Age: 17
Gender: Male
Top three favourite video games:
Counter-strike source, Call of duty 4: Modern Warfare, Command & Conquer: Generals: Zero Hour
Name three violent video games
Hitman, Resident Evil, Tekken
How many hours on average a day is spent playing video games?
Weekends: 4-5
Weekdays: 2-3 (during exams, otherwise it'll be around 3-4)
How much do you feel video games influence your 'real' life, if at all?
They do have an influence in a way, I'm actually hoping to study computer games technology at university, but I see them more as a way of killing time more than anything. Although there are certain games that I have used in the past to escape from reality for short periods of time and just leave all my worries behind me for a bit.
There has been a rise in violent crime in recent years which have been alleged to be influenced by violent video games, what is your personal opinion of this?
I feel that computer games have close to no influence on violent crime, in a way it does purely because it can give people idea's, but when you look at games now a days you can see their not completely life like, no ones going to be able to run around with a couple of pistols and take out an army. Anyone foolish enough to take the content of games and decide to 'try it out' in real life is foolish. The majority of the time people commit violent crimes for other reasons, you ask them what made them do it, I'll guarentee you none of them will say 'I played a video game and thought it'd be fun to try it out', theirs often a deeper meaning to the reasons they are commiting these violent crimes.
Do you think the increasing popularity in violence-related video games is becoming a problem within society?
Not at all, it allows people to vent their anger and aggression in a fun and safe way.
Are bans and censorship on violent video games an effective way of tackling rising violent crime rates?
To a certain extent, certain games are just too violent to be produced, and by all means those should be banned or forced to cut out some of the violence. Use of the likes of age ratings and such is pretty much useless, most younger children will find the means of getting the games without having a problem over age, parents will often buy games for their children making age ratings completely useless.
What do you think, if anything, should be done about media representations of violence?
I'm not sure exactly what this question means, I take it the way media as in newspapers and televesion portrays violance??
If thats the case then I feel computer games shouldn't be automatically targetted as the source of violent crimes, I'm sure if they dug a little deeper they'd find hundreds of factors that causes a person to act violently. I mean jumping straight on the 'Computer games cause violence' band wagon is so easy. Instead why not look at other factors that may cause it such as movies that promote crimes and almost make them look like 'desirable' career paths.