Quoted: Video games are like a black hole into which time disappears. Students today often confess to wasting a couple of hours a day on them. Corporate Canada likely loses whole weeks of productive work to those who are playing games at work. Video games have some kind of addictive allure that means any number of hours is not enough. It is always possible to play again -- to rise to that "next level" which somehow acquires near-mystical importance. They are the crack cocaine of the electronic world.

This guy should take a time-management class and call it a day. Reading this article was a bigger waste of time and energy than Mario Party 8.

While I would like to see a more contemporary study detailing the affects of video games in particular rather than a "mash-up" of previously conducted studies, some more than 40 years old, the author's conclusions still seem reasonable. The short-term effects of violent media resonate much more with me than the long-term effects as there are so many more variables in the latter that are not under the researchers' control.

Quoted: One valid remaining question is whether the size of this effect is large enough that one should consider it to be a public health threat. The answer seems to be yes. Two calculations support this conclusion. First, according to the best meta-analyses [18], [19] the long-term size of the effect of exposure to media violence in childhood on later aggressive or violent behavior is about equivalent to a correlation of .20–.30. Although some might argue that this explains only 4–9% of the individual variation in aggressive behavior, as several scholars have pointed out [39], [40], percent variance explained is not a good statistic to use when predicting low-probability events with high social costs. For example, a correlation of .3 with aggression translates into a change in the odds of aggression from 50/50 to 65/35—not a trivial change when one is dealing with life-threatening behavior [40].

Quoted: In a post earlier in the week, made in the wee hours of the morning, Minter posted, "Not seeing a lot of reason to continue even trying to make games, at this point, when a remake of Frogger, one of the worst games in the history of old arcade games, can outsell Space Giraffe that we put so much love and effort into, by more than ten to one, in one week."

Bitch, bitch, bitch. Here's an idea: Make a better game.

Quoted: "It is reasonable to expect that being able to go through the motions of violence while playing Manhunt 2 will exacerbate its negative effects," the letter said. "Given what is already known about the impact of violent games played on standard game controllers, it is irresponsible to make this game available to children and teens on a potentially more dangerous platform."

Potentially more dangerous platform? WTF?