Man, all these Black Friday doom-and-gloom commenters always crack me up. The media likes to perpetuate all the instances of stampedes and such, but the only reason they make the news is because they're so rare.
The only downside to Black Friday is waiting in long-ass lines for seemingly endless amounts of time. If you're grabbing a few games from Best Buy or Target, you'll find yourself in a line upwards of 15-20 minutes just to checkout-- and that's if they have their shit together and are processing everyone quickly.
I have never had to rush for products, get into a fight for an item, scrounge for leftover sale items, murder someone for that last TV, or witnessed anything similar to that-- and I'm in Metro Detroit, where most people would assume the rampage would be sky-high.
That said-- the deals have yet to sway me to step foot out of my home this year. The only reason I left last Thanksgiving was to grab a 60" TV (and managed that in less than an hour with no queuing , even with extremely limited stock), and I certainly won't bother going out of my way on the holiday to buy some games marked down a little bit. Shadow of Mordor and Evil Within are tempting at those prices, but that's it so far. Fingers crossed for Best Buy.