Quote Originally Posted by Stompwampa
As much as I agree with the fact that parents use video games as a scapegoat for thier own child-rearing pitfalls, I can't help but think that violent video games can't have a good effect on children, that's for sure. And despite whether or not they make kids more violent, I think that violent games offer up new ideas to kids of how to enact violence.

Example:

The bully at school has never played video games before. He just beats up kids with his fists and feet.
Take that same bully and give him GTA for a few months, and now he decides that he's gonna beat up kids with a baseball bat, or a branch of a tree.
Has the act changed? not really. He's still beating kids up, just as he would have done before. But now, he has more violent means of doing so that may or may not be attributed to video games.

if it's illegal for a child to be playing that game then you cannot blame the game for causing the violent behaviour. You have to blame the innefectiveness of the retail industry at selling these games to the correct age group and the fact that people consider all games to be suitable for children. it's all fine and well saying some 10 year old kid played GTA and started to beat up other kids because of it, but noone stops to think that GTA has an 18 BBFC rating and it's not the game manufacturers fault that the child had access to it.