The first thing I think about this whole plan that Obama is setting up is that the CDC is hardly an unbiased source, and no matter who does these studies, they still have idiots trying to sway them. In 2010 during the Brown VS EMA Supreme court, an extremist Right wing Pro-family, anti-violent games group sent an Amicus Brief to the court that cited known lies and hoaxes such as the "Doom Will Become reality Hoax" (debunked here), the Claim Eric Carneal got better at firing a real gun just by playing Doom (debunked here), and that the Military uses FPS games to break down the inhibition to kill (debunked here, by someone in the military). There is always someone trying to get their agenda through, and this attempt by this group from the midwest was clearly an attempt to Hijack the Supreme Court with bogus crap to try to make them vote the other way, which would have lead to an effective ban of violent games not just to minors, but to adults too. (Read up on articles I wrote about Brown Vs EMA to understand why).
The CDC are hardly in a qualified position to know what is true and what is faked in the "evidence" department. They handle "infectious diseases" not fact checking about violent games. In fact 99% of the nonsense spread about violent games is fake. There are literally hundreds of news article making up crap about violent games that very few people have looked through them to see that they are false. And after School shootings, especially Columbine, Fabricated Evidence was used to demonize games, in the form of hoaxes including the doom will become reality hoax, but there was a far more sinister hoax in place involving 3 articles, one from Denverpost.com, one from Rocky Mountain News, and another from Times Magazine all claiming Harris customized doom to be used to simulate the Massacre with (with begging students). This version supposedly had features doom could not do at that time, including a second shooter (friendly AI, Impossible to create for Doom mods in 1999). It also supposedly had begging students that scream quotes, but the quotes said varied from article to article, and so did how they begging students said the quote (one said screaming, the other said begging). And it also supposedly had the ability for either student to die when running out of bullets (impossible to program in doom then, no source code to actually do this, it would be needed to do it right), and no other way of doing it as well, no editing program then allowed you to do this, dehacked didn't, editing tools did't, etc. The thing is that each article mentioned some of these but only one mentioned the last, the first printed one, the one from Times Magazine. The next mentions the begging students and the second shooter, and then the third mentions the begging students only. It's like 3 different newspapers all conspired to fake evidence to make doom like it contributed to the shooting, using ideas that would be in a school shooting simulator, as the supposed modified versions features, when the game couldn't have allowed the modder to make such a mod in the first place...
Now it's possible, but only because of the source code (released after columbine), allowed source ports that support extensive scripting languages to code this thing into mods. Back then no source port even had scripting language support. How do I know all of this? I have edited doom since 1994. I am an ACS wiz, I know how to program, I have spend my free time since 1996 learning how to mod the game and make levels for it as well. My Point is that someone will try to slip bogus information to the CDC. Who is there to see through it? Something needs to be done... I just don't know what yet...
If they allow people to persuade them that all of this info I have debunked is true (and there are hundreds of websites saying it is), we would have a situation where special interest groups who are biased against violent games decide the outcome of a study using false data, leading to more legislation... This could be disastrous. If you think they will only use this stuff, then you are wrong. What nonsense will they make up for this? These falsifications are very deceiving, there is very little data to prove that they are engineered, and none of the people looking at them in the CDC are Video game players, who know that the Doom hoax with the three articles can't be true. Who is there to balance this out? No one... That's why it's scary.
All this takes is some false data being brought to the attention of the CDC, something they cannot debunk, and it spirals out of control. Enough false data that is set up to make it look like School Shooters train on violent games or are influenced by them would lead to the CDC saying that there is a link between gun crimes and violent games. Then comes the legislation of morality causing violent games to be in the cross hairs of the groups who aren't satisfied with a mere restriction to adults, they want the industry GONE by any means necessary. So that means bans of violent games to adults as well... Then comes the idiots who think that gamers are the cause of school shootings and they would be targeted next. It's already happening, Leland Yee said some crappy remarks about gamers recently, like we only care about "our lust for violence", and we need to "shut up". This is a nightmare waiting to happen...
Just in case the people who have been shutting down sites (like the second one that proved the doom will become reality hoax was just that, a hoax) that debunk this nonsense here are screenshots proving the debunking still exists once they get shut down:
First the Post on the Design Synthesis blog debunking the claim that the military uses Violent FPS games to break down the inhibition to kill.
Now the image of the supposed "Eric Harris" Aol Site that says "On April 21'st Doom Will Become Reality" (not April 20'th....)
And now a screenshot ofthe site dedicated to all things related to the Columbine Massacre that Debunks this hoax (acolumbinesite.com/ericpage.html):
Just incase the video gets taken down or people want a quick explanation. According to Reports, Micheal Carneal fired 8 individual but quick shots with a semi automatic pistol. He shot 8 students, all in the head or the chest, and People in the extremist right wing groups quoting the nonsense that he learned this from Doom are idiots, for Doom has the thing where you fire the guns in the game, holding down the fire button makes every gun, even a single fire gun like a shotgun fire multiple shots as the fire button on the mouse is held down... This is how doom "trains" fans to react..... (Trains is a bad word, but just go with me on this one)...
Carneal did not do this, because it said he brought 2 rifles, a shotgun, and a semiautomatic pistol into the school. None of those weapons are Full Auto the kind needed to replicate the way doom makes it so when you hold down the fire button more shots keep on firing. Semi automatic merely means that the clip for the gun holds more than one shot and the weapon can fire multiple shots before reloading... Nothing to do with this behavior, that only a full auto weapon can do, like a military grade assault rifle. Also Doom cannot simulate recoil, which all weapons had, so if he tried the "methods" doom "train" you to do in real life he would be aiming at the wrong place and would miss over and over again in the best case, or the gun would spiral out of control at the worst case, depending if he used a pistol (best case) or a full auto rifle (worst case).
