California Town Driven Mad by GTA IV

Corey: The kid probably reached his adolescent stage and started acting out like most kids that age do.

Exactly my first thought reading the excerpt.

"Little billy never used to be aggressive unil he began growing 3 centimetres a day, getting facial hair & going through drastic hormonal changes that radically alter behaviour. All of that was caused by GTA4!"

I love the way that the end of the article mentions the removal of the GTA4 ads in portland & chicago as if there was some form of causal relationship rather than them acting out of fear of a thompson initiated DOS attack on their faxes.

Interesting that "Peter" played games other than GTA, good thing that the 360 version of GTA4 has the "Influenced childrens behaviour" achievement so the cause of the influence is irrefutable. Is Peter 17? If not, why was dad not noticing the things on the case where it describes the content & thinking "Hmm, not sure he's ready for this yet" or sitting with his son whilst he was enjoying the new game, just to see what all the fuss was about? Also, gotta love dad's name: Greg Within, it's like "Intel Inside"

It is slightly encouraging to see Wellis mention that the game did not incite the altercation but he ruins it by immediately saying it affected his behaviour as if it was the only thing that did.

Grab your pitchforks! We'll teach these video games not to mess with our lives!

A friend of my became more aggressive when he stopped playing video games, and started hanging out with other friends. Now he yells at his parents, rarely at home, smokes, etc. OMG!!!111! Stop playing video games make you even more aggressive!!!

What I really think it is, is that these kids have a different social life. At 19, you are heading to college, and that is a huge leap. It is very socially different, and of course Mark is going to act different. I think Peter is going through the same thing. It's always social pressure, espiecially in High School and College.