Reuben

"Let him without sin cast the first stone". -- This was not in the case of murder. Remember (Gen 9:6): Anyone shedding man’s blood, by man will his own blood be shed, for in God’s image he made man.

If you play a game for 50 hours, you got your money's worth.

Hooked on Phoenix.

I think you answered your own question. If a country the size of california sells 1/4th of the aggregate..

Don king is a Super Saiyan -- the greatest prize fighter of them all.

"Define harmful"

I guess that would "depend on what the definition of 'is' is" or how you would determine whether or not something is "cruel, degrading and inhuman".

Anyway, not to denigrate you, but seriously, that's not a good sign for humanity when we can't point at something and say "that's bad". We have to wait for science to determine it for us.

Simply Beautiful

It's all cute and what not to say "Parents should do their jobs!" or "government should keep their nose out of our business!" and so forth, and I whole-heartedly agree, but it's shortsighted to think the problem will stop there. The simple fact of the matter is, what you see affects your thinking (if this weren't true, people would have stopped advertising a hundred years ago... strangely they haven't) and as long as kids play violent games, they will be affected... period.

Personally, I would rather government step in and not allow the distribution of what is clearly harmful, than to see the aftereffects of a society run by these corrupted kids 20 years from now.

After having read the comments to this article. I think I'm going to give up games for a while...

Jake has the right idea on the religion thing. Anyone that has actually read their Bible knows that "Thou shalt not murder" (Ex 20:13) means just that, and that "The one who loves violence, God's soul certainly hates" (Ps 11:5). And so on...

As for violence in media. Obviously it has some effect, otherwise it would be unreasonable for so many companies to dish as much money as they do into incorporating sex/violence into their messages. If they didn't believe it did something, they wouldn't spend the money (especially not in the quantities they do), period.