Here’s a question that’s as old as the controversy. Does playing video games actually cause people to be more violent? One way to gauge this is to take into account violent acts before gaming became mainstream and after.

This graph from the Department of Justice clearly shows a reduction in violent crime over the years, despite the fact that games have only progressively gotten more and more violent over the years. Granted this is only a correlation, not a cause, but, you gotta admit, it’s hard to be beating up on people in real life when you’re too busy beating down hookers in GTA.

It’s not every day you see prominent non-gaming legends defend the industry, but Stephen King did just that recently when he laid the smack down to lazy elected officials trying to scape goat the gaming industry for all society’s ills. Hear how he completely owns after the jump.

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Got some trouble past experiences with video games and violence? A UK magazine wants to give you money for those stories. How much money? Hundreds of pounds. (Which is like hundreds of thousands of US dollars….I think) Looks like the Blame Gamers First crowd will stop at nothing to ban on happiness. Although, for hundreds of pounds, I think I’d be willing to fake a few vicious stories. I mean, think of all the video games I could buy. (What if this is all some scheme to put violent gamers behind bars?)

Newspaper offers cash for anti-games story [mcvuk.com]

With all the talk about how bad violent video games are, there are surprisingly few people willing to come out and say how therapeutic busting a cap can be. One man’s experience was as such:

[During my early high school years] where I was constantly tormented, beaten up, threatened and humiliated, video games (violent and otherwise) and heavy music gave me somewhere to escape to and release some stress. If I didn’t have them, I would surely have hurt myself.

I’m sure if this guy didn’t get his games and metal, he probably would’ve turned into Travis Touchdown. While my experience in school weren’t like this guy’s, I know that I probably would’ve had a hard time without Tekken and Devil May Cry there. What if there were no violent games? I doubt I’d be here today. (By ‘here’ I mean working on this site)

Grand Theft Childhoon [TheAge]