by priming aggressive thoughts. Longer-term effects are likely to be longer lasting as well, as the player learns and practices new aggression-related scripts that can become more and more accessible for use when real-life conflict situations arise."
"One major concern is the active nature of the learning environment of the video game," say the authors. "This medium is potentially more dangerous than exposure to violent television and movies, which are known to have substantial effects on aggression and violence." (http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/psp784772.html)).
The importance of understanding the effects of violent video games is underscored by the sheer number of games that young people play: Video games have consistently scored second only to television as a home entertainment option, and at least ninety percent of American households with children under the age of 18 have either rented or purchased owned a video or computer game. Of course, not all of these are violent, but the perennially most popular games tend to be those that feature a great deal of violence. (Wallis, 1999).
Violence sells in video games, and it sells extremely well: Although there was a slight decline in video game sales in the first quarter of 2004 compared to 2003, the sheer numbers involved are rather mindboggling: The computer game industry brings in about $10 billion a year:
Hardware and software sales fell 1 percent in the first quarter of 2004 compared to a year earlier, due largely to a sharp decline in console sales, market research firm NPD Group said on Tuesday.
Total U.S. retail sales of game software and hardware in the first three months of the year were $1.8 billion, down from $1.9 billion a year earlier, NPD said (http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=industryNews&storyID=4881313).
That's a lot of hours of potentially highly violent content. To what extent this influences the people who play the games is a subject of...