Warriors Of Freedom Prompted Rampage Attempt?

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to a Philadelphia Inquirer article linking videogames to an alleged spree killing attempt. According to the article, "Investigators suspect the three teens arrested.. as they allegedly were about to launch a killing rampage in the small town, found inspiration in violent computer games.. [police] learned that the name the three reportedly had given themselves - Warriors of Freedom - is also an Internet-based combat game." But only a few media reports mention that the violent game connection was made by Jack Thompson, a Miami lawyer and outspoken critic of violent video and computer games - is this a case of shameless Googling to find any obscure game with a similar name and make a connection, or is there genuine evidence here?

Comments

Boo to the media

[egg troll]

It seems to me that poverty and easy access to firearms is much more of a cause of violence than videogames. All videogames do is occasionally have the misfortune to draw some violent people to them (although only a small percentage of videogame players are sociopathic, mind you.)

I just wish the media would give these causes as much airtime as they do trumped-up, sensationalistic stories.

Warriors of Freedom...

[Ikari Gendou]

Is a freaking browser based RPG. I'd have to say this is a pretty thin stretch of a Googling if I've seen one.

This whole thing makes my brain hurt.

Warriors of Freedom?

[syr]

The article mentions that the youths were obsessed with Warriors of Freedom. I've never heard of the game so I did some googling and this is what I've come up with so far. Warriors of Freedom is apparently a browser-based RPG which involved the leveling up of fantasy themed characters who are either evil or good. So in essence its like any other RPG out there.

It appears that the official website for the game is either at this clan server or at this game company. Google returns the fact that Warriors of Freedom RPG is now ... "The Guardians of Har". So maybe the Alternative Games company changed the name of their moderately popular browser-based RPG.

It's interesting that these youths would be corrupted by a simplistic browser RPG. Most previous stories of this type involve games such as Doom or Counter-Strike or sniping in Halo. I guess we might be able to assume that these youths didn't need the first person perspective to corrupt their perspective of reality.

This Columbine article quotes Jack Thompson (the attorney who brought up the video game connection) as saying "We intend to hurt Hollywood. We intend to hurt the video game industry. We intend to hurt porn sites". Mr. Thompson has tried suing the video game companies, tried pressuring Best Buy and Wal-Mart to not carry certain titles and tried to get a bill introduced to outlaw mature video games being sold to minors.

I don't believe that video games caused these youths to go beserk. So I will continue playing games and wondering what exactly is wrong with Jack Thompson.

The most amusing thing is,

[Sevn]

That strictest anti-gun states have the highest
crime and murder rates. Neat how that works out.

Japan and Judas Priest

[MsGeek]

Japanese mass media (TV, movies, etc) are perhaps the most violent of all "First World" media. Exhibit A, Exhibit B, just to give but two examples.

However, the murder rate in Japan is currently hovering at one in 100,000, where the murder rate in the US is at 7.7 in 100,000. This does not count suicides though, which have gotten hideously high (18 in 100,000) in Japan. However, I haven't seen people blaming violent movies for suicides. Judas Priest, maybe. Not violent movies. At least not yet.

"Warriors of Freedom" is a text-based RPG

[Animats]

That game doesn't have any visual violence. It doesn't have any visuals. It's a text-based role-playing game. It's not even a product. It's someone's toy web site.

Bowling for Columbine has some answers

[Paddyish]

"Bowling for Columbine," Michael Moore's bittersweet masterpiece, explores this issue (and many others) in depth.

For better answers and more questions on violence in the American culture, watch this film.

Re:My take on videogame violence.

[Ignorant Aardvark]

I beg to differ, Ignorant Aardvark. A possible outcome is: "Blecch! Rotten food! The world spins and goes dark." After which you could be killed by the kitten.

This is perhaps the most geekiest argument ever, but let's delve a bit deeper into this. I quote from the Nethack 3.4.1 source code eat.c line 1184...:

} else if(!rn2(3)) {
... snip ... pline_The("world spins and %s %s.", what, where);
flags.soundok = 0;
nomul(-rnd(10));
nomovemsg = "You are conscious again.";

Eating a rotten corpse can indeed cause 1d10 turns of "helplessness".

And now from line 1277 of the same source file:
if (!tp && mnum != PM_LIZARD && mnum != PM_LICHEN &&
//Call rotted food function
(The comment is my own to avoid the lameness filter).

Rotted corpses can have negative effects such as blindness and helplessness except for when the corpse is of the lizard or lichen variety. I mistakenly thought that jelly fit into one of these categories; indeed, it does not. Eating jelly can lead to death by kitten during helplessness. I was wrong.

Re:does it matter?

[The_dev0]

I'm assuming you're Australian. The secret biological weapon against cane toads: Dettol. Splash some of that on 'em and they smoke and melt into a little puddle. I keep a water pistol full of Dettol to squirt the little buggers when I'm in the backyard, a quick spray and you know they have about 10 minutes of life left before they turn to soup.

Re:does it matter?

[mkro]

I could probbably make an equally persuasive argument that violence is movies and videogames reduces violence because it releases peoples agressions in a nonviolent way.

Someone already did, and it is called the catharsis theory.