I can't believe I'm talking about this AGAIN

I'm going to say that I don't actually know what the game contains. Partly, because it's irrelevant, and partly, because I am sick and tired of people saying a game contains "x y z", and that it influences people to do actions "a b c", when they haven't tried playing the game themselves. Hey, if you find the game influences you to kill someone, you have your proof that it happens to you, and that it may affect other people. Unless you're willing to experiment then you can't judge other people.

I don't judge people for smoking cannabis. I wouldn't do it myself, I consider it too much of an unknown value, and the evidence for and against is all somewhat conflicting. Smoking tobacco I don't judge people for, save to say if I know them personally I will advise them of the evidence in favour of the fact it might kill them, if I deem it suitable to do so (no sense talking to a brick wall and having an un-neccessary argument).

Because that evidence is there, it exists in black and white statistics. And I say black and white as opposed to the grey area statistics of cannabis, because the fact is, if you smoke, you are more likely to die of one of the diseases related to it. There is a much touted piece of evidence in the statistics of cannabis smoking which say it's users are more likely to develop psychoses. However, it could also be construed that they are already more susceptible to psycoses and its related depressive conditions which lead to drug use. The cause and effect can be reversed quite easily. There is no reasonable way this can be done for smoking, ergo, smoking is the cause and cancer etc. is the effect.

In the words of xkcd: Science, it works bitches.

So how does this relate to GTA IV and the youtube video thereupon?

Well, in the video, the person in question decided that the fact these 3 kids had started this re-enactment was tantamount to the fact that GTA IV causes crime. This is just plain bad science. 3 kids represents something like 0.000035%  of the total consumer population which has bought GTA IV. It is also thus, an even smaller percentage of those of us that engage in violent computer games.

So, having worked out these statistics are somewhat available, I decided to try and find out if someone had tried to work out the percentages of gaming population who had gone criminal and compare it to the non gaming community (or more accurately, those who do play violent video games as opposed to those who do).

The statistics do not exist, as far as I can tell. And I spent far too long looking. If I could be corrected by someone though, that would be helpful.

But the statistics not existing says something in itself. Gaming companies aren't about to prove the thesis that violent gaming causes crime, and since violent games aren't about to be banned anytime soon, they have little to no incentive to disprove it either. However, the anti-violent-gaming lobby has a really good reason to statistically prove their claims. If they could, the argument would be null- violent games would be proven to present a significant risk and we'd all live much better lives. The fact they haven't singularly states one thing and one thing alone. They are scared to- they could be wrong. If they are so sure they are right, they would be able to prove it, it would be so simple.

And excluding all of that- I know that at least one person would be immune to the effects. Me. I have been playing violent-esque computer games since age 3, where I had a brilliant shoot em-up game on my old amstrad where you were a military gunman and went around shooting given targets (enemy militia and whatnot) whilst avoiding "friendlies". No storyline or reason to kill these militia whatsoever. Anyway, sidetracked again. Age 3 onwards. Violent crimes committed by me to date: none. I had a breaktime detention once for talking in class though, but thats about it. And that was given to the entire class, some of whom are non-gamers, so I think its a null shred of evidence. Furthermore, I own several weapons, including a samurai sword, have martial arts training and a number of people who it could be argued I have motives to commit violent acts against. Still, I haven't though.

And this is what it comes down to. Some people will always commit violent crime, weapons bans in place, no computer games, no action flicks. There are a hundred ways to kill somone with a biro.

Now, unless someone manages to come up with properly taken, independent and well represented demographic evidence, I'm going to refer them to this article, because this argument is so over.