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Has the author noticed it's not 2007 anymore? To find substantial video-game addiction stories, you now have to go find them. They are not a part of mainstream culture, especially the crazed gunman stories.

I'm not sure if things have changed all that dramatically in 8 years. Video games remain a convenient scapegoat for various societal ills.

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I haven't heard one media outlet claiming e.g. Dylann Roof was influenced by video games, and I think they would have a stronger case nowadays with games like Hatred on the market.

Dylann Roof is an atypical case. Not much was said about gun control either, which is unusual. The primary debate that was sparked was surrounding the Confederate battle flag(s).

What do you mean by "nowadays with games like Hatred on the market"?

What is special about Hatred? It wasn't a particularly violent game, it just got propelled into notoriety by demagoguery and the developers' guerrilla marketing. It's a near verbatim clone of Postal, and that came out in 1997.

That's because society as a whole isn't mentally capable of assigning more than one salient feature to an event.

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