I like video games. I mostly play 4x titles like civ (but I don't play civ). I control my kids screen time pretty rigorously but I let her play games. I really like to play board games but it seems like my friends and I are very busy with families and work now a days so we don't get to play all that often. We do try and table top role play every other week but it often gets called off. I get hit by heavy depression one to a few times a year. There is no getting out of it, just have to do the time. I find that I can sink into a complicated 4x game and lose myself in the tactics and little story I write about the game. It's a great way to keep myself from just sitting around and feeling hopeless. Now I also oppose the kinds of violent and unethical behavior many games promote.
I'd bet that crime rates are lower because people are home playing video games instead of doing violent and unethical things in real life.
I agree and we are not alone in that thought.I'd bet that crime rates are lower because people are home playing video games instead of doing violent and unethical things in real life.
I should have cited this directly, sorry about that. It's a bit of a chunky article to throw out there and be all "Yep!" All this had a major effect: It drove gang members indoors. Drug dealing continued, and so did other forms of crime, including identity theft. Gang members became more adept at using the Internet to promote their gangs and belittle rivals. But boasting and threatening online doesn’t require the commitment or violence of classic L.A. street gang-banging, nor does it blight a neighborhood. “When you don’t have kids hanging out on the street,” says George Tita, the UC Irvine criminologist, “there’s no one to shoot or do the shooting.” It's doesn't explicitly mention video games but it does speak to the larger point of people not being on the street has been one of the many factors that have lead to a drop in violent crime. This of course was precipitated by the gang injunction forcing them to clear out of sight.The LAPD also began to make use of a tool that had previously been used sparingly: the gang injunction, essentially a ban on gang members hanging out together in public. The gang injunction spent much of the 1990s in court before being narrowly ruled constitutional, but law enforcement valued it. Today, Los Angeles alone has at least 44 injunctions against 72 street gangs. Gang members seen on the street together can be jailed on misdemeanor charges. Other towns and counties followed LAPD’s lead.