The entertainment business gets the blame from a lot of people for a lot of different things because it's an easy target. People choose to point the finger at movies, TV, and gaming because they don't have any factual leads and just blaming "the usual suspects" is easy. I'm fine when anti-gaming stuff comes out that's supported by some sort of research - but when people just mindlessly pop off that it must be video games at the root of it, it's a bad as saying that Hurrican Katrina was the result of Christian God's wrath for tolerance of Muslims or homosexuals or something equally ignorant and unfounded.

Yes, there are situations when video games are the root of evil. My one friend spent freshman and sophomore year of college racking up an AVERAGE of 6 hours a day in World of Warcraft. He wouldn't hang out with us, come to dinner, do his homework, go to class, etc. because he was logging so many hours on that soul-sucking game. It came to the point where my friends just stopped trying to associate with him because he was so tied up in WoW. Maybe he was being social with his clan mates, fine, but he wasn't being social in the real world with people just down the hall from him who wanted him to go out and experience the real world.

And while some games like Grand Theft Auto, Bully, or Manhunt are morally reprehensible, I doubt they're major cause of young crime and violence. I don't really know too many people who go out after playing some GTA, sleep with a hooker, run her over when they're done and take their money back. Those kind of claims are just faceless and idiotic.

Yes, gaming and TV and such can be blamed for a lot of things. I'm a believer that they *do* cause young people to be less active. I, myself, over the last couple years, have excercised less and less and put on some extra pounds to show it. What have I been doing? Playing games, sitting on my computer and being lazy. But it's not the games' fault, you can't blame games for it. I'm an adult will my own agency to make my own decisions. I've chosen to spend more time doing it and it's no ones fault but my own. Yes, I do get out and hit the basketball courts from time to time and yes I do put down my games to read or write as well.

Games DO provide many of the same elements as books. People carry on about not reading books anymore, but you can often get the same sort of fictional bliss from playing a well developed game like Final Fantasy. RPG games (real RPGs, not MMORPGs), are like books on consoles, in my eyes. The detailed and developed storyline in these games are often times *better* than a lot of the mainstream fantasy novels on the shelves. And it's a bonus that you get to be involved in the action. I don't know about other people, but when I finish a good game, something like Final Fantasy X, Dragon Quest VIII, or Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, I get that same sort-of-sad feeling that I get when I'm finished reading a book. You get the mix of joy that the story really came together along with that bittersweet taste that it's over. If effective, you should feel attached to the characters and the story that you shouldn't want to stop.

I don't mean to defend gaming from all criticism. There are equally as many bad thing about the genre as there are good things. But that comes will all things. Books have good and bad aspects to them as well. There are a lot of trash books out there same as there are trash games - take a look at *most* of the books at the local supermarket.

If you're going to blame gaming for something, back it up. Don't just throw out a wild accussation because it's easy. Otherwise you might as well just say that children aren't reading as many books because gas prices are so high. What? Maybe they can't get to the library or shipping costs have driven up the price of literature. Or maybe there's no causal connection at all.

If 50 percent of children don't know who Hitler was or 2 percent can't pin down the right century to the civil war - maybe these people should turn their focus to a *more* likely suspect - crap education system. Doesn't it make sense that a child should be learning this stuff in school, not out of his own curious interest? Nope, must be the games. Why criticize something we can change by pushing for better education? Nah, let's just blame entertainment because we're all too lazy to go out and bring about a REAL solution.