So despite the numerous studies linking video games to increasingly violent and aggressive behaviour (here aren’t any, sorry ACL and ACCM) a new report out of the US links the increase in video game popularity with a decrease in incidences of violent crime which has dropped by half since 1991 in America.

Here's a link to the report.

The study doesn’t go so far as to suggest it’s all butterflies and ponies in game land and points out that many games can cause short term increases in aggression among some people. But it does point out that these short blips of aggression are a positive thing and the fact that people are indoors taking out their aggression on digital Nazis, zombies or zombie Nazis they’re not outdoors beating each other and taking part in gang violence, possibly on their way back to Coney Island.

So, yay, I guess violent games are once again vindicated.

Not that this is major news to us folk who all ready champion our hobby as a safe and respectable one. The ACL and ACCM don’t have a leg to stand on in terms of studies as I pointed out here in painstaking detail  http://www.thataussiegamesite.com.au/blogs/886-a-look-at-some-the-accms-evidence-against-games

The bottom line remains, do violent games make us aggressive? In the very short term, for a matter of minutes, yes, but so does your team losing a game or someone speaking disparagingly about your cardigan. Do games violent games desensitise us to violence? Yes but no more than watching the news or reading the paper and only to depictions of violence and not the consequences of it. Do violent games make us violent? No, not even a little.