I don't think any non-crackpot really believes that video games cause people to pick up guns and shoot people. No one has ever played a video game and gone "hey you know what'd be cool, if I went and shot up a mall".

The moral dilemma is not about directly causing someone to become violent, but rather about creating a culture where violence is celebrated rather than abhorred, and the consequences of all of this violence in aggregate. No single video game would drive someone to violence, but the aggregation of thousands of video games, tens of thousands of movies, and a government that glorifies war, certainly doesn't help anything.

I think the moral dilemma isn't about any real, measurable harm, but rather about whether you're creating a pop culture that reflects the world you want to live in, or you're contributing to a pop culture that is the antithesis of your own principles.

> "Thought for the day: A drug addict kills someone with a gun for money to get their next hit, what aspect of the story does the media focus on?"

The fact that they're an addict. Seriously, I have not seen any major case pinned of video games for years. Jack Thompson and Columbine was a long time ago, before the mass-marketization of shooters. With games like COD and Halo being so mainstream your grandma has played it, the "video game causes deadly shootout!" angle is no longer tenable.

And we as gamers need to stop pretending the world is still like the bad old days of the 90s when every evil was pinned on us. Only the most extreme, the least credible news sources are still hanging onto this angle, and it's disingenuous to pretend that this is still a mainstay of modern news reporting today.