Video Games Share Blame in Florida Murder Case

EH writes "Yet another article making the case that video games force young children to ruthlessly bludgeon people to death. Or at least a South Florida lawyer thinks so. 'Whatever happened [in JoLynn's death], it was not murder,' Thompson wrote in a news release. 'The American video industry must share the blame.' Articles like this make me so angry." I'm really getting sick of video games being used as the scapegoat for the evils of society. It's not like Nintendo is blamed everytime an Italian becomes a plumber.

Comments

Video games don't force people to do anything

[PurpleFloyd]

Remember that videogames don't force you to do anything. Only someone who is deeply disturbed lacks the ability to differentiate between fantasy (like a computer or console game) and reality. This reminds me of the '80s worries over D&D "cults" that would supposedly do crazy stuff to people because it was in D&D. Not gonna happen, unless someone's fairly far out there already.

One other thing: I hear a lot about videogames training kids to be killers. Again, not gonna happen. While some videogame skills might transfer over to the real world, most don't. Nobody who plays Quake for 8 hours a day picks up any marksmanship skills at all, any more than playing Tetris prepares you for a job in mail-order packaging. Besides, anyone playing games obsessively will lack the physical fitness necessary in a combat environment. Videogames are for the most part designed to be unrealistic to a degree; apart from hardcore sim-heads, those kinds of games are seen as boring and don't sell. While small amounts of realism make a game fun (think Counterstrike), large amounts simply consist of players doing boring, repetitive things (just like in the real world). Games don't train anyone to be a killer.

Re:Video games don't force people to do anything

[kamapuaa]

Remember that videogames don't force you to do anything. Only someone who is deeply disturbed lacks the ability to differentiate between fantasy (like a computer or console game) and reality.

That's why the typical argument (I play video games, and I've never killed people) fails. Most people who are going to kill are deeply disturbed. The argument is whether the video games bring out latent homocidal tendencies. Culture can have negative effects on people's behavior.

An extreme example: people saw the movie "Birth of a Nation." The majority liked it for the spectacle and the new cinematic techniques. However, others siezed on the racist content, the KKK re-formed, and lynchings and increasingly racist laws happened. That's an extreme example just to prove the point that culture can directly have a negative effect.

Another example is music. A number of individuals were encouraged to try drugs by hippie culture, which was defined by music. A number of individuals consciously modeled themselves after gangsta stereotypes after hearing gangsta rap, and lived a lifestyle that just doesn't have a place in the Great Society. (Similarly, I've listened to "Sgt. Pepper's" and "Straight Outta Compton", but I've never shot a policeman on acid (me, not the cop))

On the opposite end, obviously a lot of culture really is harmless.

But I don't think it's unreasonable to question culture's ability to influence events - and if it's unhealthy, to restrict it.

Flame away :)

Are games a cause, or a symptom?

[deek]

You've got to ask yourself ... is playing violent video games the cause, or a symptom? If the young children are brought up in a repressive family environment, I can surely imagine that they would play violent video games to work off their negative emotions.

Personally, I can't imagine ANYONE being influenced to actual violence through games, unless they had some underlying problem in the first place. In that case, surely it would be better to treat the problem, instead of blaming the game. Maybe people are too frightened of discovering the cause, lest it be themselves.

DeeK

Re:Violent video games don't kill people...

[Babbster]

Good points all.

Here's a quote from the article that I found significant:

"Mickey Mishne said his daughter had invited Lynch to stay at their home because she felt sorry for him."

First of all, why would a parent (either that of the girl OR the boy) let a teenaged boy and girl cohabitate? It's a recipe for uncomfortable situations at the least and teen pregnancy at the worst - admittedly, murder wouldn't have leapt into my head as a possibility.

Second, why did the girl feel sorry for him? Was it poor social skills, bad home environment or what? If it was the former, how would that translate to inviting the kid to be a "houseguest"? If it was the latter, wouldn't a call to child protective services (or whatever it's called in their area) be more appropriate?

Finally, I would note that the video game argument seems impossible to maintain here. This wasn't an act of revenge or similar like Columbine (where I still felt the relationship was bogus but maybe closer). This was an obviously disturbed individual who it sounds like entered a state of rage and acted out physically on that emotion - unfortunately, it happens all the time, even to full-grown adults who play ZERO video games.

The video game argument is being offered not in any attempt to help a young kid who may need psychiatric help. It's being offered in order to raise the profile of an attorney who has decided that he wants this to be his criminal defense niche. I expect that he'll propose this defense every time anyone under 30 commits a violent crime and has a history of playing video games.

Lawyers...Gotta love 'em.

Had a thought

[Tyreth]

We know that in times past, gladiator sports were popular. We often look back on the idea of men fighting to the death as a bad thing, and find it abhorrent that people could stand by and watch. Same with executions in the middle ages.

Yet these computer games, we do exactly the same thing. Imagine 100 years from now if violence was removed from games. People will look back on the mindless violence we participate in in a similar way to how we perceive those who enjoyed gladiator sports.

Now you and I would argue that computer games don't accurately represent reality (but we're getting close), but more importantly we don't actually watch someone die - we just imagine it.

I think that violence is something inescapable, ultimately. Men (and I refer here to males, not mankind) love violence. In small or large doses. Most here have probably participated in fights with friends - wrestling, etc, in a show of strength. To me, I think that violence is an innate part of our nature - whether we participate in reality or in computer games.

I reason then, that computer games help reduce violence, not increase it. One can release their frustration in a less harmful manner through computer games. Without computer games, a person fosters thoughts of violence in their mind with no outlet.

Just a thought.

Re:C'est~la~America

[rempelos]

In Germany they do that with everything, not only video games, this way they are trying to expose their youth (And the big difference is that they do not blame the game industry for their violence of the youth, rather the way they raise them and the idols that they look up to.

Yegads.

[offpath3]

I think the thing that shocked me is that the victim's father wanted the murder to get a lighter sentence! "Gee, it wasn't poor little Dustin who brutally slaughtered my daughter by stabbing her multiple times. It was the video games."

What the hell kind of parent is that?

Yes, yes, so knee-jerk

[k8to]

You all say, of course, that video games are not causing people to murder folks, and it's true that the video-game blamers are a shrill bunch.

But have any of you stopped to wonder why it is that video games are often so violent?

Sure, tension is a good element to a storyline or scene, and games fall along those lines like a short comic book or a single action sequence in a movie, but the majority of videogames involve beating, maiming, and killing (from cartoony to graphicaly unpleasant) as their main activity in an endless way. Is this the nature of the medium, or is there a choice being made here (perhaps without considering it.)

Also, how about the drift from cartoony cute conflict towards the GHOUL engine from Raven Software where you can shoot off people's arms and have them realistically bleed and/or fail to function (which game is this again?) Sure, increasing graphics capability and sophisticated programming makes this possible, but doesn't it make nearly infinitely many other things possible as well?

I guess what I'm saying is the video-game blamers are often ill-considered and poorly reasoned, but they're not inventing this stuff from whole cloth, and it might be something that could actually be improved for the good of the game industry and the gamers both, nevermind the sideline nannypants whingers.

Anvils!

[Anonymous Coward]

I challenge you to find, in the history of mankind, one murder that involved the criminal dropping an anvil on the victim's head. I think I was about 15 years old before I learned that an anvil had a purpose other than for dropping on an unsuspecting road runner. The Road Runner and Coyote cartoons feature extreme violence, yet even the most deranged killers have never attempted to kill someone by dropping an anvil on their victim's head. So don't waste your time looking on Google. I've searched on anvil and murder. It's never happened. Why? Because it happened in a cartoon. It's not real. And just because someone plays a gun wielding maniac in a video game doesn't make him one in real life. The kid in this article was screwed up long before he ever touched a joystick. Enough about this, I am too busy waiting for a package from ACME.