No problem. Crossposting your post and my reply here:

Can you say with certainty that our perceptions are not at least somewhat shaped by the media we watch/play? It's very clear that they can, since advertising is very big business.

Of course they can. However, there's a huge gap between things like shaping, or influencing, and causing specfic actions, or bearing blame for the acts of individuals who are of age and otherwise sound mind.

I think your argument about permanent death isn't really on the mark. Nobody sees a movie or plays a game (except for maybe the very young) and think that the actors or the characters are actually dying. That doesn't make the world 'delusional'.

Hence the reference to "reductio ad absurdum". I'm alleging it is just as ludicrous to assume that the Chief, or any game or film character, is "really dying" than it is to assume that other characters the player shoots are *not really dying* because they respawn. Two sides of the same coin. Also, the presumed remedy to the judge's criticism is that, to be socially responsible, a game must implement permanent death, at least for targets of the player's violence-- since to allow them to resurrect, by any method whatsoever, creates the "delusional" environment, since the normally one-way arrow of death has been reversed. Why should the player be exempted from this?

Death by murder isn't something most people experience firsthand, unless you have gone off to war. So, I think a lot of people's understanding of murder at least comes somewhat from the media in which murder is featured.

Technically I think it's not usually called "murder" when it is within the context of a legally declared war, but your point is taken. The vast majority of people, myself included, experience these concepts in a mediated way, through news and entertainment.

A friend of mine, by no means delusional, joined the army. By his own admission, he joined because he not only wanted to serve his country, but was good at FPS games, and felt he would also be good at the real thing. He understood the difference between fantasy and reality, but I have no doubt in my mind that video games influenced his perceptions of violence, combined with the media's coverage of the war. In fact, the army is using video games as recruiting tools, not because people are so crazy they can't tell the difference between what's real and not, but because people ARE subtly influenced by how subjects are treated in the media they experience.

The gap between "influence" and "cause" is a yawning chasm, however.

To draw a parallel with the judge's comments, your friend would have had to believe he could heal himself by picking up a cardboard box with a red cross on it, or that he could rack up a kill ratio of hundreds if not thousands to one with minimal support from his compatriots, or any one of any other unrealistic feats that are included within video games, which are at best rough approximations even when they are portraying "real life" environments and situations, as many WW2 titles do, as opposed to fictions woven from whole cloth, like the Halo series.

I have no beef with criticism of media based on social effects. However, most of the major media stories on the topic that get play are grievously flawed and extreme. They aren't about "hey, let's encourage games to be more nuanced and include a broader range of human experience than they do" it's "my kid can't possibly be as stupid/evil as to have done the thing he's clearly chosen to do, so the *influence* of media and games must be to blame". Lazy thinking and lazy parenting. I'd rather not be in the position of defending an industry that more often than not produces shallow bulletfests bereft of artistic merit. When the critics stop being as one-dimensional as the games they attack, I'll be able to drop that.

Some movies explore the meaning of violence in a meaningful way. Some other movies do not and use it to entertain. If you primarily watched movies, or played games that were in the former category, don't you think your perception of it would be more sophisticated than someone who watched primarily media from the latter?

Sure! Now, what shall we do-- ban those in one category as opposed to the other?

Does that mean that a game that considers violence in a meaningful way cannot be blamed for any influence it might have, but a game that does not consider it in a meaningful way can be? Who is the arbiter of what "meaningful" is?

A lot of rhetoric asking for better, deeper, more contextualized themes in games or films are really coded requests for politically correct treatment of those topics. So, a war movie that shows pain and suffering and condemns war for it is good, while one that glorifies it and urges war is bad. One may accurately state that entertainment products are not the best places for people to get their value judgments from on a topic such as this, but neither am I willing to let the legally community predetermine those judgments, somehow exposing the "bad" category of art products to liabilities that do not affect the "good" category.

That's just for normal people. ESPECIALLY if you really are mentally ill, then the media that shapes your perceptions of violence will have a much bigger impact on your attitude towards it.

This also is often considered and I think it's a red herring. If you are mentally incompetent, then you have a legal guardian who is responsible for your care and conduct and should be filtering the media the person consumes. If one's illness does not rise to the level of incompetence, then tough titties. I don't think anybody ought to be expected to produce content that is deemed "safe" for those who are mentally ill and might be affected in a way that is different, either in degree or kind, from the way a so-called "normal" person might be affected.

I am NOT blaming Halo one bit, but I will criticize it and many many other games for not even trying to explore or contextualize the violence that's at the core of its gameplay.

Halo's violence doesn't have a context?

Humanity isn't being exterminated by a conglomeration of zealot races who believe their gods demand jihad? The Prophets aren't protecting their power and privilege by concealing the truth of humanity's special place in the galaxy, and ordering their destruction to keep that secret? The Elites aren't justified in their violence against the Brutes, the Prophets, and their supporters by the murder of Elites on the council (ordered by the Prophets, undertaken by the brutes) also in service of promoting the prophets' agenda, preserving their power, and protecting the secret of humanity?

If that's not a context I don't know what one is.