-should death be feared? I fear death.
-does fate exist? perhaps. probably
-are our shadows more a part of us then they seem? not in my opinion. Just blocking the light.
-Video Games: are now way different than RPG's. People (grown adults even) get nightmares from playing some of the video games available now. Like Silent Hill, Doom, etc...
The shooting games (like with 50 cent) are just ridiculous and flex feable minds in stupid directions.
I don't think he did it because of video games. That's too little of a cause. He's just mentally disturbed due to several things probably. But if he played a lot of those sorts of games, i don't think they helped.
I know this family with a young child, 5 years old (though now he is probably 8 ), whom they let watch horror movies and play bad video games all the time. He's psychotic and extremely mean. Talks about those horror movies all the time, and has a very disturbing nature about him. His mother can't keep in school the whole day, they won't allow it. He's too destructive and upsetting to the other children. Tortures animals in sick ways, so they can't get a pet. Tries to torture his sisters. Luckily they're older than him, so they can usually defend themelves, but not always. I had to babysit him a few times. They gave him medicines to sedate him most of the time when i had to be alone with him. He still of course said odd things and would freak out if he couldn't play a game or watch a movie. So you can't tell me that the games and movies had nothing to do with that.
But of course, that's a case where the child started very young with those influences. They have very impressionable minds.
However, i know adults become very affected by extreme hours of video game usage. I just read an article in a magazine about a man who played the Sims so much, that he started obsessing over it in his every day life. Monitoring his whole family and when they had to pee, amongst other things. He imagined meters above people's heads, and when in a social situation, tried behaving as a Sim to get plusses or minusses (or hearts or whatever) above his head, to obtain whatever social stature he wanted with that person. When people were talking with each other, he would imagine text bubbles above their heads and picture what would appear in the text bubbles. Try to imagine what they could be talking about. He monitored everything and thought of his family as a family of Sims, and just let it guide his life, his finances, his household, etc.. He said he's getting better, after lots of counseling or something, but he still plays the games. He says he's just too addicted/obsessed. And that's just the sims!
But anyway. That was a long post. I thought the sims guy was pretty interesting though. I read it on the plane going to America, actually, lol.