[Coda]

Originally Posted by Lawtan

(I was more responding to Salone's "people who torture NPC's for no reason are mentally unstable" thing than anything else. You are correct in your statement - I was stating that justifying it as something along real moral values is potentially flawed...I don't know if I typed that correctly)

So, as a query, with many people seeking improved realism and making real-life things based on fiction, is that healthy or obsessive?
(Not so much expecting an answer, but is a theme I am trying to look into.)

My guess -- though I don't have any studies to back it up -- is that it's healthy as long as moral feedback remains present and the cognitive separation of fantasy and reality remains intact. That said, I could easily imagine that a child playing a sufficiently realistic game (VR?) without moral feedback (earning points for doing evil things?) could gain some depersonalizing mental patterns.

Originally Posted by Den

There was a study done a few years back where they had participants play violent video games... They found that it actually made the participants more empathic, and better people overall.

That effect was only found in adults. A separate study showed that they heightened aggressiveness in children and that the effect lasted several hours, whereas the heightened aggression in adults only lasted a few minutes after the end of play.