A link between videogames and Anders Behring Breivik’s horrific killing spree in Norway last week has brought the issue of violence in videogames crashing into mainstream media once more.

In the words of Breivik, who prior to his killing spree wrote a 1,500 page manifesto entitled “2083, A Declaration of European Independence,” he described Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 as a “training-simulation more than anything else.”

"I just bought Modern Warfare 2, the game," wrote the mass murderer, who reportedly killed 94 people (at time of writing) in Norway on Friday.

"It is probably the best military simulator out there and it's one of the hottest games this year. ... I see MW2 more as a part of my training-simulation than anything else. I've still learned to love it though and especially the multiplayer part is amazing. You can more or less completely simulate actual operations.”

It would be crazy to suggest that a videogame was solely responsible for Breivik’s violence, but what these few sentences do indicate is that violent videogames can only be bad for people who are violently unstable, as Breivik obviously is. He clearly indicates that MW2 is part of “my training simulation”, suggesting that he has imagined himself conducting killings while playing the game. That's quite disturbing. However, his comparison between MW2 and real life operations is way off the mark - Breivik had no military experience to make such a judgement, and any gamer who has played the Call Of Duty franchise will know that it is nothing like a simulation. This suggests that Brevik must be living in a fantasy land, and sought excuses to fuel his inner rage and reasons to spur him onto carrying out the killing spree - MW2 was a just small part of that.

Of course, there’s a hundred-and-one different aspects to Breivik’s character that may have led to this dreadful disregard for human life, including family situations and his alleged connections with right wing Christianity. Usually though, videogames have been tenuously linked to crimes and murders – where we hear that a killer used to play a certain videogame, perhaps – but in this case Breivik clearly states that MW2 helped him in his plans. That alone will give pressure groups the ammunition to press forward with plans to try and censor future games, and they'll probably have more people on board than ever before, such is the scale of the devestation caused by Breivik. Do they have a point? Should videogames be toned down? Well, we can't recall any case that has such as strong link between a videogame and a real life act of violence, but we suspect that the debate will once again disappear into the background until another gamer does something awful.