Personally, I feel that the studies don't do enough to fully uncover what are the precise impacts that a violent video game might have on a kid. Where I'm coming from, I do believe that the media you expose yourself to does have an effect on you in some way. Someone mentioned BoBo doll study prior. That's an excellent example right there. And that to me pretty much means that mediums effect you.
I don't agree that violent games automatically means crazy killer, but it might imply something else like tolerance to violence in general, willingness to dismiss the full effect of violence, etc. But even then, not all violent games will weigh in the same way on this. I mean, there is a distinction between the almost purposely offensive moral vacuum in manhunt and the somewhat more incidental moral vacuum in GTA3.
The underlying message of both, despite both being games sharing the attribute of doling out violence to random strangers, is quite different.
And the precise effect of each I think is what needs to be examined. Because otherwise, we're really no better than people who argue that Mozart's music will cause moral decay back in the Victorian era. It's not that the media doesn't effect you, it's that we don't understand WHAT it does exactly.
