If you're a member of a gaming clan online, a new study suggests you're more prone to socially harmful behaviour – especially if you play Call of Duty. Researchers surveyed more than 1,000 US gamers on their beliefs and personality traits, as well as their level of'identity fusion' with other gamers. Identity fusion is a psychological phenomenon that causes a deep sense of alignment with a group or cause, and is particularly prevalent among gamers. The researchers found links between identity fusion and multiple undesirable traits, including sexism, racism and recent aggressive behaviour. The research also found that specific gaming communities – namely, Call of Duty players – can encourage'strongly fused' gamers to embrace anti-social tendencies more than others.

How likely are you to read a 39-page document about the "health" of the internet? But listening to the return of excellent tech podcast IRL is definitely our idea of a good time. Its new season tackles AI-related issues, including the unethical use of artificial intelligence in surveillance, and the problematic way it creates bias in healthcare. This content is also something that its creators, Mozilla, have – in previous years – published as a gargantuan Internet Health Report. Evidence, if ever you needed it, of podcasts' ability to create a hooky listen out of even the most technical of subjects.

Over the last two years, in a protracted and devastating #MeToo movement for the video games industry, hundreds of women have spoken out about the manipulative and predatory behaviour they have experienced in their video game careers. A 2018 investigation by games website Kotaku led to legal action at California developer Riot Games, where five former employees sued the company over workplace harassment and discrimination and hundreds more joined walkouts to protest. The company promised to overhaul its workplace culture and a settlement was made in 2019. Then, last summer saw a wave of stories on Twitter about people in the games industry generally being plied with drinks and pressured into sex at industry parties, belittled and gaslit at work by male bosses, stalked, groomed, harassed, or treated with contempt when a senior man's advances were spurned. In the past month there has been another surge of allegations against men from all areas of the video game world - developers to the games media, Twitch streamers and YouTubers to competitive players.

Gaming culture is rife with graphic representations of gun violence and has been since arcade goers first blew aliens out of Space Invader's skies. You'll be hard-pressed to find more than a handful of AAA titles designed for adults (sit down Rayman) that don't rely on firearms, or use gore in substitution, either as a primary tool for the gameplay or as a thematic element. While firearms have been a mainstay in video games since the mid '70s, few games have cemented their position in popular culture than 1993's pioneering first person shooter, Doom. Not only did Doom bring the FPS genre into mainstream gaming culture, they also helped to normalize a level of gore not often seen since 1988's Turbografx 16 hit, Splatterhouse, one of the first games to ever carry a parental warning label. Doom's influence is clear in nearly every game in the genre.

Whenever an artist scheduled to play Qudos Bank Arena at Sydney Olympic Park doesn't sell enough tickets, the venue tactfully drapes black cloth over the empty seats in the theatre's uppermost section. Filling more than 18,000 seats is quite an ask, which is why only top-flight acts like Pink, Katy Perry, Shania Twain and Kendrick Lamar are attempting it in coming months. The black cloth is not needed today. Sydney gaming enthusiasts have filled the venue almost to capacity for the Intel Extreme Masters (IEM), a three-day professional video game tournament that rivals anything Qudos has hosted in terms of scale and spectacle. Two groups of five men are onstage, seated at computer monitors.

Following the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, responsible for the loss of 17 lives, Donald Trump held a meeting at the White House. Seemingly intended to disabuse the nation of the imminent threat of semi-automatic weapons, the president shifted attention to other possible culprits: violent video games. He said: "I'm hearing more and more people say the level of violence on [sic] video games is really shaping young people's thoughts." Considering he couldn't maintain focus on violent games for a full speech, let alone a news cycle, it's a challenge to muster concern about what Trump's bluster means for the future of the medium. Nor is the fate of the video game industry as pressing as the fate of the nation's populace, whose lives will remain in real peril, so long as Trump and his supporters continue to turn the conversation away from dramatic change in the commercial gun industry.