I was playing Left 4 Dead late at night a while ago.  Trying to 'Expert' the 'Dead Air' campaign.  Met a few complete idiots on the road to doing it, and some pretty cool people too... Eventually though I was left at the finale with two bots and this really cool girl... Or at least I thought it was, due to the pitch of the voice.   After some general conversation 'she' turned out to be a 'he' some kid in Canada of all places.
 
Now he/she is somewhat irrelevant, it just illustrates the point about how young this guy was to be playing a cert 18 game.  I quizzed him on his thoughts on this, (He turned out to be 12.) which was that, yes, Left 4 Dead is also cert 18 in Canada, but, and I quote, "Left 4 Dead is awsomeness so I just play it anyway." 
 
Well, erm, okay... Having spoken to guy, and I still see him online from time to time, I'm not convinced he's been severely psychologically damaged by playing it.  Whether because of the violence in the media these days kids are desensitized to it much earlier than they once were... Or maybe some kids mature at different ages, or maybe he will grow up to be a psychopath?  I don't know...
 
I do know, despite quite happily playing video games with my 10 year old nephew , I would not be comfortable playing Left 4 Dead on split screen with him... Okay 10/12 - same, but not the same I know... I wouldn't be happy with my own little girl playing Left 4 Dead if she was 12 (She's 3 at the moment.)...
 
I suppose, the graphics on the whole aren't actually all that scary, certainly not that realistic.  If anything it's all a bit cartoony.  A 3 year old would find it scary - but I'm not convinced it is realistic enough for a violence desensitized 12 year old to be scared of.   So should they play?  On the one hand I think no - if you think about what Left 4 Dead is representing, then it's quite horrific, a zombie infestation causing innocent people to turn psycho - and the survivors have to murder innocent people to get to the safe house?  That's not nice... 
 
The question is, does the average 12 year old think about this?  I'm guessing not - I'm thinking in the spirit of the best George Romero Classic they are just playing the game, point and shoot at the target - and enjoying the story, the plight of the protagonists and wanting them to survive... Or just being silly - going on expert and killing all the other players just to be a dick....
 
Does that mean we should scrap age certification for games like this?  I mean how much harm does showing young children depictions of violence actually cause?
 
Personally I think age certification should stay and be enforced.  There's enough violence and conflict in the world for us to want to protect our children from it for as long possible.  It might not damage them, but it's still nice to think they can spend their life as a child in the naive state of not truly understanding or being exposed to violence, because once they are adults there is no getting away from it.

The average twelve year old certainly has no concept of how video game violence may effect them in the long term but every child is different. I played violent video games when I was a kid and I am one of the most passive people you could meet, but I've seen many fifteen year-olds be whipped into an aggressive frenzy by games like Call of Duty. It should be up to the parents and guardians of children to know their child and know whether what their children are playing is suitable for them, however I don't believe video games turn anyone into a psychopath.

"Guns don't kill people, kids who play video games kill people"
 
... I have that on a shirt and a button. :)
 
It's a partial truth. Most gamers will just scoff it off as nonsense (as if they all have PhDs in psychology), but I'm somewhere in the middle on the subject. I used to be with the majority of gamers who laughed at such nonsense, but anymore I've started to think about it on a much deeper and serious manner and I think there definitely is something to it.
 
I don't think it's necessarily about the quality of the violence or gore they see, but more to do with the interactive nature of solving problems through violence. Now don't get me wrong, I love most of the games all you other guys do too. I play Resident Evil, I play Call of Duty, I play Dead Space and even Left 4 Dead, but still there is a part of me who feels that many of these games really are not suited for younger people who are still going through critical phases of mental development.
 
I actually respect Microsoft a great deal for some of the work they have done with the family settings on the console, age lockout, and actually taking it farther to setting up stands at places like Best Buy to educate parents on such features. 
 
Now I don't think playing games is going to magically de-sensitize everyone who plays them or turn us all into killers, but what I definitely see it as being capable of is 1) perpetuating ideas about problem solving through violence (particularly to young people still mentally developing), 2) conditioning people into glorifying war, and 3) nurturing any pre-existing troubled roots.
 
I don't think games are going to undoubtedly turn anyone and everyone into bad guys, and I don't think we need any legal restrictions on what developers may do, and I don't think that games are any more dangerous than any other medium, but the fact that the popularity of games as skyrocketed compared to 20 years ago, I think it is at least an important issue of concern.
 
In the end I think it is the duty of every parent to take an active involvement in what their kids play and to make personal decisions about whether they think it is suited for their child or not. I get upset when I see young children playing games like Call of Duty at game shops or conventions - not because I am overly worried about their fragile minds being warped per-say (though to some extent I am because I know how impressionable human beings are and how easily we allow ourselves to be molded into sheep) - but because no one seems to take it as seriously as I think it should be taken.
 
 To say that games have no correlation to human behavior and no effect whatsoever on our thinking is to say that games have no power over us. That is nonsense. Games have the power to shape people for the better or for the worse. 

When you see kids play with sticks before they play "super gory" games or watch "mentally scarring" movies...what do they do? 
 
They poke each other and go "HA you're dead! You can't come back!". Fuck when I was way little I remember kids going for limbs and saying shit like "NO you can't use that arm anymore it's chopped off!" 
 
So do you think they're just saying stuff like that and not imagining it? I know I had a pretty good picture in my head of his arm off and blood going everywhere...like everyone else I was playing with. 
 
Kids know whats make believe and reality. There was this documentary about children development I watched awhile ago where this old lady wanted to know how deep seated violence was in little boys, she observed how they played and told stories. 
 
When they played without a ball it would always be some sort of war game and someone would always die. Dismemberments a plenty as well, she'd talk to them afterwards too and each kid went into detail as to what happened in the game. 
 
During story time where they had a toy and had to make up a story on the spot about that toy each boy had a violent confrontation in his story and the story would end with the bad guy dying. When she tried it again the next day and said no one could die each boy was stumped and they couldn't tell a story.  
  
Don't take my word for it that games aren't a big deal... 
 
Here's a dude from MIT!!! 
 
 http://www.pbs.org/kcts/videogamerevolution/impact/myths.html

Hell I played tons of games when I was 10, I was on CounterStrike all the time and played GTA III...now? I think it's fair to say I don't ever think violence is the answer, unless someone starts something...or I'm drunk....  
 
It's 2010 and people think videogames are killing our kids' moral values!! 
 
It's the 1950's and people think those horror comics are killing our kids' moral values!!! 
 
It's the industrial revolution and people think trashy books are killing our kids' moral values!! 

All valid points, and very well articulated.  Personally I think my views on this topic changed somewhat when I became a parent.  I'm still very anti-censorship, and I have a bone to pick with the Australian Regulatory body, and the German equivalent for being over-the-top with their censorship policy.  At the same time I'm against glorification of criminal and violent behaviour, through any medium - but particularly games.
 
The issue with games is it is interractive, if you are the protagonist in GTA3: San Andreas, beating some granny to death with a pool cue for $5 then you're not in a passive position, you are actively participating in the violence.  If it was in a film, you would percieve this as a third party.  The trouble is knowing where to draw the line, what is and isn't sensible?  I think the GTA games are pitched dangerously close to being deserving of criticism, but I wouldn't censor them.  I think Man-Hunt, went a little too far, not for the content, but for the reasoning.  Violence in games should have a moral purpose. 
 
I suppose the most amusing point was the 'Hot Coffee' mod for GTA3, a game which allows you to rob, murder and act criminally at will - suddenly allows your character to have sexual relationships with the characters girlfriend, and we see lots of controversy!  The trouble is there are people out there who hate games, who don't see the point in them.  These people are always looking for any reason to criticize gaming as a hobby.  What the gaming industry shouldn't do - is give them free ammunition.
 
Of course, a lot of the time, people criticize games and start controversy without even understanding the game in question.  I'd like to cite 'Bully' as a reference {It has to be Rockstar doesn't it?) because it's set in a school, and it's called Bully, anti-bullying groups start crying out about how evil it is and it shouldn't be released!  Now if you play through Bully (Or Canis Canem Edit if you live in the UK) you find that really, the main story is more about helping people and preventing them being bullied.  Okay - I admit you can grab people at random and flush their heads down the bog... Which is sort of funny - but ... The player isn't forced to do this sort of activity, not unless it's in order to help someone else.  
 
i suppose in some respects you might expect us to be violent peoples, we've got a long glorious history of killing each other - usually over land or religion... And before that you might believe we evolved from something a bit like an ape - from a stand-point of natural selection, our ancestors were possibly better at fighting and stealing bananas from the ones that didn't make it.
 
I'd still like to protect childrens innocence.  My little girl is three - her only concept of violence is from people being knocked down, I'd like to keep it that was as long as possible.  
 
I suppose the really disconcerting thing is that, developers want to push boundaries in the way that games like 'Man Hunt' did, and that players actually want to play these games.  This isn't unique to the gaming industry though.  Over the last decade or so, we've seen the likes of Saw, Hostel, Human Centipede and Grotesque hit the screens... 
 
These aren't horror films in the normal sense - the name for this genre is 'torture porn' and despite the films being essentially the oppurtunity to watch people being tortured, they are surprisingly popular.  Really, why should a rational human being with what is accepted as a good, normal set of morals want to watch people being tortured to death?
 
I suppose the answer is probably a complicated one, and one for someone with PhD in Psychology or similar.  It's much like the people who are into the old 'BDSM' who pay good money to have pain inflicted upon them.  
 
I suppose the lesson here is that humans are complicated beings, and striking the right balance when trying to legislate to protect the vulnerable few, versus protecting the liberty and freedom of expression of the greater majority can be a difficult task.

Violence should not happen inside of children, I've said this a million times.

I've been playing games sense I was small, the first chance at a 'violent' game was for the N64 called Nightmare Creatures. That game scared the piss out of me and coming from a person whom is still frightened about the mario -death- theme it was a bit much XD But I would play it with my dad (more like behind him) but after a while it wasn't that scary. And it helped me with my fear of the dark.. believe it or not.. XD
 
Don't need to worry about monsters if you can kill them with an awesome sword. <<
 
Now a days my cousin (like 6) play Halo and CoD with his dad online. Sense his dad and mom have separated it's a way they can play together.. When you meet him he's your average 6 year old. cept my grandmother has to stop saying dirty words around him. (she's more of an issue than the games are)
 
A few kids I babysit for i am graduating to a few games myself, currently playing mostly Rayman and Super Mario Galaxy. I'm showed one how to play Muramasa (he's pretty damn good too which shocked me) He can't read well (bits and pieces) but he likes fighting the ninja's and thier isn't any blood. I just round out the story in a nutshell for him and he goes to town. Again, your average kid of 6, doing good in school, plays cops and robbers and so on, he's a smart boy and sweet too. But he does had pretty awesome parents that keep him grounded.
 
I think it depends ont he child, certain children you just know won't handle things well (like my other cousin whom is 6 and acts 3 no joke. I would never let him play games like Muramasa because he isn't wrapped too tight.) you just have to know the kids...

His parents bought the game for him so I wouldn't worry about it. It's the parent's responsibility.

I have an eleven year old daughter.  She loves the Halo games.  She plays some CoD every so often.  And it's not something where I feel like I have to play with her every time. 
 
When we first started letting her play shooters, or even watch shooters, I believe it started with CoD2.  We made her watch the intro movie, and then we made her watch the intro movie to Saving Private Ryan.  We explained to her WWII, and how CoD was basically a reenactment of that.  She took it all very maturely.  Now granted, she seems to almost enjoy the games too much for a little girl... but based on her behavior, I have NO concern that she has any problem leaving the video game violence at the console or computer. 
 
What's funny is that any acts of violence she's committed I think were before she started playing shooters.  If the boys at school pulled her hair while standing in line, for example, she had no problem turning around and kicking them in the shins (as we found out when we were called into the school). 
 
With the whole video game violence thing, you have to take these two things into consideration: 
First, are the parents paying any attention to what the kid is doing and trying to at least make sure the kid understands it's just a game. 
Second, kids are smarter than people give them credit for.  They hear adults blame children's issues on video games and they figure they can do the same.  There ya go, adults just handed them excuse on a plate.

Violent media only acts as a trigger for violent behaviour. Whether the child is effected or not depends on the maturity of that specific child. I think it's fair to say that a child that will grow up to have psychopathic tendencies will turn out that way regardless of whether or not s/he engages in video games or movies promoting violence. They only act as a spark to set the child off. 
 
IMO.

i kind of think that kids shouldn't either play online all together or have a mic. either one helps because i hate to hear 12 year ols talking and having high pitched voice. when i was 12 i was playing probably n64. i didn't have a lot of violent video games. comparing goldeneye and say modern warfare 2. there is a big difference between them.