As people who play games, we often take the notion that games don’t correlate to real-life violence for granted. But what’s the science behind that statement? How did we get there? To learn more, I spoke with Villanova University professor of psychology Patrick Markey, co-author of the 2017 book Mortal Kombat: Why the War on Violent Video Games Is Wrong.

Like most of the country, all of us at Waypoint spent the last month processing the horror of yet another school shooting, while simultaneously admiring the bravery of the student survivors from Parkland, Florida rising up, demanding change, and pushing back.

In the lead up to this weekend’s March for Our Lives event, Waypoint is publishing a series of stories this week about gaming’s relationship with guns. To be clear, we’re not suggesting playing games, even violent games, causes real-life violence, but as Austin said in a piece earlier from today, “that doesn’t mean that the way guns and violence are portrayed in our favorite hobby cannot test our consciousness or that we cannot be critical of their depiction.”

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