Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2007 in the subject Business economics - Information Management, grade: 2:1, University of West Scotland, course: Professional, Legal and Ethical Issues in IT, language: English, abstract: From humble beginnings in the late 1970s, when they were considered to be a passing fad and catered mostly to a niche of technology lovers, the video game industry has mushroomed and now caters to a huge market worth $7.1 billion in the United States alone. However, despite this level of popularity and the fact that video games are fast eclipsing Hollywood as the premier entertainment industry, the amount of research that has gone into the effects of games is still insignificant. The purpose of this paper, then, is to investigate existing research into this field, and see if there is any basis behind the reasoning that video games actually promote violence in real life, or whether this is just a tide that has caught on due to sensationalist reporting.