1999 saw an unimaginable catastrophe, the massacre of Columbine. Two 18 year olds ran into their high school and shoot twelve people, fellow students as well as teachers. After the incident many people looked around for someone or something to blame. Sadly I must say it was not long until they set their sights on video games. As an avid video gamer, it angers me to see that video games are an easy target and take the fall for an incident which was caused by two younger men who were not completely sane. I have been playing games for more than 15 years. I started to play games when I was eight covering all kinds of genres, from shooters to adventure games. However never have I gotten the idea of murder or violence. People try to say that playing a violent game at the age of fourteen will cause you to get the idea to murder a fellow human. They however neglect the fact that the families of these individuals may be dysfunctional, that the person may have lived alone and secluded. He or she may have been picked on in school and they snap, see red and go make a huge mistake, such as becoming a bully or even going as far as a massacre. I do however will admit that a video game may give an idea. If an individual is pushed to a boiling point that they may get the idea of murder, playing a shooter for instance may show them how to shoot someone effectively, and with games getting more realistic it is easier to “learn” and even see the effect of a bullet. But these “teachings” can be seen in movies such as shooter movies. Here they use special effects that are more revealing than a game. But since in my example the two young men played a game or two in the past it is seen as the main reason why they shot twelve people. All shooter games are deemed a devil as they were the exact games these teenagers played. However I have met people in my past that were more aggressive than others and did not play games, or played games such as Super Mario, which is far from violent. I believe that this argument will go on for a while as games will only get more and more realistic and so will the violence in them. But so will movies and even the internet will start to spread more. I think that once a new media comes along that has such an impact like movies had then and video games have now, then the focus will shift to it as the main source of all the juvenile violence.
