Violent crime, arson and car theft all dropped nationwide in 2008 compared to the prior year, according to the FBIās annual Uniform Crime Report.
But what does that mean to gamers?
In reality, it shouldnāt mean a thing. Crimes and the things that cause people to commit them are far too complex to compare to other statistics, like unemployment or demographics. But that doesnāt stop pundits, newspapers and politicians from doing just that every year.
Occasionally, a wacko will also try to roll out annual video game sales and draw some sort of correlation between the increase in video game purchases and the crime rate, be it juvenile arrests or violent crimes committed. It is, of course, utter nonsense. But itās also an interesting jumping off point for discussion and debateā¦ intelligent discussion and debate.
One word of warning, the numbers shown here, all pulled from NPD and the FBI, are meant to only show changes over time. They should not be used to compare totals because I had to re-fame the āper thousandsā on them to get all of the numbers (which range from the thousands to the billions) to show up on one chart.
Now have at itā¦ nicely.
