Unsurprisingly it didn’t take long for the gamer-haters to start blaming videogames for the awful event at Virginia Tech this week. Belittling the deaths and straying from the bigger and more important argument of gun ownership, the usual suspects; plus some new ones, used the awful incident to get some extra publicity.

Only hours after 61 people were shot, with 33 of them being fatal, the media had already began reporting that videogames were the cause. Jack Thompson took his chance to make his political point on the news a mere four hours after the massacre, and even TV psychologist Dr. Phil McGraw had a little dig at the gaming industry and its influence on the minds of today.

Speaking on Larry King Live, he said, “We are programming these people as a society. Common sense tells you that if these kids are playing videogames, where they're on a mass killing spree in a video game, it's glamorised on the big screen, it's become part of the fiber of our society. You take that and mix it with a psychopath, a sociopath or someone suffering from mental illness and add in a dose of rage, the suggestibility is too high." He continued to say “we're going to have to start dealing with that. We're going to have to start addressing those issues and recognising that the mass murders of tomorrow are the children of today that are being programmed with this massive violence overdose.”

As PSPSPS reported yesterday however, negative press helps market some games, so aren’t these people simply helping to promote the hobby they despise so much?

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