And so it begins once again.

#1 Hmm, maybe we should make our political leaders play Civilization for a few years before they can hold office. You know, for training.

#2 Maybe we should also stop our schools from spending money on educational games. After all, no one can learn anything from a game. :)

I think the truth is somewhere in the middle.

#3 You do have to already be a little bit psychotic to want to play WOW for more than the trial period ;)

#4 Oh don't worry about Breivik... Hes a mad man..
In the court when they showed videos of the children he killed on Utøya he was all like: "Yeah whatever" But when they showed hes propaganda videos he bust in tears.
Also he claims to be acting in selfdefense, so no worries on that part!

#5 Ok....wing nut kills a bunch of people. Got it. I can GUARANTEE that I have spent MANY MANY more hours than he has playing games. (heck I just broke the 200hour mark on Skyrim alone!) yet I never once thought it was 'realistic'. Now, patrolling in Iraq or Afghanistan....totally different story. Still, never been crazy enough to randomly shoot people. A wing nut is a wing nut period.

Blaming games or movies or books or any of that crap is nothing more than sane people trying put a wing nut into a neat little box because people like things that they can comprehend and understand. The random wing nut just does not make people feel safe...there must be some reason or trigger that caused the guy to crack. Many times.....there is no reason, he or she was just nuts. so be it.

#6 @Bryce: Non-issue. This is in Norway. Not a litigation-happy nation of religious fanatics. We don't even eat squirrels! Usually.

#7 Enjoy your murderkilldeath simulators serial killers of the future! :P

Quote:
took an entire year off to play World of Warcraft

o_O
He's a worse version of Hitler! XD

#8 yep, yet again ...

Its human nature to always blame what we dont understand, games are just another form of entertainment and dont even account for majority of "media" influence todays kids recieve.

For a college class ... I spent a few weeks researching the actual vs "known" impacts of video games on children. Both to justify my gaming hobby and to understand WHY my kids actually play, from a parent point of view.

If anyone is curious, its still sitting out on my skydrive documents;
[url] https://skydrive.live.com/redir.aspx?cid=5a085d65943aa005&resid=5A085D65943AA005!278&parid=5A085D65943AA005!257&authkey=!ABMfN3wUqofD86U [/url]

and it tries to address these common "known impacts" of gaming;
a) (increased) Aggression
b) (declining) Academic Performance
c) Poor Health (obesity, laziness, lack of exercise)
d) Online Dangers (for those connected to the internet)
e) Effects on Values (morals, family values, female objectivism)
f) Anti-social behavior (from playing games �alone�)
g) Poor attention span (ADHD)

#9 In case anybody's not followed the trials, the bastard is so batshit insane nobody's talking about his gaming habit but a few journalists. Besides, if WoW really did make him do this, he'd have brought 9 or 24 friends. Also, he started planning long before WoW was released.