A Japanese software industry body in June decided to ban computer games in which players simulate sexual violence against females. This came as a reaction to the US rights campaigners who took objection to ‘RapeLay,’ which lets players simulate stalking and raping young girls. The game give players points for weird deviations.

In a separate move, the Chinese government in July banned websites that host, promote or distribute mafia-themed games. “These games encourage people to deceive, loot and kill and glorify gangster life. They are a bad influence on youngsters,” said the Chinese ministry of culture.

The big questions being asked is what harm could these kinds of games do and should they be banned?

Craig Anderson and Douglas Gentile have explored this subject in their book published in 2007. Titled “Violent video game effects on children and adolescents,” the authors found that children’s exposure to even cartoonish violent games had the same short-term effect on increasing aggressive behaviour as the more graphic teen (T-rated) violent games.

In a study reported in the book, the authors found that respondents who had more exposure to violent video games held more pro-violent attitudes, had more hostile personalities, were less forgiving, believed violence to be more typical and behaved more aggressively in their everyday lives.

In another study, the authors found that children who played more violent video games early in the school year changed to see the world in a more aggressive way, and became more verbally and physically aggressive later in the school year — even after controlling for how aggressive they were at the beginning of the study. Thus, in a nutshell, yes, playing violent games like the one’s described above including others, has an adverse effect on the personality traits of the people.

Also, research studies have shown that violent video games are the most popular games bought. Harris Interactive, the US-based market research company says that, based on worldwide trends in video games' use, the addiction is real and on the rise. Within the US, 8.5 per cent of youth gamers (ages 8 to 18) can be classified as clinically ‘addicted’ to playing video games, particularly of the violent kind. Because of this, lots more violent games are being made. And each one is competing with the last one to be even more violent and appealing to more people.

Yet restricting the games to certain ages does not seem to work. For example, the Mortal Kombat and the doom series games are rated 18+ because of violence, blood and gore shown. But younger kids can easily lay their hands on such games. Even those targetted at five to 11 year olds are typically violent. Simpsons hit and run lets you run wild in a car and on foot and beat up people or ram their cars off the road. And it’s a popular game.

Well, should such games be banned? The answer may not be that simple. Says Stuart Miles, author of many articles and reviews on video games, “Video games, like movies, books, music and any other form of art, are there to be enjoyed not restricted.” He says that the video game industry, just like the film industry, is heavily regulated with a strict code of parental guidelines. Even consoles have parental controls. “Where the system goes wrong, however, is not that the video games are too violent, but that some parents believe it's okay to give their children 18-rated games even though they are well under that age,” says Miles.

In the end, it’s strong parental guidance and self-regulation by the industry, like in Japan, which can stop access of children to harmful games. Publicity on the harmful effects and information on why parents should not be indulgent on extreme violence in videos would probably make the difference, rather than the heavy hand of the law, like in China.

The writer is knowledge editor at Financial Chronicle and a doctoral scholar at Carnegie Mellon University, PA