Jarek delivers a strong punch to his opponent's torso. Blood shoots out while Jarek moves his hand around inside the opponent's chest, trying to find the heart. Once he finds it, he pulls it out, and holds it up, still beating and dripping with blood.

Don Ramsey suspects his son, Evan, was imitating the computer game "Doom" when he ran through his high school's hallways with a shotgun last year. Evan ducked behind corners and blew holes in the ceiling. He killed a classmate and the school principal.

Many researchers fear that ultra-violent games, especially realistic, first-person point-and-shoot games, are harming our children.

David Grossman recently retired from Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, the town where two middle-school video gamers killed four classmates and a teacher last year. Grossman, who was also a military psychologist and professor of behavioral sciences at West Point, is the author of "On Killing," a 1995 book that describes how the military teaches people to kill.

Grossman claims that the "point-and-shoot" games are similar to the techniques long used by the military to break down a soldier's aversion to killing. After World War II, Grossman says, the military found that only 15 percent to 20 percent of infantrymen fired their weapons in battle. By replacing bulls-eye targets with man-shaped targets, the military was able break down this reluctance. By the Korean War, 80 to 85 percent of the fighting force was willing to shoot-to-kill.

Psychologists attribute three harmful effects to media violence that they suspect might also apply to ultra-violent video game playing:

1. Children may become more aggressive and develop favorable attitudes about the use of violence to resolve conflicts.

2. Children may become desensitized to violence in the real world around them, less sensitive to the pain and suffering of others, and more willing to tolerate ever-increasing levels of violence.

3. Children may begin to believe that the real world is as mean and dangerous in real life as it appears on the media and in video games.

Sub-Zero gets behind his opponent, and grabs the top of her head. He then tugs furiously and her head gets ripped from her shoulders, spine still connected. Blood shoots everywhere. The camera zooms out and circles around Sub-Zero as he holds up the decapitated head, while the character stumbles to the ground, a puddle of blood forming near her neck.

"It's nothing but kill, kill, kill, kill, kill," Grossman said.

George Gerbner, a Temple University professor and long-time critic of media violence, told the Associated Press this May, "It's a brutalizing experience. The result of exposure is not imitation, but a sense of normality, an acceptance of brutality.''

Although most of these games are rated for mature audience, Toddlers are kibbitzing over an older sibling's shoulder while pre-teens kill, kill, kill. In a field study conducted by National Institute on Media and the Family, less than 5% of parents had ever heard of the "Mature" game, Duke Nukem. However, more than 80% of 11-13 year-olds reported that they were familiar with the game.

A 1996 survey of 900 fourth through eighth graders found that almost half of their favorite games contained fantasy or human violence. A 1998 study reviewed thirty-three popular video games and found that almost 80% of the games kids preferred had violence or aggression as part of the play. Almost half of this violence was directed toward other characters and twenty-one percent depicted violence towards women.

A 1993 study asked 357 seventh and eighth-graders to identify their preferences among five categories of video games. The researchers found that the most popular game category is fantasy violence (32%), followed by sports (29%), general entertainment (20%), human violence (17%) and educational games (2%).

A 1994 study found that 65% of male and 57% of female seventh and eighth graders played one to six hours of video games at home per week, and 38% of males and 16% of females played one to two hours of games per week at arcades.

Stanford Professor Don Roberts has been studying media violence for more than 30 years. He told ZDNet, "One of the things that research evidence has shown us is that the more involving the medium message, the greater the possibility that there's going to be some kind of impact, some kind of an emotional arousal, some kind of learning, some kind of change in the cognitive map of the world in each of us . . .And it is clear that video games and computer games, because of their interactivity, are highly involving, certainly more involving than, say, watching a motion picture or television show."

Dr. Sara Stein, an emergency psychiatry specialist, said in a San Francisco Chronicle interview that "only ten to fifteen percent of kids are susceptible to some side effects after playing violent games." Most at risk, she said, are young children who may have a hard time separating fantasy from reality; children who were exposed to violent traumas like flood or disasters and kids with attention deficit disorders and learning disabilities.

"I don't think it's a reason to stop the game as long as their grades are reasonable, they're doing the household chores, they're keeping a normal schedule, they're sociable and have friends and outside activities and get some exercise outside of the computer, and they're getting along reasonably well within the family," Dr. Stein.said.

In Littleton, Colorado, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, killed themselves after killing a dozen classmates and a teacher. Both spent their spare time playing Doom. The boys accused of the school shootings in West Paducah, Kentucky, and Springfield, Oregon also reportedly played the ultra-violent games.

Sonya grabs her opponent's body by the waist on either side with her feet, while standing on her hands. She then lifts the victim into the air while she squeezes the sides of the victim. The victim's body splits in half and blood and bones fly.

Not in my house.

Susan Ives is a past president of Alamo PC and on the staff of the peaceCENTER. The scenarios used in this article are taken from the video game Mortal Kombat.

For Further Reference:

1998 Video and Computer Game Report Card
Includes Video Game Violence: What Does the Research Say? by David A. Walsh, This site is produced by the National Institute on Media and the Family, an independent, non-partisan, non-sectarian, non-profit organization. The Institute’s mission is to maximize the benefits and minimize the harm mass media has on children, through research and education.

MediaScope Media Policy Clearning House
See especially their issue brief on Video Game Violence. They also sell a 1996 annotated bibliography, containing more than 200 sources, on video game violence.

Game Violence
An article from the 1999 San Francisco Chronicle.

Experts fear video games breed violence
Boston Globe article reprinted in the Anchorage Daily News. Evan Ramsey attended High School in Anchorage.

Children and Television Violence
An article reprinted from The Kansas Law J0urnal

Gore Games: Violence in Video Games is Rising, but What is the Impact on Young Gamers?
From ZDNet. Includes interviews with violent video game developers, and an interview with Stanford Professor Don Roberts.

Television, Video Games and the LD Child
From the Greenwood School.

Video Games and Children
From a 1994 Study by Bernard Cesarone

Young Media Australia
See especially the articles New Media and Children; To kill or not to kill: competition, aggression and violent video games and To kill or not to kill: competition, aggression and violent video games .

The games kids play
A series of articles from The Lutheran Magazine.

ESRB Parent's Guide
The ESRB is an independent board that has, with the support of the industry, developed a standardized rating system for interactive entertainment software products. This is a guide to software ratings.

Some computer games flunk senators' report card
A CNN Interactive Report on U.S. Senators Herb Kohl and Joseph Lieberman's campaign against violenct video games. Lieberman has a section of his web site about video violence.