Scholars Take a Stand on Video Games, Violence, and Policy
It may not be the stand you would expect. I know that developers often feel like easy targets for researchers and pundits, and it’s often the truth. However, the research community such as it is, is not uniformly in one camp or another. There are a handful of particularly outspoken scholars who believe games are a real danger, but a vastly larger number who are more balanced in their approach.
Why does this matter now? The American Psychological Association maintains a task force on violent media whose findings will be highly influential among policy makers. If the APA decrees that there is strong evidence that games are dangerous, it will be used as both evidence and ammunition for laws restricting them. In 2005, the APA put out a strong statement to that effect, with predictable results, leading all the way to the Supreme Court (which struck the laws down).
