Does anyone think that psychological research into videogames and violence is an epistemological dead end? In the same way that saying books cause violence is a

Does anyone think that psychological research into videogames and violence is an epistemological dead end? In the same way that saying books cause violence is also practically meaningless. Societal violence isn't as simple as neurological desensitization to stimuli. To take Call of Duty for example, the violence is so incredibly unrealistic, the only thing I could imagine it desensitise someone to is the cocophenious stimuli of Call of Duty itself; the actual reality of soldiering is too corporeally miserable to form any meaningful connexion between the comfortable experience of playing a video game. However, Call of Duty creates a very reactionary world where you get to be part of the machinations of a barely legal extra-judicial dark operations. While I do not think it is obliged to do so, it never really comments on the morality of what you are doing, as you are always fighting evil - and this evil happens to be either Russian, Brown, or Marxist. It's not scientific to draw the connexion between videogames (as literature) and violence, but you'd have to be deliberately obtuse to deny that ideas (even within videogames) effect change. No one today talks about opera as a medium being a catalyst for violence, but opera was a surprisingly common source of riots; sometimes even igniting revolutions. Following the July Revolution in France, the Belgians enthused by 'La muette de Portici' and its nationalist idealism, rioted and occupied the government buildings, and splitting from the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Anyone who claimed it was the soprano's vibrato rather than the librettist's lyrics would be dismissed as mad today. In a way it's similar to claiming that a red pulsating vignette in COD causes bloodthirsty violence. However, it's completely valid to critique games as literature that encourages dehumanisation that leads to violence.