Our game criminal roundups are mostly a result of Google News alerts. It’s fair to say that a great majority of game related violence is not reported (assaults, petty robberies, and so on), or not noted as game related (not noting that a robbery was of a card game), or simply not carried on Google News.

What do we learn from a year of game related criminal activity?

  • We noted around 275 events over some 26 countries, including killing, wounding, robbery, theft, illegal gambling, child neglect, sexual assault, and assorted oddball cases.
  • Nearly all US activity was spread around different cities and towns in the 41 US states that we noted, with few places reporting more than one event. Cleveland, OH and Chicago, IL each featured a handful of events.
  • 67 events involved one or multiple killings; 52 of these were with guns. Guns featured in 123 events. Guns featured in roughly 5/8 of the armed events (robbery, wounding, killing, and other). 23 events involved knives or another stabbing implement.
  • 153 events were over card games. Dice, Dominoes, and Mahjong also featured well.
  • 6 events in Jamaica, all over Dominoes; 5 involved shootings. 10 events in China, most over Mahjong. China, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, and other countries in that area reported crackdowns on gambling.
  • All 3 events in Colorado were for sexual assault. All 12 events in Illinois were violent crimes.

Were all of these gambling related events? No. Many of the violent ones were, however.

How do these stats compare to video game-related or sports-related events in 2010? I don’t know. Does anyone keep stats? I ran  across a dozen or so video game-related neglect or assault cases over the year, but I wasn’t looking for them.