Cologne (Germany) (AFP)

Video games responsible for shootings in the United States and elsewhere? Consumers and professionals gathered this week at Gamescom, one of the largest in the industry in the world, defend accusations lately including Donald Trump.

The US president held video games partly responsible for the killings that killed 31 people in Texas and Ohio in early August.

"We need to put an end to the glorification of violence in our society (...) This includes the horrific and horrifying video games that are now commonplace," Trump said in the wake of two shootings that shocked United States. In 2018, after a slaughter in Parkland, he even accused video games of "changing the thoughts of younger".

Without going that far, the World Health Organization (WHO) last year recognized as a disease the "video game disorder", namely the persistent and addictive use of these games.

- "Theories without proofs" -

"As a player, you're used to hearing this type of criticism but I'm not careful because it's not serious," said 22-year-old Celina Bausch, speaking of "theories without proof".

Manga in hand, she waits her turn to test the latest version of "Call of Duty" series of famous video games shooting in situations of war and presented at the Gamescom show in Cologne, which ends on August 24 .

The goal in these games is "not to kill to kill but to privilege tactical progression" echoes Tim Köhler, 21, another fan of the same game.

For Julien Villedieu, general delegate of the National Union of Video Game (SNJV), representing the French industry, "reducing video games to violence is a mistake: from the moment it is proposed as part of a context, offered with a number of alternatives, we can consider that it is part of the universe "of the game.

- Catharsis -

From the beginning, the video game industry has been singled out for its supposedly harmful consequences on the behavior of users, especially young people.

In the United States, critics have been particularly intense after games such as Wolfenstein 3D (1992) and Doom (1993), popularizing the genre of violent shooter games in the first person.

They continued after the killing of Columbine High School (13 deaths) in 1999, committed by two teenagers who could spend up to 15 hours a day in video games or that of high school Marjory Stoneman Douglas in 2018 (17 dead).

"The argument of Donald Trump is totally outdated.It is more than 20 years since studies on violence in video games and movies have completely deconstructed this argument," says AFP Pascaline Lorentz, sociologist and gender specialist .

"These studies say that there is no causal link between violence in games and violent acts perpetrated by players," she adds.

The violent games would even have a cathartic dimension, she says: "Letting go a good shot, it feels good.The body cries, screams, runs, strikes to get out some negative emotions. 'emotional and sensory balancing that is dangerous'.

The amateur of "shooting games" Tim Köhler is also surprised by the mis en cause: "We play worldwide video games but the main shootings occur in the United States. problem otherwise ".

Comparatively, in pioneering countries like Japan, where Nintendo, Sega or Sony, or South Korea, countries that spend more per capita on video games than the United States, such dramas are rare.

© 2019 AFP