

Thompson also said the Department of Defense pays video game programmers to create killing simulation games to do two things: Create scenarios and killing strategies for new recruits. More importantly, programmers want to break down recruits' inhibitions and make killing easier.

"Why should it then surprise that if our Army is creating these games for that purpose that they (the games) have the same effect on civilian teens?" Thompson said.

Thompson cited studies from Harvard, Yale, Indiana University, and others he said show the possible danger children face from playing violent video games. Children process the game in a different part of their brain than adults do, he said.

"I called Dr. Vincent Matthews (part of the Indiana University study) and asked him if a connection can be made between violent video games and real life violence," Kushner said. "He said, 'We can't make the conclusion that violent video games lead to aggression; it's too early to say.'"

Thompson concluded by saying if there were to be another school shooting, and Doom or a similar game could be linked to it, there would be a "human outcry in the political arena to ban these games for play by anyone." He said video game manufacturers run the risk of putting their industry in the crosshairs of government regulation and sinking the industry altogether.

"The fact is the verdict is still out on this issue," Kushner said. "Use some common sense - 145 million people play video games, 60 percent of the population, and less than probably 10 have gone out and shot somebody up."