Violence
Violence in video games is and always will be a huge concern to people, whether it be parents being unsure on whether it's okay for their child to be thrown into a world of gratuitous violence or whether they're going to end up being negatively influenced by it, though people have been influenced by it, it isn't common it's been found people have had negative actions after it.
In recent years the most popular games
have been big names such as Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto, these games are
mainly associated with murder, violence and crime, however there are many
points against these reasons, for example is ‘The Columbine High School
Massacre’ in 1999, in which two teenagers killed 13 people before committing
suicide, investigations showed that the two teens played the game ‘Doom’ in
which was a violent game, the media directly blamed the creators of the game,
but didn't consider the fact the teens were social outcasts and victims of
bullying.
These were 2 teens who played the game,
if everyone who played the game were violent after it, solid evidence could be
given.
Scientists Christopher Ferguson and Cheryl
Olson studied
377 American children, on average 13 years of age, from various ethnic groups
who had clinically elevated attention deficit or depressive symptoms.
Christopher Ferguson
of Stetson University
says; "We
found no evidence that violent video games increase bullying or delinquent behavior among
vulnerable youth with clinically elevated mental health symptoms.
Explicit Sexual Content
There are many games which can come with relatively sexual scenes which can induce things like nudity, sexual scenes and generally unwanted things for younger people.
With the aging of video games there's more that games can get away with, be it very lightly or excessive amounts of sexual content.
http://mashthosebuttons.com/2013/07/the-little-rating-that-couldnt/
This being an image from Saints row 4, a game that teeters on the amount of nudity it will show, although this scene does show it blurred out, there's far more sexual references and even sexual scenes, this could influence many people that aren't inoculated enough to know it isn't a normal thing to see.
(Be advised this includes scenes of sexual nature)
Abusive/Inappropriate language
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PEGI_bad_language.png
If you see the case of a video game with this pegi logo on it, you're in for lots of swearing wherever it's convenient, this can have a heavy impact on gamers that are younger than the pegi rating left on the game, due the high amounts of swearing in games, it can make some people more common and more used to swearing in a normal environment outside of a game.
"Xbox One users are slowly beginning to realize that Kinect is always listening, paying attention even during single-player modes, and coldly, silently judging anyone who uses more than their fair share of foul language. Specifically, someone noticed that, while playing NBA 2K14, swearing too much earns users a technical foul for bad language."
http://www.avclub.com/article/video-games-can-now-penalize-users-for-swearing-to-106149
it's now also used in xbox one's kinect to get people to swear less in-game as it might be too excessive to others and unwanted, being known to boot people from games for swearing too much.
Addiction
When someone plays a video game for the majority of their free time, people typically begin to think they're spending too much time on it, it's becoming excessive and bad for them, though there have been and still are many cases where people are spending far too long in their daily lives on it, some being in the case of wearing adult diapers, not eating correctly, more commonly people like myself losing sleep over it.
there can be times when people have become so addicted it's started to effect their social lives, how they react to modern lives, it can be extreme as violence, throwing tantrums, being rude to people around them.
(It's advised there's swearing in this.)
A video of a Dad shredding his sons games after playing them excessively, not getting a job, during the process being incredibly rude and screaming at his Dad, leading onto him screaming and pitifully attempting to put games back together in hopes of returning them to their original state.
This is an extreme showing of addiction to video games and what it can do to people who play it for far too long.
Stereotyping and Representation
a good example of stereotyping in video games would be the GTA franchise, such as black people commonly being in gangs, women commonly being found as prostitutes, which can be seen in most of the games.
This would lead people to assume some of these stereotypes are applicable in the real world, acting incorrectly around people who are what the stereotype is based on.
http://uk.complex.com/pop-culture/2012/05/the-15-most-stereotypical-characters-in-video-games/irish-red-dead-redemption
This post is very good at pointing out some of the stereotypes being used within different video games, such as a drunken Irish in Red Dead Redemption, half naked women brawlers in games like Street fighter, Mortal Kombat and Darkstalkers.
http://www.fanpop.com/clubs/gta-san-andreas/images/22793342/title/prostitutes-photo
Censorship
within gaming there's a certain level of censorship which is implemented in different countries, this could include the banning of the game Manhunt or Blood for being far too visual.
it can also include the choices the producers make in games to implement certain features or references in the game, this can include all the GTA games in the franchise choosing not to implement children in any of its scenes.