A new book comes out, filled with research, findings, and opinions about violent videogames being behind violent tendencies in children after playing the games. There looks to be some interesting information presented in the book, but it still seems people fail to see one point of view and analyze it from that POV when doing this research - is it not possible that instead of violent games causing the behavior in children, could it not actually be violent people are just naturally drawn to violent games, and so they are already pre-determined to violence going into these surveys?

From the article:

Dr. Craig Anderson of Iowa State University has a new book out, Violent Video Game Effects on Children and Adolescents: Theory, Research, and Public Policy.

According to an ISU press release, the book, co-authored by ISU prof Douglas Gentile and PhD candidate Katherine Buckley is the first work to link research and public policy in the video game violence debate.

Later this week Anderson and Gentile will present their research at a meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development in Boston.

Among their findings:

Cartoonish game violence (Captain Bumper, Otto Matic) raised aggression levels in the same way as more graphic T-rated games like Street Fighter and Future Cop. Said Gentile:

Even the children’s violent video games - which are more cartoonish and often show no blood - had the same size effect on children and college students as the much more graphic games have on college students. What seems to matter is whether the players are practicing intentional harm to another character in the game. That’s what increases immediate aggression - more than how graphic or gory the game is.

Read the full article over at gamepolitics.com