The recent anniversary of the Columbine Massacre on April 20 served as a reminder of how easily videogames can take the blame following a burst of violence.

In the immediate aftermath of that caught-on-camera school shooting, talking heads took to the airwaves and newspaper columns to decry the effect of videogames on our impressionable youth -- much as previous pundits had blamed heavy metal, gangsta rap or comic books.

As if prior to DOOM, there had never been a school shooting, or if giving kids real-life air rifles and BB guns wasn't way more hardcore than virtual weaponry. Besides, despite the uproar over the gravestone-strewn 1976 arcade game Death Race, teenagers exactly didn't take to the streets to run over pedestrians any more than the Grand Theft Auto games caused a rise in carjackings or driving on the sidewalk. (I’m not a very patient videogame driver.)

In fact, as videogames have grown more and more violent over the past two decades, juvenile crime has dropped precipitously.

Earlier this month CNN tried to create a controversy when it discovered an out-of-print Japan-only violent sex game called RapeLay – “Turns out, Grand Theft Auto is as clean as Pac-Man compared to a new Japanese video game that’s out,” they wrote, knowing full well the game had come out in 2006 and was no longer being sold after an outcry in the western media a year earlier. Then, CNN fearmongered: “And the game's gone viral – people all over the world can play it,” also knowing full well their story would actually make people go seek it out.

Yes, the game is as gross and indefensible as it sounds, but as Kotaku pointed out, despite the existence of "hentai" sex games in Japan, the country has an low rate of sex crime compared to the western world. And as Grand Theft Childhood author Dr. Cheryl Olson told CNN, “one of my concerns is that kids generally never hear about this stuff unless it gets this kind of publicity.”

But these stories -- like 60 Minutes' 2005 GTA story which asked "Can a video game lead to muder?" -- always do generate this type of publicity because the powers that be in the mainstream media and government still don’t understand videogame culture. There is no real question that violent media can stimulate aggression, but it remains unclear of this serves as a pressure-valve release or creates spillover into the real-world.

As a recent episode of Pure Pwnage, "The Day The LAN Center Stood Still," tried to demonstrate, in its inimitable way, it was not gaming for 24-hours that sparked the frenzy of vandalism.

But the bigger point is whether or not videogames deserve different treatment from other forms of media like TV and movies. There’s a double-standard at play, much like NWA being savaged for "Fuck the Police" while Terminator’s cop-killing cyborg went on to become the governor of Caleeefornia. (Or, to return to the gaming sphere, Manhunt being criticized while movies like Saw and Hostel hardly merits a mention).

The what-about-the-children fear-mongering comes from folks who don't understand that videogames aren't just for children anymore. The average gamer age is continually rising – up to 35, according to the Entertainment Software Association – and therefore more mature-rated games are being created to serve that market.

But once enough elected officials and journalists are from a generation that grew up on videogames – and continued to play them into adulthood – the more the medium of videogames, violent or otherwise, can be viewed on par with other forms of modern entertainment.