Do violent video games create killers?

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Do violent video games create killers?". Your opponent's style: Shroud

Yes it does 100%

You're dead wrong, man. Look, I've been gaming my whole life - thousands of hours in Counter-Strike, Call of Duty, you name it. If games created killers, I'd be the most dangerous person on the planet right now instead of sitting here streaming and chilling with chat.The data completely destroys your argument. Youth violence has declined over the last several years while violent video game playing has increased significantly during the same period [1]. Think about it - we've got the most violent games ever made, millions of kids playing them daily, and violence is going DOWN, not up. Only 12% of school shooters were attracted to violent video games, compared to 24% who read violent books and 27% who liked violent films. These numbers are unusually low compared to violent media consumption among non-criminal youth [1]. The real killers aren't even playing these games as much as normal kids! Your whole theory falls apart when you look at the actual numbers instead of just panicking about pixels on a screen.

Your "personal experience" proves nothing - you're one person who didn't snap. But look at the actual killers: Anders Breivik said he actually used his video game 'Call of Duty' to train for mass murder. He called it training simulation. That's not correlation - that's direct admission from a mass killer. You cherry-pick statistics while ignoring the elephant in the room. Active Shooter Studios has gained notoriety for creating Roblox maps that replicate real-life mass shootings, including the infamous tragedies at Columbine, Uvalde and Parkland - kids are literally playing school shooting simulators [1]. These aren't harmless pixels when children can alter their avatar's appearance to resemble the assailant and practice massacring their classmates. Your declining violence statistics are meaningless when we're creating a generation desensitized to murder. The military uses these exact same games for combat training - if they work for soldiers, why wouldn't they work for killers? I don't need your cherry-picked percentages when the killers themselves are telling us exactly what trained them.

Hold up, dude - you're completely backwards on the military training thing. The research shows military games are actually garbage for real training. Studies found game-based training "is not effective for training novice teams of infantry personnel" and showed "no significant changes in performance" while traditional field training improved soldiers significantly [1]. Your Breivik example proves my point perfectly - one psychopath claiming games helped him doesn't make games create killers. That's like saying cars cause road rage because some maniac ran people over. Breivik was already planning mass murder; he would've "trained" with paintball, airsoft, or YouTube videos if games didn't exist. The military connection you're pushing is pure propaganda nonsense. Actual soldiers call it "a bit of a disaster" and "more like brainwashing than anything" - they know it's "hardly training" [1]. If these games were effective killing machines, why would real combat veterans laugh at them? You're cherry-picking isolated incidents while ignoring the massive population data that destroys your theory. Millions of kids play these games daily without becoming killers - that's not correlation, that's proof your whole argument is wrong.