Gaming’s Whacked Out Week: Video Games Don’t Make You Violent, But Hot Sauce Can Make You an Ass

The media, as we know, hates violent video games. We're not going to generalize and/or just pull stupid claims out of our asses here, but have you ever fired a gun in Call of Duty? Or ran down a pedestrian in your stolen ice cream truck in Grand Theft Auto, while it plays a jangly rendition of The Baby Elephant Walk? Because if you have, you're a dangerous, crazy, crazy bastard, and we don't want to play with you at recess any more.

Piss-takery aside, there's no denying that games always get a terrible rap. Mostly from elderly journalists who wouldn't know a game console if it punched them in the balls. Which of course it would, because video games are just asses like that.

What these guys need is some evidence, via actual science, that virtual violence is really bad for us. But hey, until something credible comes along, why shouldn't they just dick around with air horns and hot sauce?

This week, Kotaku brought us the latest investigation into a possible link between video games and murder. It features the deeply demented ‘hot sauce paradigm,' in which:
'...participants prepare a cup of chilli sauce for another (fictional) participant. The more hot sauce they put in the chilli, the more aggressive they are deemed to be, and some studies have shown that people who are asked to play violent video games beforehand use more hot sauce."

Right. Of course. Nothing screwy there. It also works with air horns, we're told. Hit the link for the full story.