After watching this video above on violence in video games, I started thinking about the debate people make between movies having just as much or more violence than video games and how movies aren't being attacked. At one point I did agree but after giving it some more thought I came to the conclusion that movies and videos games cannot be an equal comparison.

Just follow me for a moment...

Movies display the violent acts while video games require you to engage in the act. Movies show a trigger being pulled video games allow you to pull the trigger. While both forms need to monitored, video games are much more engrossed and interactive. I don't watch a violent movie for 6 to 8 hours day after day for weeks and months. I may see it once or twice over a lifetime but then I'm done. With video games it's a much longer lifetime of consistent use and connection to the user because they are causing the events to happen. Movies are pre-built unchangeable by the viewer, no control over who lives or dies in the video, you just follow the story. Video Games on the other hand are built for you to create a path, your own story, shoot/kill as much or as little as you want but you have to press the button, you cause the action. The music in the video game will trigger the person to remember what they did in the game. Video games have been used as simulators in all kind of ways, from recreating a plane crash to see if it could have been avoided, a car crash, NASA uses simulators for their launches, the military uses simulators to help their soldiers in combat. They don't show a movie, they need the interaction with the scene and feel some control over it in order to have a better understand of what would happen.

Thoughts?