Causality: The Game

For the past forty years, mass shootings in the United States have prompted at least one very predictable reaction from politicians and commentators: blaming everything on violent movies, violent music, and in later years especially violent video games.

The argument falls flat on its face at the slightest scrutiny from any angle. Yes, of course the shooter played video games. Everyone has played video games! And yet violent crime rates have been dropping slowly but constantly all these decades. Not to mention focusing on any single personality trait or hobby rapidly edges into "Hitler was a vegetarian" territory. Not to mention that billions of fans of heavy metal music or horror movies or first person shooter games have, for the past half a century, testified to their subjective experience that these all work to provide an emotional outlet, to decrease our frustration with the world.

So I'm pretty sure imaginary rocket launchers (RPG RPGs) don't cause school shootings. I do know, however, that after every mass murder the political pressure from the Mrs. Grundys of the world wrests yet more concessions and promises from the game industry to self-censor, to dull, de-fang and castrate their products.

Video games don't cause shootouts, but mass shootings do cause bad game design.