AP Did violent games influence Kimveer Gill, identified as the gunman who killed one person and wounded 19?

On Wednesday, he dressed in a black trenchcoat — like the Columbine killers — entered a college cafeteria and started firing a rifle, police said. In the end, one person was killed and 19 wounded. The shooter was killed by police.

Out of millions of gamers, few are killers and most aren't criminals. But as far removed as this episode was from the gaming mainstream, it still provides first-paragraph fodder for journalists and conjures associations — some would say tenuous — between real-life and pixelated violence.

Plenty of games from mainstream publishers depict realistic and violent situations, whether it's World War II or Vietnam simulations or gang battles in Grand Theft Auto. Meanwhile, smaller producers have made games that recreate JFK's assassination or let you drop bombs on the Ba'ath party aboard an FA/18 Hornet during the current Iraq war.

So where should game-makers draw the line, ethically? Is it OK to be on the allied side of World War II games but not to play a Nazi? Do realistic games desensitize players to real-life violence?

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GAMES ON THE EDGE

Jeff Gerstmann, senior editor of Gamespot.com, compared the spectrum of video games to the movie world, saying a taboo topic would be more likely to pop up in a student film than in a widely released popcorn flick. Further, he added that the independently produced Super Columbine Massacre game that Gill played is so far on the fringes of the gaming world that most players weren't even aware of it.

"This is a billion-dollar, mainstream, industry just like movies, just like music," he said. "The vast majority of people aren't out there doing horrible bad things and blaming it on video games."

Psychologists say games featuring real-life situations or the killing of humans can desensitize people to violence. And the fact that a potential killer could simulate a schoolhouse massacre on his computer before causing one in real life is troubling.

But games tackling taboo topics are likely to remain relegated to the fringes of the gaming world since a mainstream publisher would never create one, said industry observers. The industry group Entertainment Software Association wouldn't comment on the Montreal case.

"Not everyone's comfortable with doing a present-day theme, and I'm certain you'll never see a commercial game based on a tragedy like Columbine, the World Trade Center, that kind of thing," said Dennis McCauley, editor of gamepolitics.com, which probes the intersection between video games and politics.

Mainstream publishers tend to tackle real-life topics that are less taboo or more distant from the here and now. For example, there are more World War II games than Vietnam games. And McCauley and Gerstmann weren't aware of any mainstream games based on the Iraq war.

Most World War II games "are focusing on what's been generally accepted as the good guys, and I think that's the difference in maybe why people lash out at Grand Theft Auto. Sure the act is the same. You're shooting who in the game world is your enemy. It's just that in the World War II game, your enemy is Nazis. In the other game it's maybe a gang member or police."

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PLAYING THE PART

So is it dangerous for players to mimic soldiers, gang members or mass killers?

Psychologists say that the participatory nature of video games makes them different — and potentially more harmful — than passive forms of entertainment such as television or movies. Among the concerns of the American Psychological Association, which has called for a reduction in video-game violence, are rewards for violent acts in games, the repetition of violent acts and a closer identification with the violent characters gamers control in the games.

"It requires active participation, practicing violent effects. And rehearsal certainly impacts the effects of learning and intensifies it," said Dr. Elizabeth Carll, who heads the Interactive Media Committee of the American Psychological Association. The association is in discussions with the video game industry's ratings board on standards for violent content.

Carll said people exposed to violence in video games -- especially children -- are predisposed to aggressive thoughts and behavior. Whether this aggressiveness manifests itself as violent or criminal acts depends on a lot of other factors.

"Obviously not everyone who plays violent video games is going to go and shoot people," she said.

But video games are sometimes implicated when aggressive behavior spills over into violence. Devin Moore, convicted of killing two police officers and a dispatcher in Alabama, said upon his arrest in 2003, "Life is a video game. You've got to die sometime." The victims' relatives have filed a $600 million lawsuit against the makers of the Grand Theft Auto series.

A version of the quote attributed to Moore was posted on Gill's blog.

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asap reporter Jonathan Drew is based in New York.

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