Game Viloence

As of Monday morning GameStop bought EB Games for 1.44 billion dollars, 70 percent of it being cash and the rest in stock shares. So what does this mean to the average person? Probably not much, but to the gamers of the world it is tremendous. GameStop is the largest video game chain in the United State and EB Games has expanded itself from the United States to Canada, and now even Paris. In short, with GameStop merging with EB Games, it has created a corporation as large or even larger than the Wal-Marts and Targets of the world but are strictly devoted to video games, DVD movies, and other gaming products. This means that theres going to be more advertisements and more frequent coupons and discounts in our Sunday papers for the newly branded GameStops. Thus being a very exciting time for the gamer community. So now how is this information relevant to psychology? The goal of this merger is to attract more cliental to GameStop, which sells games that have mature and violent natured games (as well other less aggressive titles) that in pasted years have been accused of generating hate crimes as well creating violent tendencies in our youth. So the big dilemma is this going to generate more criminal activity in our youth due to a great accomplishment of a corporation? Or is the blame of criminal activity in the youth being generated by some other factor all together? Psychology tests that we have gone over in class suggest that if we witness violent actions taken out on something physically or verbally that it's ok for us to do it, as long as the party witnessed doing it didn't get recommended for their actions. So is this the same to be said about the video game industry where it's ok to kill someone to make it to the next level without getting in trouble for your actions? I personally am in the middle of this on going debate that psychologist's have undertaken, that is being a store manager of a GameStop for over 2 years now. I have seen the possible outcome of violent tendencies of some but on the other hand I've also meet young and old gamers (between the ages of 6-72 ) realize "Hey its just a game, I know it's not real life, it's just the way I vent my anger and relax after a long day of work."

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