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A counter point could be that playing violent games would allow people to vent out their aggression in a safe way so that they don't take it out on us. I am curious if there is a study that links playing (violent)sports with more violent tendencies, because the reasoning seems similar. Also it goes without saying correlation != causation(Just for fun please try http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations)

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There's some research that indicates that the "venting anger" theory leads to the opposite, i.e. more anger, not less.

[1] http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bbushman/PSPB02.pdf (quick google, there are certainly better and more up-to-date papers).

I skimmed through the paper and they used a punching bag for venting out frustration. I think that and video games are fundamentally different. Punching bag do not give you a sense of objective fulfillment which video games do. Also video games generally have group dynamics, even in quite a few of single player games. But agreeing with you on the broad point, other research papers do suggest that violent games increase aggression. Although another interesting link(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/08/violent-video-games... :the actual paper is behind a paywall) seems to suggest that it is not violence but our failure to master the game play that causes anger.

Would be interesting to figure out whether the different methods "used for venting out" anger make any difference. I do agree that playing a game is different from punching a bag though, takes more intellectual skills and such, yet I for one remain convinced that the problem persists – whether it's punching a bag or hunting bots.

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