I think this is something you'll see more and more.
Why?
Simple, gamers are growing up and getting jobs. Some of the reporters are gamers. You'll have news anchors who are gamers. Eventually we will have gaming congressmen, senators, and judges. However, we may be in trouble with the first gaming president.

[knock knock]
"We're with the Secret Service, the president suspects you of... 'haxxoring'. Please come with us..."

8-year old playing GTA: Parents fault.

Classic strawman argument. Someone should teach reporters logical fallacies 101. "8 year olds shouldn't be playing GTA." Gee, ya think? And should they be watching Hostel or Saw II? No? But those movies get made and are marketable to an adult audience aren't they, and sometimes kids get exposed to copies, yes? Should we ban R rated movies? No?

Another schmuck for the pile.

Wow gamers are really disabled people. We are desentisized or whatever he said. And there is something wrong with our brain. Our lobes are fried!

I'd be wondering just who gave a game rated for 17 year olds and up to an 8 year old kid.

I wanna know just who this reporter is, now. She seems well informed, at least when it comes to psychology and video games. And this arouses my curiosity and feels me with hope. I'm just so use to reporters, as GP said, parroting what they hear from the police.

When will they stop bashing GTA? I highly doubt that game has encouraged anyone to become a criminal that wasn't already on that path. And Doom? Come on. Why don't you join us in THIS decade?

Nintendo console in 1977?? What would that be exactly?

Well, that's a first. Usually it's both, the reporters and the ignoramus who are clueless in these sort of exchanges.

How can you possibly say on one hand: "a new study suggests that there is no desensitizing effect", implying that there is no link between playing violent video games and violent behaviour, and on the other hand, say that "But with all due respect, no one is saying that 8-year-olds should be playing GTA.".

If there truly is no ill effects to playing violent games, then why not let the kids play GTA? It won't have any effect on them!

After reading the article, were I in charge in that county I'd be FAR more concerned about the presence of MS-13 than I would about GTA IV.

I'm crazy like that, though.

@DrkMatter:

No bad effect != good effect. The time is better spent with something that has positive effects.

“You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who can in good faith come in here and say it’s a good thing for an 8-year-old to be picking up prostitutes, shooting guns and stealing cars like they do in (the popular video game) Grand Theft Auto.”

Yes. You would. So don't buy it for them for the CONTENT in the game. Not for the non-existant mental effects. Duh.

Well, on the law enforcement side, you still have david grossman (sorry I refuse to give the man the respect of capitalizing his name just like I do thompson) out on the police circuit spewing his bile without any real rebuttal. Our police chief here went to a "symposium" that grossman held a few months ago. While the officers that I work with regularly know the guy is full of it, the chief unfortunately did not. One good thing though is like another poster said earlier, there are a lot of officers that play games now and know he is just scare mongering. It's the older generation that is still listening to what he has to say.

As someone who lived in Naples (for over 9 years, moved when in 3rd grade, left for college... though returned on breaks to see my parents) I can say the cop is sensationalizing because they have nothing to do there.

I'm sure things have changed a bit since I lived there... but the place is full of rich retirees (celebrity status rich) and bored out of their mind kids. The city doesn't give kids an outlet... those not yet out of high school have the choice of hanging out at the mall or getting into trouble... Until 9PM when everything closes, except trouble. The population with kids is split into the impoverished (migrant workers) and the too well off (where parents don't parent their kids, they either ignore them or spoil them). I was in the rare middle ground...

Video games where the only safe outlet for me... the mall got boring (and overrun w/ bored cops telling kids to move along) and going out meant running into drugs, what were those rich kids to do with all that money and no parents around????

I'd never say there were "gangs" in Naples.. the place doesn't know what one is... Except maybe the manor (gov subsidized housing/projects?).. but that was more of just a bad area, then a gang. Though, it was home to my HS :-) Go Lely!.. the otherside of the school was a wealthy PGA golf course... like I said, city is split like that.

Anyway, back to the point (was there one?) it's a boring city.. where the only real crime is drugs (the vice of the really rich and really poor), and honestly it too is limited, and caused by the city's boring atmosphere... Video games and violence (and gangs?) are just things for the cops to turn to gain more money from the overly wealthy paying for them to do nothing.

I'm happy I'm not there anymore... But congrats to that reporter for doing some real research.

all societies problems stem from chuck berry's electric twanger.


no wait, it's obviously books that aren't the bible

no wait, it's christians.

no wait, it's those freakin' greeks... err... semarians.... err... ug-lug from the tribe two caves over.


it's the damn dinosaurs!

At this point, I just don't even care what these dickweeds say.

@Relax Guy:

I KNEW those brachiasaurs were up to no good!

-P

Personally I would have no problem letting my daughter play GTA. Why? Because it's a GAME! No real prostitutes get picked up, no real violence gets done. I mean it's about time that we stopped catering to these morons by saying things like "no one is saying that 8-year-olds should be playing GTA". I'm an adult, I'm the father and I live in a country where games are protected by the constitution, so I (not some politician or police officer) get to decide what my daughter can and cannot play.

Why does it always have to come to that? People act like video game creators go around in black vans handing out copies of GTA to small children. If an 8 year old is playing GTA one should be looking at the parents, not the developers.

@Ian Cooper: Certainly you get to decide what your kids can and can't play, but that won't stop other people from questioning the wisdom of your decisions. Personally I'd give an 8 year old a copy of Kingdom Hearts of Katamari Damacy, which are just as fun.

For the record, I'd let a kid play a game like Assassin's Creed, just for the historical benefits. (I don't have kids, but if I do, I'll use the LEGO rule, which I got from Kotaku.)

an 8 year old should not be playing GTA, I'd say around 13-15 is when most people are mature enough to handel it (although even then...)...

But just because an 8 year old shouldn't play it dosn't mean other people should have to be blocked out either.

Fuck it. First Amendment. If they get past that I'll care a little. Thing is, they won't, so it doesn't matter what they try. Still offensive, though.

Still don't see why video games are such an important factor to look at when only a small portion of the gamers turn out to be delinquents. Now, epilepsy is a serious problem which CAN be directly caused by videogames. And much like delinquents, epileptics only comprise a small portion of the gamer population. Yet epilepsy is largely ignored as an argument to limit childrens' access to videogames.

I thought it was clear that trying to predict a relatively rare activity (delinquency) by studying a much more common activity (gaming) will produce nebulous results.

You'd think the police could be bothered to find out who has been teaching all of these 8-year-olds to "pick up prostitutes, shoot guns and steal cars" in real life so they think of doing these things when playing a game that pretty much lets them choose exactly what they want to do.

@JustChris

Off-topic, actually, only a select type/sequence/vividness of flashing lights will bring on epileptic attacks (it can differ from person to person, and even something that didn't trigger an attack in the past can do so in the future), and even then only in epileptics sensitive to light triggers. It's more the movement or change than the light itself, so flickering, flashing, spinning, and other motions not as much cited by the media are even more likely to be culprits in triggering epilepsy. There are very good reasons sufferers with uncontrolled seizures aren't permitted to drive and, in fact, are stripped of driving priveleges until properly medicated or treated if they have most of the more-afflictive responses, like grand mal seizures.

@JustChris

Isn't there epilepsy warnings on the inside cover of most game manuals nowdays?

The problem with things like this is that public opinion can be affected very strongly even if the original statement is completely debunked. How many people went "Oh thats an outrage!" when they heard this statement? How many of those outraged people bothered to read any further, even if only to see the depths of depravity so that they can be outraged in a more informed way?

As my old saying goes, you can lead the ignorant to knowledge but you can't hammer intelligence into their brains because intelligence bends after a few hits and doesn't go in straight.

To be fair, some of the early consoles could have been confused with arcade machines on sheer size alone...

It is clear that the old of mind have never understood games. They're new technology whick is basically magic & therefore witchcraft.

Like they said in one of the scream movies; "Movies don't create maniacs, they make maniacs more creative." So basically, anyone who wasn't already bent should be fine doing as they please.

fuckkkkkkkkkkkkkk this site.sucks