Perhaps that should be a key metric for acceptable video games – would you let your little pink princess play it? If not, then perhaps your young prince shouldn’t either.

(I’m not a complete Luddite. My almost-7 yr old son kicks some serious crocodile butt in Donkey Kong Country!!)

You have to spend like $8 buying extra guns to get everything. The graphics and feel of the game is it was rushed out over the weekend. The increase in difficulty just increases how shaky your hand is. The education part is just links. Interactive 3 D showing how to load a gun, clearing a gun or any practical use of a gun would have been great. No physics for distance shooting. Guess slapping “endorsed by the NRA” doesn’t mean crap in quality control.

Once again a crappy App. It’s also the worst kind of App they make too, by making you buy extra guns instead of earning them in game by being good.

Sorry I didn’t reply with “Needs more Zombies and Boobs”

To their supporters there is a very clear difference between this, intended as an educational “gun safety” tutorial and harmless target practise game, and “violent video games”. Don’t forget, the NRA wants you to buy guns.

I’d also like to see a comparison of amounts of violent content in games, television programs, movies, etc.

Does the incidence of gun violence change after the release of a major movie, game, etc that include violent content? If it does, how much is the change versus the type of media?

Video games may not *cause* violent behavior, but they (and other media forms) do numb players to violence and make ever-more intense experiences increasingly tame.

We’re a society of people who are desensitized to horrific acts. Consider that the very kinds of traumatic, violent experiences that until recently only a combat soldier would endure – and suffer with PTSD as a result of – are now considered entertainment.

And you can argue that it shouldn’t happen, but young – very young – children are exposed to brutally-violent video (and movies) games either due to negligence or naivety on the part of their parents.

Funny that we recoil in sheer horror at the very thought of a child seeing a naked body, yet we backslap and chuckle over that same child’s “headshot” skills in a first-person shooter. It’s inappropriate for a child to see a breast, but ok to see a spleen being blown out of a person’s body by massive artillery?

So, does anybody want to ban violent books?

This sketchy science has threatened to derail nearly every gaming study I looked at in the last two years. Games and learning? Action games and visual acuity? Video games and online communities? Semiotic domains? Literacy? Problem-solving? Identity? Before any of these studies could address their intended subject, they had to pay homage to video game violence first. It’s like we had to put the kids to bed before we could have a grown-up conversation.

I hope that the CDC, as a mostly disinterested party with a good deal of credibility, can insert some scientific rigor into the discussion. Then I hope we can move onto something better. Gaming is popular. Gaming is powerful. Gaming is a rich field for research. And gaming offers a lot more than simply entertainment But if we can’t put this bogeyman back in the closet, we’re exploring the subject with a severe handicap.

Comics, rock and roll, and Elvis dancing were all once seen to corrupt young people. Video games is this generations scape goats. History’s on videogames side as not THE cause of violence like the NRA will portray. They can’t even admit that maybe some of their members shouldn’t be owning guns because it would mean no members should own guns at all.

Americans can’t take personal responsibility for their actions, they did A because of B. We are just repeating history with these useless studies on video games. I grew up playing those violent videogames. You know why I didn’t kill people? I knew right from wrong and reality vs fantasy. I know a lot of people working in healthcare playing those games to this day.

Obama’s playing up on the fear of the week wasting resources.

Why is this Obama’s fault again?

It’s like trying to stop under age drinking by banning pina coladas.

Naah, I’m just kidding. I can’t even bring myself to blow up Megaton in Fallout 3. Apparently I really care what a bunch of poorly rendered pixel people think of me.

The Harvard study begins “Experts are divided about the potential harm…” 

There is certainly no smoking gun but it also sounds like there is no definitive answer or concept of what the relationship/mechanism is. I don’t think we can just assume there is no connection…it may even be a positive one. Media in all it’s various forms has an effect on adults and kids alike or we wouldn’t have so many wonderful advertisements and ways to enjoy them. Also, when my six year old watches Ninjago, it’s nothing but ninjas and epic imaginary dragon battles for hours afterward.

He always defeats me.