Gory Games Stir Controversy

The object of Duke NukEm is simple: annihilate alien invaders. The video game boasts it's complete with strippers, adult language, and violence.

It was a top seller last year and an example, says a national watchdog group, of a rise in a small core of ultra-violent video games glorifying torture, blood and guts, reports CBS News Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson.

"I don't think we should call them games. What they are more accurately called are 'kill-for-fun murder' simulations," says David Walsh of the National Institute on Media and the Family.

Parents know their kids are drawn to the super-violent games. And even though they praise the industry's ratings system, those ratings are nowhere to be found on many bloody games accessible to children on the Internet.

Senator Joseph Lieberman even connects violent games to recent school shootings. "These games and their awful ads are part of a cumulative toxic culture of violence that is enveloping our children," says Lieberman.

The video game industry admits some games are inappropriate, even offensive, but argues that there's been aggressive imagery in children's stories for hundreds of years.

The same debate that has raged over television shows and movies has now made its way to the computer game arena. And like television and film, this industry insists it's up to parents to decide what, exactly, gets into their children's brains.

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