Are violent video games contributing to the mass shooting trend?
Mar 7, 2018, 4:08 PM | Updated: 5:04 pm
President Donald Trump will talk with members of the video game industry Thursday as the debate over gun violence in America continues.
Trump has invited representatives from the Entertainment Software Association and the Entertainment Software Rating Board to the White House. The purpose of the meeting is to discuss violence in games.
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Members of the Entertainment Software Association include Nintendo, which has a headquarters in Redmond. Microsoft — which owns the Xbox brand — is also a member. The Northwest is also home to other video game companies, such as Bungie (Halo, Destiny), Big Fish, and Valve (Dota, Portal, Half-Life, Counter Strike).
While details of the meeting have not yet been disclosed, the president said last month that he’s hearing more and more people are concerned with the level of violence in video games. Some worry about how such entertainment could shape young minds.
In a statement, the ESA says a number of “reputable scientific studies have found no connection between games and real-life violence.”
The ESA goes on to say that while they, like all Americans, are deeply concerned with the level of gun violence in the US, video games are simply not the issue.
The ESA further states: “Entertainment is distributed and consumed globally, but the US has an exponentially higher level of gun violence than any other nation.”
