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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?
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?
Evidence of what? Playing a violent video game? Big deal. Most kids play violent video games. What kind of games do you expect psycho killers to enjoy: doom3 or oregon trail? These critics really need to understand that a=>b does NOT mean b=>a. It's a very simple logical fallacy. I'm not discounting the possibility that violent games can incourage violent behavoir either, it's just that you actually need to show that video games lead one to violence when one would otherwise not be disposed to it. Violence was here long before video games were.
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson
Do videogames cause violence? No, I don't think so. The capacity for violence must already exist within a person; I don't think a videogame is capable of creating that in you. But it is possible for videogames to bring out the violence in someone. A person with a capacity for violence might play a computer game such as Counter-Strike and go out on a CS-inspired killing spree. Did CS cause the violence? No. But without CS, perhaps they'd just go out on a baseball bat killing spree if they only happen to play sports games.
It's much like guns. Are guns in themselves evil? No, they are tools. But when put into the hands of an evil person, the give the evil person a much increased capacity to harm others. Videogames are the same way: a person who learns S.W.A.T. strategies in a videogame can put that to use in his killing spree, allowing him to evade death longer and inflict more casualties.
I'm not arguing that we should prohibit videogames because they give the inspiration to make sick, twisted killers even more efficient. It's very much a freedom of speech issue to me. But people that deny that videogames are associated with violence in any way are just wrong - we must understand the link, so that we can lessen its power.
On a personal note, I do enjoy playing violent videogames. But I also enjoy playing non-violent games, such as SimCity 4. It's not the violence for violence's sake that I enjoy: I don't enjoy Soldier of Fortune 2 because, frankly, I don't think it's a fun game. Now that I think about it, all the "violent" games I've liked in the past were in their own rights good games. The violence could've been removed (assuming it left the fun elements intact) and I'd still enjoy the game. Perhaps it is someone who plays a game solely for the pleasure of the violence, not for the gameplay, who is responsible for acts such as those outlined in this article.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
And just because I go around building towns near gold mines and harvesting lumber doesn't mean the game has affected me.
But what about the adult who killed 5 of his co-workers in Mississippi? Are we going to blame that on videogames also?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
As an avid gamer, I can say that I've never heard of this game, and unless there is some evidence on their computers to back up this claim, its basically groundless.
Offtopic, I love the new gaming icon (Tellah is my favorite video game character of all time!)
If you want to go on a huge killing spree and kill lots of innocent people as a "Warrior of Freedom" sign up for the United States Army.
All the murder, none of the legal problems.
In a recent study, 100% of teenagers that went on killing rampages were found to have significant levels of testosterone in their bloodstreams, irrefutable proof that testosterone causes violent behavior! I think we should demand that testosterone be immediately banned in all highschools!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
>>or is there genuine evidence here?
Well, is the game installed on any of their computers? If so, then maybe the game has something to do with the group's name. If not, then move along.
Huh?
I just wish the media would give these causes as much airtime as they do trumped-up, sensationalistic stories.
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
They will blame everyone and everything, except the two causes:
1) the people who teased them to death for years.
2) the boys themselves for choosing to plan the crime and carry it out.
EVERYONE else will be blamed first- you, me, and the internet....
I suggest you read Slashdot
...you'd get high, play pacman.. fist a bag of doritos, and that would be the end of it. C - - - -
What the hell?
Violent video games, last time I looked, weren't terribly accurate as far as blood and guts and such went. Granted, it's been a year or so since I played a first-person shooter, but if memory serves, the blood flying across the screen had an almost comical effect, with more blood than would possibly come from one living thing. Quake was always amusing, not serious.
I know that they're going to blame the "violence that we expose our children to in video games" for these screwed up kids, but I don't buy it. If it wasn't video games, these kids would be into real guns in a much more serious way, or knives, or swords, or compound bows, or something. And, they'd probably be a helluva lot more dangerous, since they'd actually know how to wield these implements, rather than going through video game experiences.
If parents would raise their kids, rather than letting the TV, the computer, the entertainment system do it, maybe we'd have less problems.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Yup. http://news.google.com/news?q=kids+dressed+up+like +the+matrix
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
Am I the only one who wonder some about the game in question, since the first hit off google gives this rpg as a result.
I wonder when they start to blame Fallout....
I didn't do this, now did I?
Violence has been blamed on video games, music, movies, television, even books. This is nothing new, it's just someone using a crime as an excuse to advance their opinion on something completely different. This has always happened, and will continue to happen as long as people don't like something new, and can find any connection, however small, between something they don't like and crime.
How come they only blame video games when white kids do a murder?
When some black kids do it, well you know how those negros are...
It's as if a nice whiteboy would never do a murder it must of have been an evil video game that corrupted him, but when some black kid shoots someone at his inner city school it doesn't even make the news. I guess blacks are just expected to shoot each other naturally. No one looks for the causes of a black kids violence.
It's racism really.
Correlation doesn't mean causation!!!
Seriously, before video games, there was no war, no violence, and everyone loved each other. The crusades were caused because of the church's addiction to Doom. World War I, well, that was Duke Nukem. World War II was cause by the release of Quake. It is time to put an end to these horrible inventions now, before Doom 3 comes out and World War 3 starts.
today is spelling optional day.
As a psycho killer, I am outraged that you don't think I can enjoy Oregon Trail as much as non-psycho killers, or non-psycho non-killers.
Next you'll be saying we don't like Commander Keen.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
What about TV? Movies? Magazines? Where does it end?
I've been stuck at work for the past fourteen hours, and I'm about ready to kill someone right now. Maybe we should look into getting work outlawed as well?
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C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
The vast majority of multiple murderers are middle class white males, not poor folk. And in places like I grew up in Alaska, where lterraly every 10-year old has a rifle and several knives, we had zero problems with violence, because we were taught to have respect for damage that weapons can do. Anyway, your applying the same "Post hoc, ergo proctor hoc" fallacy to all three "causes".
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
It amazes me every time that something like this nearly happens or does happen that guns are still legal in the United States. Should guns not get the blame for killing people rather than video games? People who say things like "Guns don't kill people. People kill people." may be right but having no guns makes it a hell of a lot harder for these would be killers to go on killing sprees.
Totally silly to blame a few kids going *bonkers* (or perhaps intending to do the same) on an inanimate object, namely object code.
I even hate this line of questioning (and I'm not remotely a gamer so it's not like I'm defending gaming out of desire to protect my own personal habits/preferences). I hate it b/c it allows the kids to potentially carry on with the illusion that they themselves were not and are not 100% to blame for their own actions.
And, yes, at ages 15, 16, 18, you are responsible for your own actions. Even if you've got "absentee parents" and the rest of your life has sucked the big one, you are old enough to know right from wrong and thusly you are old enough to choose one in lieu of the other.
That's not to say that there aren't things existentially *wrong* with American culture -- I personally think it's important for kids to have a parent at home particularly during *the formative years* -- but those aspects of culture are part of being an American: where choice and free will are implied and no legislation intrude.
With all the changes to the language, I'm confused... are these kids from France or something? If so, how do they justify using the moniker "Warriors" ???
This whole thing makes my brain hurt.
Call on God, but row AWAY from the rocks!
I live quite close to there, and read about it in my local newspaper. The 3 teens had 2 rifles, 2 handguns, a shotgun, knifes and swords. They surrendered when 1 cop showed up and told them to drop their weapons. Rampage my ass, this was just a cry for help. With their numbers and firepower they could have easily killed him, but they didn't. The 18 year old 'leader' just lost his mother (and some other female friend/family member, don't remember which) and didn't fit in at school. He was mentally unstable and socially outcast. Games had little to do with it, except to give them a title to use.
echo 'Header append X-HD-DVD "0x09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0"' >>
Of course people are trying to link it to video games or violence in film or whatever. No one wants to take the blame or put the blame on the kids or the parents.
Maybe the kids just don't want to be in the gene pool, chalk it up to self-motivated natural selection.
Twelve fingers or one, its how you play. ~Gattaca (Vincent)
Ahh its the old "violent games make people do violent things" argument. Its FUD of course; I would venture to say that the ratio of people that play violent video games to people who play violent games and kill people is probably the same as the general population v. killers. I think that we will always have mentally dearanged people, and that they will use something to channel their anger - I mean - did jack the ripper play violent video games? Of course not - he was also a loonie, just a different time period and object of hate.
"I thought you'd like to know that I am a warrior, I am fighting for mankind's freedom. Freedom from this society," said the letter, which was signed "Sincerely, Me. Matthew. The One, the Neo, the Anti-Christ, etc. etc. etc."
--> crazy meter (TM) : high.
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.
If find it highly ironic that Video Games are quick to get the blame, while no one cares to consider that having guns and weapons close at hand might also make good scapegoats...only in America!
Now, please, before you get all second-amendment on me: this is not intended to start a flame war over your "right to bear arms" - just a reflection on the fact that video games are always quick to get the bad press. Probably because the sound-bite media is always eager to find simple explanations to complex problems.
Reminder: find a new sig
I absolutely agree with this. I think that some types of video games can incite certain types of behavior in certain types of people. Certain people tend to resonate with the violence they see more than others.
It does not make sense to ban violent games. In doing that, you'd have to ban anything that could be construed as an influence on people who react violently to their environment.
Video games are an easy target because the very name "video games" is so general, and so broad. It's more difficult to do finger-pointing at a specific target because the public may not identify with it. Also, the solution to a general problem is to simply limit it, because then its impact on society will be limited.
I think the real problem here is these kids are in home or social situations that are fundamentally unstable, and have been a good portion of their lives...let's see you ban that! yeah, I'd love it if we could. It would solve a lot of problems
On comedy central the other week, there was a comedian who talked about her love of video games. "I love the video games, and The News hates the video games, so I hate The News". She pointed out that the more violent, the better she liked them, and if they made a game that involved stabbing babies, it would be the best game ever.
All I can think when I read yet another lameass story about video games causing violence is: I wish they made that babies game.
I grew up in Oregon with easy access to firearms. In the early 1980s the economy was in the shitter. Consequently, lots of loggers and carpenters used those firearms on one another. When the economy came around, the rates of homocide decreased. Thus, both poverty AND easy access to firearms, in combination, do tend to cause more violence than anything else.
Following your analogy, and assuming a cycle of 3DRealms - id Software - 3DRealms, the next big war will be caused by the release (not of Doom 3 but of) Duke Nukem Forever. I guess i can sit pretty for a while =)
"It's important for us to explain to our nation that life is important. It's not only life of babies, but it's life of children living in, you know, the dark dungeons of the Internet." - George W. Bush
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
Lovett's uncle Thomas Crymes said the June graduate of Collingswood High School had been on his computer "constantly."
"He never went anywhere with anybody," Crymes said.
Ever think he was on the computer constantly because he was harassed by the other students and had nowhere to go? Maybe that same harassment had something to do with his motive?
Was the guy that shot up that Lockheed Martin factory also "under the influence" of computer games and violent movies? Or is there a more complex societal problem going on here?
Ronald Lovett, who works as a electronics repairman on the same block as his apartment, said his son had become withdrawn after his mother's death. His son also often had to defend his younger brother, who has undergone 13 operations for a cleft palate, the father said.
"When they used to go out when they were little, of course people would pick on the brother, and Matt would have to defend him," Ronald Lovett told CNN. "They didn't get along well with their peers."
.
.
.
"The boys also had to endure the death of an older half sister who was hit by a car a year after their mother's death, Crymes said."
What kind of evil SOBs would pick on a kid with a cleft palate whose mother and sister recently died. I thank the Lord that these kids were picked up before they hurt anyone, but if you want to examine "root causes" instead of video games maybe take a look at an utter lack of conscious or morality by all parties involved.
Evil begets evil.
Brian Ellenberger
Quoted from the article "And among the names Lovett used in a letter left for his family was the Neo, an apparent reference to the main character of The Matrix, which is both a movie series and a computer game." ...
Instead of pointing out the fact that the movie itself was about cyberpunk, he just said that 'The Matrix' is also a video game.
I guess that's enough to prove that people who write these kind of articles are ignorant about the subject, are mostly scared about things that they just do not understand and they would prefer that everything would stay the same.
Maybe we should forbid weapons and take care of our children instead of trying to find evidences that the actual society is responsible of their acts. Guns do not kill, people do. The same for children, they did not went bad because of the actual world, some grow up bad because WE made this world as it is.
Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
The inherent problem I see with allowing violent videogames is not that it might promote violence as a legitimate course of action in the minds of the players, (we have CNN for that, luckily..) but that it gives people the necessary skills to be able to actually carry it out. Living in australia, I can rack up a few quick, easy hours practice with a pistol at the local video arcade, without anyone noticing anything awry, unlike at a gun club.
There is a deeper problem that must be addressed, that is why are kids deciding to shoot their classmates. But we also need to ask ourselves whether we are not giving kids the opportunity to hone their skills, making them much more adept at shooting.
The skills that one develops playing a "virtual" shooting game are very similar the the skills that one develops practicing at a range, this is one reason that the military uses such simulations instead of only ever practicing with real equipment.
We have to ask ourselves: Who do we really want to develop those skills?
I'm not at all promoting the idea of removing violent games, just don't use them as a medium to teach our kids how to shoot each other.
And NO, I don't count aiming with a mouse as the same thing. Sheesh.
Don't knock HTML email. It makes my life easier, since I
The only reasonable explanation for a kid to lash out under these circumstances is the evil influence of games like Mech Commando. I just can't see it any other way.
I certainly wouldn't put any of the responsibility for these crimes on the people who made up these kids' world. There is no way that people are to blame for this sort of thing.
It has to be video games. Or rock music. Or D&D. (D&D!? That's sooo 80's.) Or marijuana. Or the devil. Or a malevelont, super-intelligent giant chicken from the center of the Earth. Anything, as long as people don't have to come face to face with their role in the lives of these kids.
The game is TEXT BASED
If...
>> There is a knight ahead. Attack or flee? {A/F}
$$ A
>> The knight has been slain.
causes people to go on killing rampages, it would have been an epidemic about 20 years ago.
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
...when you need him?
Speaking of a => b does not imply b => a. What basis were they making that assumption on? They wore black and had trench coats?
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I'd like to see Broderbund brought to justice for Number Muncher's role in the mental anguish and derision I suffered as an elementary-school math dork.
Co-founder of GerbilMechs
Uhh... yeah. Incredible real-life shooting skills from Halo? Since when has playing Halo given anyone any skills other than being good at playing Halo? Thompson is trying so hard to link his "video games are really just real life murder training programs" to incidents of violence that he'll ignore anything grounded in reality. Does he have a brother named Thomson?
Geez, it's like the Dungeons and Dragons scare all over again.
From the article:
Lovett also was the target of teasing. The classmates said he had been mocked for his bow-legged and stooped gait and his clothes.
My guess would be that over 75% of teenagers play or have played 'violent' video games at some point or another. I'm guessing but it feels more or less right. That's probably millions-- tens of millions-- of video game players in the US and across the developed world. Are they all potential killers? Of course not. To argue so would involve twisting statistics around in a 'war on drugs' fashion-- maintaining that marijuana is a 'gateway' drug, which simply isn't true. Very few users of marijuana go on to do harder drugs. But many that do harder drugs have smoked pot (and continue to do so), which is what alarmist conservative organizations, in a thorough betrayal of libertarian roots, emphasize in order to restrain civil liberties.
But there is simply not enough of a correlation to warrant limits on video games (a form of free speech IMHO anyway) even *if* in specific cases a causal argument *might* be made. The point is that you can't do sociology by anecdote only. By all rights, statistically, toasters are probably deadlier than video games anyway.
Given the utter lack of *any* systematic correlation between playing video games and engaging in violent, anti-social behaviour, perhaps we should look at other possible causes, Like the bullying and teasing which goes on in every schoolyard, every day, hmmm? I am convinced that the solace this kid found in video games was a result of being called a 'fag' constantly, of being beaten up for lacking social grace, for failure to heed the intricate, consumerist protocol of North American teenhood. Any 'obsession' with video games was a symptom and NOT the problem.
Bah, sheer sensationalism and a refusal to look at root causes-- of course this seems to be a recurrent theme these days.
Reminds me of that Onion article--Columbine Jocks Safely Resume Bullying. It's a sad indicator of the state of our civlization when we learn nothing from tragedy, but that's another topic entirely.
iopha
Stop making fun of the icon you bastard, or i'll cast Meteo on you!
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Guns don't kill people, people kill people.
Games don't kill people, people kill people.
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
Maybe I just forgot how to use Google and all... but the "Warriors of Freedom" game I found was... a text-based RPG, according to here: http://www.mpogd.com/games/game.asp?ID=1754 .
"SUMMARY
Browser based empire management game. Players choose and alignment and build an army which can be comprised of humans, dwarfs and elves.
GENERAL INFORMATION
Genre: RPG
Platform: Linux | Mac | Windows
Client Type: Browser
Interface: Text Based
Time : Tick Based
Status: Gold
ESRB Rating: NR
Massively Multiplayer: No
PRICING
Software: Free
Subscription: Free
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
Minimal
MPOGD SPECIFIC
Last Updated: 5/26/2003"
I fail to see how a text-based game can portray violence in a way that a book couldn't...
oh wait, that means... while we're out banning video games, lets ban books too!
He isn't trolling... You guys are definately modding the wrong dirrection on this one. Sorry had to say it.
The British author (amongst other things) Ben Elton wrote on the topic of violence in movies in his book 'Popcorn'. One of the main themes was about violence in movies spreading into real life, he pointed out many times that it's not that people emulate the characters they see directly, but that movies STYLIZE killing and violence - they make it seem COOL. Killing and violence is shown as a quick and effective way to get revenge, achieve goals, make a name for yourself etc..
Think of how they portayed killing in the basement scene in the first matrix, how 'COOL' was that; a computer hacker/nerd in sunnies and a trenchcoat, with a hot female in latex blasting away numerous innocent people without even flinching - with the propellerheads soundtrack pumping.
How many people play violent video games and imagine that the people they are shooting are real? Or use the simulated violence to release agression? What happens when life becomes too much and they SNAP and decide to do something about their situation - get revenge on all those motherfuckers in the coolest way you know, bust into school in trenchcoats with semi automatics and spray it with bullets - fantasy becomes reality.
I'm divided on the issue, as I don't think any sane person would snap like this and bring something patently evil into action, but what about the nutcases that do - have videogames and movies made killing SO cool that it appeals more than anything else? Should we start -constantly- portraying killing and violence as negative, highlighting the consequences and making these actions TABOO in our society, rather than revering them on Screen and in Play?
Something to think about I guess, rather than the prevailing view among gamers that videogames don't affect people, and are good because you can release tension through your onscreen avatar.
generic
While it involves more of refuting the involvement of "The Matrix", this columnist in the same paper as the original story doesn't buy any crap that this kid wanted to kill because of movies/video games...but that it was his own sickness in the head that led him to suit up and head out that night.
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
I think the *real* motives of Jack Thompson should be obvious to everyone. You see, he thinks his game was poorly recieved, and he's merely trying to exterminate all the competition.
Wait, you say you didn't know he was in a game? Haven't you ever played The Bermuda Syndrome?
The Bermuda Syndrome basically chronicles the adventures of pilot Jack J. Thompson . . . Final Grade: D
A shoddy disguise at best - all he did is remove his middle initial! Who was he hoping to fool, anyway?
(Moral: You can find facts to back up *anything* on Google.)
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
How many more must die due to this dangerous scourge of freedom which takes over the minds of young people like a hideous drug??
I demand that we put an end to freedom!
To quote David Cross
"What was that video game that Hitler played and then gave to the entire German populace?"
Games don't kill people, people kill people.
Okay, we ALL know games can't be blamed for violence...I mean come ON. But if this game is anything like those web-based spammer games like lords of chaos and pornstarguru or outwar or any of that other crap you get spammed with on irc, I feel it's an appropriate thing to go after.....I've actually been party to entire irc channels being taken out because someone from that channel ignored common courtesy and mass spammed one of those games....
;P
They're probably one of the worst things on the net, right up there with search results that if you're not paying attention to what the page summary says, floods your screen with 10^5 porn popups, half of which are impossible to close (Thanks Microsoft....)
They serve no purpose whatsoever, and do nothing but encourage spam and poor behavior. I don't even see how these games could be FUN anyway, just going around pissing people off who will NEVER CLICK YOUR LINK ANYWAY, just to build up some 'army' that is supposed to win you some non-existent prize...
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
...The next thing people are going to start saying is that people kill for their religion...
The 20th century provides a large number of examples where people were encouraged to go on massive killing sprees for various mistaken beliefs. There are big piles of bodies in Europe, Russia, China, Korea, Cambodia, the Middle East, etc.. I doubt the Rwanda massacre happened just because a bunch of Hutus had bad essences that made them prone to kill others. They were manipulated into it.
History seems to show that there are things the people get taught that makes them extremely horrible, disgusting gross people.
One of the worst beliefs, IMHO, is that everything is just a game and that I am out to get as much as possible in the game...despite the number of bodies I leave in my wake.
There are ways that you can screw with people's minds that can make those people monsters. Video games probably play a very important role in many children's lives these days. The game manufacturers simply compete on much graphics and sensations they can put in a minute of gaming. However there also needs to be people who worry about what the games teach.
I don't fall for the fundamentalists arguments that unchristian/satanic video games teach bad behaviors, but I do see a need for people to think about what we teach with video games, and what happens when people get too much entertainment and not enough real life.
If you see religion as a myth created by man, then all the killing going on their now is the result of century old fantasy games.
Belief systems do matter, but there is not a blanket statement of video games are bad and church on Sundays is good. I think the main hope is for people to develop a good solid understanding of logic and common sense.
The Roots of Sound Rational Thinking.
Look at the photo, and read the caption. I bet that guy called "Elizabeth Robertson" hates his parents.
http://jesus.everdense.com/
Really.. They're quick to publish spectacular theories on violence in computer games, movies, art, and just about every aspect of culture but themeselves.
How about removing the beam from their own eyes?
Modern news media (and especially the American ones) are flooded with violence.
There is a key difference here though: People, even young children, understand that films, computer games etc. are fiction. News media, on the other hand, is treated as fact, no matter how distorted the picture is.
People are lead to believe that violence is constantly increasing (even when it's not), that their neighborhoods are unsafe, and that a prowler, burglar or hoodlum could be waiting for them at any minute.
Excessive violence in news reporting leads to excessive fear. Fear in turn, leads to violence.
Blame the media is a popular game.. but they still don't get nearly enough criticism, and you can wonder why..
I sat around and thought about the merits of snipering from a tower vs. armed assualt complete with smoke and infared goggles. I remember thinking about it in detail planning every little thing I could think of, researching ammo types, max lethal range for certain easily available rifles etc.
Now granted my knowledge of firearms came alot from Video Games, but not any more than from Tom Clancy books and the History Channel. In fact since this was pre-CS I'd say most of my knowledge came from the History channel, especially some wonderful documentaries they aired on assasinations, that thought me the merits of the AK-47/74.
Now the difference between me and these guys is a simple one. I probably did as much planning as they did if not more. In fact I dare say I fantasized about it. But I stopped just short of collecting weapons and making the large leap between "I'll think about killing half my school" and "I'm going to kill half my school".
Why is this? The answer to that question is the fundamental issue here. I'm am not violent by nature. I tend to avoid fights even though I'm 6' 2" 230lbs. The fights I've been in, I've tended to reign in my punches at the last minute because I don't like hurting people.
I shudder to think what I'd be like if I had a violent personality. I can bet I'd be a lot more dangerous than these guys, more effecient anyway.
And thats what it comes down to basically. Not video-games or media in general. Having the knowledge to do something isn't the same as doing it. Despite what the media keeps telling everyone. There is something else that makes you violent or not. I wish people would stop looking for easy answers.
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
That strictest anti-gun states have the highest
crime and murder rates. Neat how that works out.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
As English is my second language, please address all linguistic criticism to me in french (my native tongue).
So, why isn't it ironic? In french please.
Reminder: find a new sig
I just love the fact that when I clicked the "shameless Googling" link Google told me that there was a Slashdot story about this posted 32 minutes ago.
And among the names Lovett used in a letter left for his family was "the Neo," an apparent reference to the main character of The Matrix, which is both a movie series and a computer game.
Actually, Neo is only in Enter the Matrix for maybe three seconds in one of the video clips. And he has a voice thing in one of the hacking parts of the game. What ever happened to research?
...is that video games are such an easy target. We're all pretty aware that simulating violence does not cause violence, since that's a ludicrous assumption based on some seriously flawed logic. However, you can't really defend videogames with anything offensive. I mean, has anyone legitimately said that videogames decrease violence? Not really...whereas gun folks have at least had some "experts" contend that guns reduce violence. Of course, whatever issue's on the defensive is an easy target, especially for the media. No studies that I've read have said videogames lower violence, but studies-the-likes-of-which-give-Jack-Thompson-an-o rgasm note that videogames cause violence. Stupid logic 1, reality 0. If some study somewhere came out that said videogames drastically reduce violence (a really hard link to prove, but then again, so is the link of videogames causing violence), then we might see the end of scapegoating the videogame industry. Hopefully. Maybe.
This is no attempt to say video games are a source of voilence, but these days with all of the sex, violence we see on TV, movies and video games, i am beginning to have second thoughts.
Mod me down if you like, but i think that things are going over board. (why else do we have reality Tv crap and movies like 2 fast 2 furious) Im not balming video games, but everything. There is a problem with society. You can say there isnt, but IMHO it sounds like denial.
Society these days has begun to value life less and less, it reminds me of one of those dystopian future sceneraios where they have galidiators.
Senseless violence is fucked up.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
He was born braindead. And then had help from is 'parents'.
"Oaklyn teenagers also say he also practiced martial arts and had compiled a list of his enemies since elementary school."
Any 'link' between this incident and video games, or the other popular theory, The Matrix, is mere hand waving by the media.
I'd expect most teens that have played video games have played at least some that involve "blowing something up", or shooting something. All but the most bland edutainment games, and openended games (SimCity, etc) involve some sort of destruction.
Could Frogger be linked to massive roadkill on the highways?
Could SimCity be linked to corrupt politics and poor city managament?
Could Bewitched be linked to a rise in adult witchcraft?
Damn, these guys are stupid. But it does sell newspapers.
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.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
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.
The US Army seems to take it pretty seriously, in fact they are prepared to spend a few million of YOUR taxdollars on it and as a FPS game its pretty tame in violence compared to some.
Check it out and grab it here, (it's "free" because you have already paid for it:) (based on the Quake 3 Engine afaik).
Its up to you to decide wether its just a fun novelty recruiting tool in the shape of a video game , or a serious combat strategy training simulation tool for helping you kill (or eliminate the threat as they say) more effectivly in the "real" Army in "real" situations.
i know red pixels on a screen isn't in reality very convincing but the strategy/planning/management etc of the game tasks can be the same as reality, presumably desired skills as far as the Army are concerned.
its a fine line.
with the blaming violence on games thing , i too cannot see it (possibly cos im an old skooler), but what i do know is
crap in==crap out
if you put shit gas in your car it runs wack
if you eat crap food it makes you ill
so i presume the brain is affected the same.
Guns don't kill people, tetris does
He may be an outspoken lawyer and critic - so what?
Does anybody complain when Ralph Nader bitches about big business?
To dismiss an argument based solely on the person advocating it is a logical fallacy and nothing more than that.
Anyone around here remember the 60's, or am I the only old fart here?
There was this thing called the generation gap. Old people didn't understand the youth of the day, and the youth didn't care much for the old people. Ever heard the slogan "never trust anyone over 30?" The book and movie "Logan's Run" was about a society where everyone died when they were thirty.
The Beatles were controversial because they had long hair. Lots of people thought rock music was evil. My father didn't allow it in the house when my sister and I were young (I was a small child in the 60's). The evils of rock music were even debated in Congress. I read once that some young people were arrested in the soviet union for doing the twist.
Back then it was rock music and long hair. Now it's black clothes and videogames.
Youth will always be troubled for one reason or another. That's part of what it means to be young. Old people will always try to find something to blame it on.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
You don't have to play violent computer games to imagine shooting people. Have you ever imagined killing or beating someone for something they did to you? Can you imagine shooting someone in the head? One does not need to see pictures to imagine such things.
It is the exactly the power of imagination that makes premeditated killing possible.
Think about the World War II, millions of soldjers saw violent acts on almost unimaginable scale. Do they come home and start killing people? One does not commit violent acts even from seeing real horrible violence, much less from the animated gore of computer games.
This is from another website that I post on, about some murders being blamed on the Matrix. I feel that it applies here.
--
Why do people feel the need to blame murders and crime on movies, music, art, Democratic politics, Republican politics, etc.? There were plenty of murders before any one of these things existed.
People just do it to further their own cause. They use the death of another person as a stepping stone to get what they want. It's disgusting, really.
First of all, by blaming anything or anyone other than the murderer, you remove blame from him/her.
Further, the argument doesn't hold water for the following reasons (The first one is a theory I propose, the rest are facts):
1) a) Legally, a person is not culpable for their actions if it was an act of insanity. In the legal sense, insanity refers to the inability to distinguish between "right" and "wrong".
b) The act of murder is one that is, in general, condemned by all humans. In the moral and legal sense, it is "wrong" and we expect all people to be able to recognize this.
c) A person watching a film in which people are killed should be able to recognize that what he/she sees on the screen is "wrong". If they do, they will not reproduce these actions. If they do not, they may reproduce these actions, however, if they do, they are clearly unable to distinguish between right and wrong.
d) Therefore, they are legally, and probably clinically, insane, and were so at the time that they watched the film.
e) They are clearly not the basis on which one would wish to make such an analysis.
2) By condemning culture such as films, the VAST majority of viewers who do not go on to kill someone is ignored. This is a simple example of the fundamental scientific error of observational selection or "counting the hits, and forgetting the misses". It's an extreme example, as well, since the number of misses is FAR, FAR, FAR, FAR greater than the number of hits.
3) Committing another fundamental scientific error: "Confusion of causation and correlation". Yes, people who commit violent crimes may tend to watch violent movies, but are violent people drawn to violent movies or do violent movies cause people to become violent? Occam's Razor, and common sense, tell us that the former is almost certainly fact. The latter remains to be seen.
4) By assuming that the mere act of watching a film BEFORE a violent crime occurs has caused the violent crime to occur (with no substantiating proof of causation), one commits the fundamental scientific error of "post hoc, ergo proper hoc" or "it happened after, therefore it was caused by". With some hyperbole, it is as nonsensical as arguing that brushing your teeth in the morning caused you to get hit by a bus in the afternoon.
5) Committing YET ANOTHER fundamental scientific error by relying on the statistics of small numbers. Just because there are a few individuals who have committed such crimes does not mean that the trend holds true for the population as a whole. For example, it is a fact that approximately one out of every five people on Earth is Chinese. You may argue that this is not true because you know 100 people and none of them are Chinese. Small numbers don't work for scientific proof.
6) My oh my...Who would figure...YET ANOTHER fundamental scientific error by misunderstanding the nature of statistics. Please provide evidence that the rate of murder that is purportedly caused by watching violent films is greater than the rate of murder that is not caused by watching violent films. Indeed, I would wager that it is not. The large majority of murders, I would wager, occur during other crimes, or due to personal vendettas. Some of the most horrible murder sprees have no association with art, film, etc. (Jack the Ripper, John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, Jeffery Dahmer, The Green River killer, Richard Ramirez (the only connection they found between him and AC/DC was a ball cap), etc.)
If the few CRAZY PEOPLE who got their "inspiration" from art had no
I think violence in movies or games probably can occasionally cause people to become murderers. And, yes, by that I mean that if those people had not played violent video games, they would not have become killers.
But just because A occasionally causes B doesn't mean that A by itself is sufficient to cause B, or that reducing A is the best way of reducing B. If you take happy, healthy kids and have them play violent video games or show them standard Hollywood movies dripping with violence, they won't turn into killers--something else needs to go wrong. Conversely, US courts have established that Twinkies sometimes cause people to become killers--should we ban Twinkies as well?
The fact that we have had very high levels of violence in the US (compared to other nations) far longer than video games have been around shows us that video games are not a major cause of violence in this culture. Let's find out what really turns so many Americans into killers and fix it; I suspect it's more related to poverty, education, and deep-rooted social problems than the depiction of violence in video games or movies.
Having played lots and lots of CS, TFC back in the day, Splinter Cell, and many other games that involve "real life" guns (ok, the guns in tfc aren't real), i can testify that just because you can outsnipe anybody on your CS clan's servers doesn't mean you can actually shoot anything in real life. i've tried. at 25 yards with a .22 rifle (which basically has no kick), i couldn't hit shit. 20 rounds, 12 actually hit the target, and only around the edges.
if this moron wants to argue that "games==murder training programs", he should play lots of quake, and then try to actually shoot something - preferably a paper target.
filter: +3. Hey, look! all the trolls went away!
Off the top of my head [having not read the article since I first saw it a day or two ago], the ringleader (the 18 year old, who apparently led the 15 and 14 year olds) also had Matrix posters on his wall, and referred to himself as "The Mystic" and "The One". Now, the former isn't as easily related, but the latter sounds quite coincidental.
"Stumble before you crawl"
I read through most of the comments and I've come up with some observations that have always bounced around my brain without ever coming otgether until now.
/.
/. style populations. If you want in depth, thought out discussions and opinions on things like DMCA, P2P, SCO vs IBM, etc, it would seem that reporters would be inclined to solicit these types of opinions rather than find crackpots like Jack Thompson, Hillary Rosen, etc. Is it the general 'geek' stigma that surrounds such topics. Are we too 'geeky' to have valid opinions. It seems like we're 'geek' enough to do all the critical engineering and researching in the modern world, but not have an insight into the issues afterwards.
1. The majority of the comments here tend to solidify around the logic that this story and the source of it are idiotic and baseless. Now this isn't commentary coming from random sources. This is commentary coming from somewhat intelligent, well-articulated people with some degree of expertise or interest in games and technology. These kind of opinions would seem to be the most logical ones to comment on this aspect of the story.
2. These opinions will never be treated seriously by the mainstream press. These are the voices that get ignored or mocked by the Bill O'Reliey's and Fox News Channels of the world. The media always seems willing to go to the Jack Thompsons of the world for quotes and perspectives, but always seem hesitant to find the kind of views you would see of
So it leaves me to wonder why this happens. Time and time again, the media is willing to go for the off-the-wall source to make a story stand out, rather than seeking out the opinions of
It's not stupid. It's advanced.
For better answers and more questions on violence in the American culture, watch this film.
Her point was simply that she knew I wasn't going to go out and shoot up a schoolyard despite being picked on. Why? She asked me. Simply, she casually asked me over dinner why I played "violent video games" (Quake, Unreal... circa 1997-98, here) and how they made me feel. You'd be surprised what your kids will tell you if you just ask.
She acted like a parent and made me tell her where I was going and when I was expected back. I didn't have a curfew because she had taught me that being "good" brought more rewards than being "bad." If I made sure to remain well kept, I could wear whatever was available and listen to whatever I felt like, all because I acted like a model citizen and did my homework.
Was I ever angry at so-and-so, what's-her-face, cheerleader, and the-ugly-one for being totally insulting? Yes. However, I was taught a difference between the 2-3 hours of Quake a day and the 7 hours at school.
Children are not inherently evil. Video games are not inherently evil or manipulative. Parental attention and understanding make all the difference.
There are two types of people: those prepared for the zombie apocalypse and those who will be eaten.
(No grammar nazis allowed)
hole. About six or seven months ago, he was the guest on Mike Reagan's radio talk show. After about half an hour of hearing him talk out of his ass, I got sick of it and called into the show. I singlehandedly ripped him a new asshole.
"No, Doom doesn't condition you to shoot people. You shoot Zombies, Demons, and globulous red orbs."
"No, America's Army doesn't teach kids that you can frag your superior officers and get away with it, you get sent to the brig."
"I'm also a hunter and a target shooter. No game can teach you how important it is to mate the buttstock to your shoulder to handle recoil."
This asshole is only interested in making money for himself, like the tobacco lawsuit lawyers.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
The context of violent video can easily be mis-constrewed. For instance, Mario and Zelda are violent as it involves killing. Zelda is depicted w/ sword blows (the newer version illustrates it better) while Mario stomps heads. Its the amount of gore which should be questionned. Gore has arguably gotten much worse. Mortal Kombat, GTA, Postal, Doom (sorry J. Carmack if you're reading!!)..... as a series have depicted killing w/ more blood and gore as graphics have improved.
From a quick search on Amazon, interestingly enough, Mortal Kombat the movie is rated PG-13 while the video game is Mature (17 or older). Why the difference? Afterall, if you've watched the movie, "Finish him" -- "Fatality" and all the other notions which made the game "bad" appear in the movie.
Just like all rock and roll is about Sex, Drugs and Rebellion, people listening to Elvis, the Beatles etc haven't generally become drug addicts and criminals as the media and parents believed. Same w/ violent video games. There are those that follow the norm and those that fall out of it.
If nothing else, the amount of weapons, the hitlist etc, all goes to show the mental state of the teens. It proves nothing about violent video games.
It was rock music, then video games, then rock music, then video games, then Marilyn Manson, then Quake(I/II/3a).
There is a connection between violent video games / music and fucked up children. Fucked up children enjoy playing violent video games and listening to music about death (or whatever). But a lot of normal children also enjoy these passtimes.
What people need to understand is that it is not the games / music that fucks up the kids, they were like that way before. Parents should look at the childs environment for possible causes of the childs antisocial behaviour.
Think of violent video games / music as more of a warning system rather than a cause.
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
Making games a little bit closer to reality would even interest the older generation.
I personaly find that the first person shooter crap that is so popular with the Xbox style "gamers" is mindless drivel.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
Isn't this the guy who tried to link the D.C. Area snipers to Counter Strike?
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
The most serious crimes I've committed in my life are petty shoplifting and drug use. I did these long before simulating either in a game, and have never particularly enjoyed simulating either in a game. Therefore, by Thompson's own logic, my committing these crimes caused these games to manifest themselves into existence.
Bow to Zod.
When you're done with that, visit Michael Moore's homepage.
Moore's Bowling for Columbine won an Oscar for Best Documentary.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
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
Funny how the biggest opponents of personal responsibily are the ones who financially benefit the most when they can convince others that individuals are not resposible for their actions. Having about milked the tabacco industry to its full potential, trial lawyers have moved on to fast food, and it's a matter of time before the game companies are crushed under the weight of lawsuits as well. This absurdity will continue until people decide they've had enough and that individuals are solely to blame for the choices they make.
We hate to take responsibility for bringing up people who end up going on killing sprees. The Great American Tradition of passing the buck seems inevitable in these stories. The parents disclaim all blame. They were too busy trying to accumulate all the stuff that society says you need to show the world that you're successful. The school systems disclaim all blame. They were too busy trying to teach ever growing numbers of kids on ever shrinking budgets to actually pay attention to any one child in their system.
Maybe, and I know I'm reaching here... Maybe if the parents would actually pay attention to their children instead of just dropping them in front of the TV for hours on end, their kids might grow up more well-adjusted.
I have a hypothesis that the level of self involvement the people who have gone on these killing sprees are exposed to in commercial advertising and from their parents prevents them from ever developing the sympathy for other living things that would actually cause them to realize that going on a killing spree is actually a bad thing. They're certainly not going to learn love, warmth and affection in school. I predict that this problem will only get worse as the cycle of commercialism and self-gratification continues to spiral out of control.
I suspect that the best thing you can do if you are raising a kid in this day and age is throw your TV set away and actually spend some time teaching them to respect all living things. Not that I see this happening in the average American household. It's far easier to contine the quest for more stuff and then point the Finger of Blame when our kids don't turn out the way we wanted them to.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Compare it with another comment posted 15 minutes earlier.
Credit where credit is due, please.
Although he did leave out the last sentence:
exactly...
Violent games will have an effect on people, but only those people who don't have the mindset to know that it has no bearing on real life. It's the same reason pyschologically that films, and music, and even a conversation with a bad friend can have same effect on people who aren't mentally mature enough to know what morals apply and why.
But, this is no reason to ban these games, or the films, that the majority of people can enjoy in a harmless way. When was the last time someone banned say soccer for the effect it has on some supporters in the UK, when the majority of people can get on and just watch it and enjoy it (though personally I wish they would band it, but that's just me being bitter about the morons...)
I think I'm going to decide to kill some people, and call my team of killers the Counter-Strike team just cos it's a cool name. I mean... come on!!!!
I wish we'd get a little less overblown reaction from the people who are so uptight they think they can stop people who are going to kill just by banning something they either played, or watched, or listened to. Naming yourself after one of these things is *not* proof that it was even remotely a cause.
Reminds me of an interesting article I read about the bias that major news orginazations have towards firearms and self defense.
Stories of legally armed citizens who have succesfully defended themselves (either by killing or maiming their attacker) are rarely ever printed or reported on.
It also points out once high profile case where an individual had gone on a shooting rampage on a university campus. Almost all news agencies repoted that the attacker was subdued by 2 students. The fact that both said students had gone to the parking lot to retrieve their legally owned firearms, and then confronted the suspect, who eventually surrenderd to these armed students, was conviently left out.
I work double shifts at 2 major hospitals as a New York City 911 paramedic. I love helping people, but my job is also very challenging. I love nothing more than to come home from a stressfull day on the "bus" and blow the living shit out of some meathead in Battlefiled 1942 or Raven Shield.
It relaxes me. Now does that mean I'm a ticking time bomb? I think not.
I go to LAN parties, and play violent games, like UT2K3 and Day of Defeat. UT2K3 is a fun game. We were playing it as if it were a game or a sport. And you know what? It IS a game. DoD was more concentrated and strategic, sure, but still the same attitude towards it: Its a GAME. We realize that, and we have a blast playing it. I'm certain that none of us would ever go and do stuff like what these kids did or the Columbine kids did. Those kids had murderous tendencies and so forth, and its their fault for not controlling themselves. Blaming something millions of people their age play and don't get ideas to kill people is pretty dumb, as we've all seen. But I can see what could happen if a kid couldn't discern between fantasy and reality, but thats the responsiblity of the parent, not the government. I do think that stores should enforce the rating system (wouldn't affect me), but that, ultimately, its the responsibility of the parent and the player.
Slashdot is a waste of time. I enjoy wasting time.
After seeing all those stupid commercials and ads about lawyers that promise "big payoffs" off of ANY kind of litigation or insurance claim, I'm inclined to think that they are tying to drag in the videogame makers too for that extra quick buck.
Why don't they go after the bunch of maniacs that invented Furby? That obnoxious nightmare can drive anyone off the deep end.
!@#$% whole-grain cereal. When I want fiber, I eat some wicker furniture. - G. Carlin
So it's been proven, the military is out to turn our children into psycho killers!
Hey, it's just as plausable as violent videogames making people violent, or D&D causing satanism... Or vegitarianism causing nazi-like inclinations.
"[Video games] don't make psychopaths, they just make them more creative."
My favorite, slightly modified, quote from a really poor movie.
-- Remember, we're not happy until you're not happy. -- Local FAA Inspector --
is the universe's sense of irony.
I played GTA3: Vice city for 2 weeks straight..
Then my car got stolen from the mall.
Really.
I remember when I was a kid, about the age this group were (15-18), there was a made for TV movie called "Rona Jaffe's Mazes and Monsters" in which a bunch of kids who play D&D become massively deluded by the deleterious (bullshit) effects of the RP, find a cave underground and start doing what we'd call live-action roleplaying today. They end up risking their lives on this delusion. The implication was a sort of Reefer Madness-esque demonization of the roleplaying genre. It was one of Tom Hanks' early movie appearances I believe.
Mind you, every time something bad happened to kids in that time frame, the media was all too willing to attribute it to the nasty effects of the demons of roleplaying as personified by D&D. The Christian Right was watching all of this gleefully, encouraging it when it could. Google for 'christian anti d&d' - there are just too many links to the anti-occult D&D bashing to pick a representative one.
In the interest of equal opportunity political bashing, Tipper Gore (and by extension Al) was a real jerk about all of this, advocating controls on roleplaying gaming materials. Very similar to her jerky attitude about censoring music while she was with the PMRC in the mid-80's. But that's another story for another time. A quick Tipper quote from her book, if you please.
"D&D] is based on occultic plots, images, and characters which players "become" as they play the game. According to Mrs. Pat Pulling, founder of the organization Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons, the game has been linked to nearly fifty teenage suicides and homicides. Pulling's own son killed himself in 1982 after becoming deeply involved in the game through his school's gifted students program. A fellow-player threatened him with a "death curse" and he killed himself in response."
In the generation before mine (I was born in 1969), there was a man named Fredric Wertham, a psychologist in New York, who was convinced that comic books were the evil that was plaguing America's youth. He published a book called "Seduction of the Innocent" to make his point. He testified in front of the US Senate in 1954 (the Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency, if you can believe it). A brief quote if you don't mind:
"They [comic books] arouse in children phantasies of sadistic joy in seeing other people punished over and over again while you yourself remain immune. We have called it the Superman complex." (and doesn't that sound familiar - substitute 'video games' for comic books?)
He was also the first to identify Robin, Batman's sidekick, as being ambiguously homosexual. "If Batman were in the State Department he would be dismissed." was his comment. Apparently the pulp comics were luring children into a homosexual lifestyle. As if. I'm assuming Saturday Night Live got the idea from this.
Dr. Wertham's effect was quite significant at the time, as was Tipper and her allies during the 80's. In the 1950's, Dr. Wertham nearly killed the comic industry, causing sales to plummet as parents took aggressive action to protect their children in light of the negative publicity. The "Comics Code" symbol was the direct result of Dr. Wertham's crusade.
Tipper Gore and the Christian Right actually managed through pressure to get the authors of D&D, TSR, to remove some or most (depending on your view) of the offensive material from the 2nd edition of D&D, particularly the demons and devils. Thus emasculated, the pen and paper game declined in popularity after that time (rougly 1986-87 if my memory serves), even unto the present
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
You are suggesting we draw a conclusion which would seem to go beyond what is warranted by the facts you have presented. I presume you would claim that the move you are suggesting is analogous to the move being suggested by those proposing regulation of violent video games.
If you are introducing this as an argument against the suggestion that we ban all violent video games for all groups of people, then yes, the gist of your point seems to have been made; although the point seems to be rather obvious.
However, I am not aware that there is presently any serious consideration in the U.S. of banning all violent video games for all groups of people.
If instead you are claiming that the move you suggest making is analogous to the move suggested by those proposing banning the sale of violent video games to minors, then either your claim is not well-supported or you are misrepresenting the position of your opponent.
If the use of violent video games causes minors who would already commit acts of violence against their peers to instead commit similar sorts of acts, but which are significantly more brutal, violent, or harmful, than the acts they otherwise would commit, and if we can not ban the use of violent video games among only these minors, then we should consider banning the use of violent video games among all minors.
It does not seem, for example, that a minor has any significantly weighty right to the use of violent video games in the first place, and so it is likely that if such considerations as the above prove to be true or probable, then probably we will be justified in banning the use of violent video games among all minors.
I notice this article avoids saying whether the kids actually played Warriors of Freedom. The article only states that it is an online video game.
... that could be due to a number of reasons. He could be a social reject, as I was. I don't go out, mainly because I don't have a girlfriend, and there's really no place I'd like to go, except the movies, to which I do occasionally go. Instead of rushing to blame video games, you could just as easily accuse Television. How many violent shows are there on Television where the hero is a guy running around blowing all the bad guys to kingdom come? But People don't want to hear about TV being a bad influence, because they all watch it. They would much rather accuse video games of wrongdoing. I think it's most likely that these kids were alone alot because of their possible rejection from social life. The video game playing most likely came as a result of this. If I had had a girlfriend and lots of friends, do you think I would have spent evenings playing Descent 3 or some such game when I could have been out with my friends? Hell no, and I doubt these kids would have.
Besides this, I also have to comment on the absolute idiocy of the person making this connection. About the comment that the kid was never away from his computer
To put it quite simply. This is just some idiot drawing conclusions that achieve his own ends, and get him on the news. No big deal. I don't think GTA Vice City sales will go down over this.
-Dae
"Alle reden vom wetter. Wir nicht." - SDS Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund.
j00 4r3 3n73r1ng l337 w0r1d.
Maybe he's played too much Ultima...
It sounds to me like there is evidence that crazy people do crazy things. Video games are just the latest in a long string of supposed causes of social problems. Everything from radio to rumble seats have been blamed for everything from alcoholism to unwed pregnancies.
The lesson to be learned here is that anytime some new social phenomena comes along that it will be blamed for pre-existing problems by people with no common sense, which is sadly the majority. This is why individual rights and freedoms are so important, because all of us need protection from the ignorant and stupid among us who would be more than happy to impose their views upon us.
Also if you actually sit down and look at the rate of violence among gamers you'll find that not only is there NO evidence for a cause and effect relationship between game-playing and violence, but it could easily be argued that games may PREVENT violence simply due to the fact that gamers are no more prone to it than anyone else. A couple of nutcases in Colorado 4 years ago and a trio of psychos someplace else today falls so far short of sufficient evidence of a link that any serious statistician or social scientist would probably throw their coffee at you in disgust if you were to suggest that a link existed.
Of course that doesn't stop hysterical soccer moms from seeing something that isn't there and ambitious attorneys from milking that hysterial for all its worth.
Its amazing that so many of us grow up to be well-rounded and competent adults judging by the insanity and stupidity that so many of us had to cope with as children and adolescents. My own mother was convinced that my seeing the dinosaurs on "Land of the Lost" was somehow harmful to me as a child, and that watchin the Three Stooges would make me want to hit my sister. Sadly this lack of good judgement is the rule and not the exception. As Dr. Evil likes to say.... "riiighhht...."
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
if a man kills 100 people and had for years ranted about the game Doom and continued to rant about how Doom made him do it, it should not mean anything at all to anyone interested in truth.
but people need to blame things. it is part of our psychology. we need reasons. so when something really, really awful happens, there must be someone to blame for it. and if the damage done by one person or a few people outweighs what seems to be possible in terms of evil coming from one person or a few, then we start reaching for other reasons.
i have played so many hours and days and weeks and months of Doom it is not even funny. but i am also about as rabidly an anti-NRA, anti-gun ownership person you can get.
what is the correlation? there is none.
that's my whole point.
i am personally accountable for my actions. and it doesn't matter if you expose me to the most violent media for months on end. in the end, i am responsible for anything bad i do, and the moment we, as a society, in our grief, start blaming the media beyond the perpetrators of violent crimes, we have started to gnaw at the bedrock of trust and accountability that makes society work in the first place.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
tic toc tic toc... Ding!
I knew I would be able to set my watch to the formation of this paticular theory.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
A person with a capacity for violence might play a computer game such as Counter-Strike and go out on a CS-inspired killing spree. Did CS cause the violence? No. But without CS, perhaps they'd just go out on a baseball bat killing spree if they only happen to play sports games.
Or an Eminem-inspired killing spree if they listen to rap music.
Or an Ozzy-inspired killing spree if they listen to heavy metal.
Or a movie-inspired killing spree if they like the Terminator.
Or a TV-inspired killing spree if the like the Sopranos.
Or a William Golding inspired killing spree if they like literature.
Ad infinitum.
So what you've said, in essence, is that violent people don't need any particular excuse to be violent, nearly anything can be a problem.
How, then, do we "lessen the link?"
Remove the SS from history books? Prohibit rugby, boxing, hockey and American football? Start putting "for entertainment purposes only" disclaimers at the beginning of CNN broadcasts?
The way to solve violence problems like these is not to try to find triggers; if there was no reservoir of tension beneath the surface, "triggers" would not exist. With these reservoirs of violence beneath the surface, triggers almost can't be avoided.
We need to look at causes in society that actually affect peoples lives in real ways -- jobs, conflicts between identity and environment, prospects for future successes/relationships, isolation/depression, moral or authority figures (religion, parents, lack thereof or overtly polemical nature thereof), etc. -- not the entertainment they choose after having been affected by such things.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
I found an argument that appears to give pause to some of those who are convinced that violent video games breed violent children. Show them Crazy Taxi.
For those who haven't played it, Crazy Taxi is a game in which your goal is to get fares to their destination as quickly as possible. To accomplish this, you take shortcuts across crowded parks, run cars off the road, and send pedestrians flying. The question is, should cabbies be forbidden from purchasing this game? Do you really think that, after playing this game, cabbies are going to "draw inspiration" from it and go rampaging across rooftops in their taxis? It turns out that not many people think so.
What's good for the syndicate is good for the country. --Milo Minderbinder
An issue that is rarely highlighted in these discussions is the psychological and emotional development of the game user.
As a well balance, happy, and stable adult (honest), I think most people would agree that there is very little danger that my psyche will be irreperably damaged by playing violent and immersive games.
However, years ago in the days of the original Doom my little brother (around 6 at the time) would sneak into my room and play Doom if I had left it running. With the unique perspective of a self-absorbed teenager, I assumed it would have as little effect on him as it would on myself.
Imagine my surprise when he was sent home from school for threatening another child that he would "...chainsaw him in half...".
A realistic threat? Perhaps not. But it was certainly a potent reminder that the power of all media; be it TV, print or computer based; lies not in the medium, but in the minds of the consumers.
I strenuously object to anyone who dares suggest that I am so impressionable that I should allow someone else to vet my viewing for me (and kudos to those Australians like Margaret Pomeranz of SBS Television who risked arrest in Sydney this week: fighting censorship of the film Ken Park).
And so the conclusion. Games do not a killer make.
Please, let us all use a modicum of common sense and avoid the usual media hyperbole.
P.S. And help support Ken Park - even if it is not a movie that you want to watch, defend your right to choose!
Q.
Insert Signature Here
At least the man (read: government) doesnt still try and blaim weed for things like this. Remember the movie Refer Madness? They tried to convince the public that if you smoked a joint youd go on a raping and murder rampage.
http://interserver.net/
http://www.ippu.purdue.edu/failed_state
So I fired off the following response:
"Dear "Journalists",
I'm really getting sick of all your pedantic video game demonizing. Your article was quite possibly one of the stupidest things ever commited to paper, or whatever medium you originally confined this to. Did you not post the full note, or am I completely unlike you all who wrote the article in noticing that they never refer to themselves as "Warriors of Freedom", but that hazy sepculation was just a conjecture applied by rabidly frothing Jack Thompson, who sees this unfortunate incident as something that he can use to cash in a big paycheck?
I write for the video game website Netjak.com. I have NEVER heard of the game Warriors of Freedom. I did not see it on display at E3 this year, and I knew nothing of the game until it was mentioned here. None of the people I know who play video games have ever heard of this game, and it's highly likely that neither did the kids invovled in this crime of incredible stupidity.
However, they, unlike you have an excuse. They're kids, they don't know better. Whereas you, supposedly reputable journalists, should. I don't see Jayson Blair credited in the top...did he ghost write this, or are you just not giving him credit?
While you don't out and out say that video games are evil, you sure imply it enough, and don't even bring in any to offer a counterpoint. Nope. Ol' Jack Thompson and his crusade to have so much money he can cram it in his ears is all you seem to be worried about. You could have posted this article here:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/07/06/college.g amers.ap/index.html
Which was up on the 6th...2 days before your fiasco ever became responsible for making the world a less intelligent place. You could have talked to any of the game makers in the industry, or, anyone who played a video game at all and enjoyed it. But, you didn't feel the need to since we're all just repressed homicidal maniacs, right? Whatever sells your papers, pal.
My favorite part about this piece of work is how you note that the reference to Neo is from the Matrix...a hugely popular movie, and then segue that into the fact that it's also a game...a game that fell well below sales expectations, and here's the best part...you can't play as Neo. Here's a quote from one of the detailed walkthroughs of the game posted at Gamefaqs.com:
"Q: Is Neo/Trinity/Morpheus/Agent Smith playable in the game?
A: Unless you are playing the PC version, everyone listed above except
Neo is available in the multiplayer game. The PC game only has Neo at
the time being due to mods and skins imported to the game. Sorry,
doesn't look like you get to play as "the one" in this one kids."
So, your entire link to the Matrix video game is broken. I suppose that may dissuade some people from writing an article like this, but you people seem to be uncaring about research or facts, so long as you get the public more afraid of those kids with a mouse and keyboard just waiting to blow your brains out.
Then you, Ms. Yant Kinney, defend the Matrix in another article, which also drops "evidence" incriminating evidence and makes no effort whatsoever to absolve the video games. What is up with this quote:
"They called themselves the "Warriors of Freedom," after an Internet-based combat video game."
I'd like to see the full text of the letter. Did it honestly say something like, "Hi, we're the Warriors of Freedom. You may recognize our name from a little known multiplayer online game.", or are you just taking the word of the man who has the most to gain directly from drumming up fear of video games, Jack Thompson, as proof enough to print as fact? I thought we were all supposed to be in this new era of journalistic integrity and fact checking.
You continue to state, "An identity crisis rooted in the mind, not the movies."
How hard would
Netjak.com independent reviews of domestic & import video ga
Holy shit, crazy people like violent video games?!? Well that does it; we need to ban crazy people immediately before these violent video games become too popular!
Shawn
Because you gotta bitch
This is potentially a sufficient reason to ban the use of violent video games altogether or the use of violent video games by certain groups.
Consider the following premises and conclusion:
1) The use of violent video games by some minors who will already commit acts of violence against theirs peers causes these minors to commit acts of violence which are significantly more brutal, harmful, and deadly than the acts they would otherwise commit.
2) We can not effectively enforce a ban of the use of violent video games by only those minors who will commit acts of violence which are significantly more brutal, harmful, and deadly than the acts they would otherwise commit did they not use violent video games.
.: 3) We should ban the use of violent video games by as extensive a group of minors as is minimally sufficient to encompass banning the use of violent video games by those minors who will commit acts of violence which are significantly more brutal, harmful, and deadly than the acts they would otherwise commit did they not use violent video games.
It is very unlikely it will be acceptable to satisfy (3) by banning any subset of all minors identified through some profiling process, such as: "has parents who own firearms", "are socially maladjusted", "exhibit anti-social behavior", "wear dark colors", "listen to Marilyn Manson".
Therefore I conclude, it is very likely that the only acceptable means of satisfying (3) will be to ban the use of violent video games by all minors.
The only potential objection I forsee is the claim that minors have a right to use violent video games. This is a higly dubious claim. It is quite implausible that minors have a right to the use of violent video games which is sufficiently weighty that it is not overridden by our obligations to lessen the effects of those minors which the use of violent video games will cause to commit acts of violence which are significantly more brutal, harmful, and deadly than the acts they would otherwise commit did they not use violent video games.
I am inclined to agree that the point you concede is true. However, I would feel more comfortable were more compelling evidence presented to me.
"In doing that, you'd have to ban anything that could be construed as an influence on people who react violently to their environment."
No, this is false. We do not 'have' to do anything of the sort, and neither does the force of reason at least clearly compell us to do anything of the sort.
If your right to take some action, x, is not overriden by some right possessed by another individual or group of individuals, generally, it seems, it will not be acceptable to deny you the right to take action x.
Further, in perhaps a majority of the sorts of cases you introduce, we can identify specifically and treat those individuals who are so affected by their environment. In these cases, there is generally insufficient reason to enact a ban.
I think that was the original poster's point, though not elaborated on: that a strong correlation does not necessarilly imply a causal link (in either direction). Your "shoe" example further proves this. This type of statistical abuse is rampant in the media, and most people don't think twice when they hear quotes like this.
If the use of violent video games by minors who will already commit acts of violence against their peers, to instead commit acts of violence which are significantly more brutal, harmful, and deadly than the acts they would otherwise commit did they not use violent video games, then we should ban the use of video games by these individuals.
I am not optimistic that there will be any acceptible way to ban the use of violent video games by specifically these minors without banning the use of violent video games by all minors.
Surely a minor's right to use violent video games is not sufficiently weighty that we should on account of it not ban the use of violent video games by all minors if doing so will lessen the damage caused by those minors who will commit acts of violence against their peers.
I realize that the first objection to this will be that then we need to ban any action which cases a some group of minors to be violent. This is not so.
First, a minor's right (not necessarily a legal right, of course) to expression: such as in clothing and hairstyle, and to certain forms of speech, seems to be significantly stronger than a minor's right to use violent video games.
Second, in the case of many other factors which cause or enchance violence, there are acceptable means to more specifically identify and treat individually those minors who will be so affected.
I can't even begin to see where this guy links this plot to GTA. I pretty sure GTA never inspired a carjacking. Could it maybe be that carjackings inspired GTA?
Also, I'm not a fan of anime and I don't know much about it, but I've seen random acts of violence in some of those movies. Is anime exempt from the violent media theory? Not only that, but this kid is now an artist because of it?
Are you friggin kidding me...
ascii art
Ok. For the most part, the subject line says it all. I grew up during the era of some idiot "jumping from the balcony with an Ozzy Osbourne cassette in his back pocket" and "misguided teens act out bizarre fantasies parallel to Dungeons and Dragons." I have always believed that (especially in cases such as these) that the "children" were already predesposed to this type of behavior to begin with. Lyrics, gaming scenarios, and 'makebelieve' do not produce killers. I have compassion for the families involved; however, the "children" involved must take responsibility for the actions they intended to pursue. No one, not 'Son of Sam', 'Charles Manson', nor anyone else can use D&D, music, their dog, [insert bullshit], etc. as an excuse. ciao
------ Send your whines to
Frankly, I just don't care . . .
I remember after Columbine that a big deal was made about the fact that the perpetrators listened to Rammstein.
Why is this connection always made when some sort of vaguely fringe music is involved, but when some suburban father of three snaps and murders his family before killing himself, no one in the press says, "A-ha! This man has all of Celine Dion's albums! That explains everything."
For crying out loud, folks, no one gets up in the morning and decides on the basis of their musical tastes or favorite video game to go kill people. You have to be severely fucked up to do that sort of thing, and it takes a lot more than dressing in black and listening to old Bauhaus records to do that.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
You doesn't want to take any responsiblity and someting goes bad, blame the somebody else.
I think all kind of violence stuff (movie, game etc) has good REASON to kill somebody else.
The main question is WHY THOSE KID's wants to KILL OTHER PEOPLE.
You amerikanski, you create most pollution, you create most crime, you eat most, you buy most weapons, you spend tons of buck to create terrorist oganisations, then asking questions WHY someting goes bad, why I'm so fat, why child's wants to kill other people, why 9/11.
Quick answer: Your kind, does not interest any thing but himself. These kid's needs attention, care, love. Same games played here, but there is no problem.
[My english is better than most other people's Turkish, so please point out mistakes politely. Thank you.]
But not the Bible?
The article comments on how the guy referred to himself "the Neo" and then comments on the Matrix.
Later on a better "extract" the quote from the letter is expanded.
"I thought you'd like to know that I am a warrior, I am fighting for mankind's freedom. Freedom from this society," said the letter, which was signed "Sincerely, Me. Matthew. The One, the Neo, the Anti-Christ, etc. etc. etc."
So there are 2 references to self-identity ("Me. Matthew") 2 to the Matrix ("The One, the Neo") and 1 to Christian "mythology"n with "the Anti-Christ"
Yet there is no comment on THAT one.
Funny that.
I am an avid computer usr/programmer/gamer now, but in my youth I grew up in the bush.
My formative years were not spent playing violent computer games, but instead wandering through miles of thick bush, practising survival skills, and highly intellectual pursuits like trying to catch live Goannas (6 foot long lizards with huge claws/teeth) armed only with a hessian sack (yes, I still have the scars).
I made napalm, black-powder, and nitro-peln bombs with gay abandon (spare time and sheds full of farm chemicals are a dangerous combination). Then I turned my attention to projectiles and hand weapons (my favourite was the 8 foot, 12 kilo pike that I made, although the old style scythe was pretty cool too) both offensively and defensively (which meant getting two neighbours to repeatedly fire stone headed arrows at me from a variety of ranges).
I lived on a farm and was expected to be able to hold my own when it came time to kill a chook or a snake or whatever. The realities of death were neither glossed over, nor glamourised. You understood what it meant, how you could do it, what it looked like, what it felt like, why you would do it, and why not.
A few years later and I was being consistently bullied at school. Not because I was small or slow or whatever, but because I chose not to follow the "cool kids" and their self-supporting persecution of others to appease their own insecurities. I also made no attempt to hide my opinion of them - unforgivable from their perspective. (And I was smart - nothing pisses of a dumb jock more than that).
Although I had spent a lot of time "playing" with various deadly weapons (and school did nothing but provide me with a plethora of additional ideas and resources) I did not choose to target these individuals.
(At least not willingly: Once I found a friend being held down and beaten by a number of the "in crowd", I tackled the main offender off my mate and dared the rest of them to take me on as well - they didn't. After that incident I was cornered by an even larger group of them, out for some "retribution" for being made to look like weak fools - I still think I would have taken a pretty severe beating if I hadn't had a large knife in my pocket to convert the situation to a stand-off (I had been teaching myself knife juggling at the time)).
Unlike much of the student body I was always certain on two things:
1. Knowledge is a hell of a lot more deadly and fear inspiring than strength. (Someone overpowering you? Stomp on the bridge of the foot and sweep your palm sideways across their nose. I don't care how strong they are, their bones aren't.)
2. School will end, I will leave, and the next time I meet one of the bullies they will be smiling and saying: "Would you like fries with that, sir?"
So tell your children, tell your friends, tell your neices and nephews: THERE IS LIFE AFTER SCHOOL.
We need to do something about the horrendous situation the current youth is facing: depression, suicide, hoimicide - they are all different faces of the one die (or dice for the uneducated). It is not the fault of computer games except in as much as they continue the bizarre abstracted existence we are taught to call life.
Thanks for reading, spread the word to those who need most to hear it.
Q.
Insert Signature Here
Pedantic? I suppose I won't object to that evaluation... oh well.
I wonder though, how weighty is a minor's right to use violent video games?
Or speaking of consequences, do the negative consequences of minors not being able to use violent video games outweigh the benefits of the extent to which those certain minors' violent actions will be less harmful?
While there will obviously initially be a lot of complaining on their part if a ban is enacted, surely that will pass.
I wonder what happened when the legal drinking age in the U.S. was raised to 21 - which must have been before my time, but I recall that it happened?
This effect could be lessened by a 'grandfather' clause which allows minors currently at or above such and such an age, perhaps 14, to continue using violent video games, but any minors under this age will not be able to use violent video games until they are (in the eyes of the legal system) an adult.
linking videogames to an alleged spree killing attempt.
An attempted killing of spree?
Warning, this is the grammer police. Anything you say will be used against you.
So what if they were inspired by a video game or by The Matrix. The entertainment industry still has a ways to go before it catches up to God, Allah, and Jesus. More people kill based on religious beliefs than anything and I don't see a whole lot of regulations on worship.
'Same speed C but faster'
Maybe you heard about the school massacre in Erfurt/Germany where a boy killed 16 people about a year ago.
A British newspaper wrote that the boy was a fan of the band Slipknot, and one of their songs is called "School wars" containing the words "Shoot your naughty teachers with a pump gun."
All German newspapers copied the news about Slipknot and a real witch hunt started on the band. But it turned out that the news just was not true. Slipknot never had a song called "School wars" and none of their songs contains those words. Certainly, the newspaper never pubished their mistake.
And yes, some conservative politicians of course tried to blame computer games for the massacre.
Signature deleted by lameness filter.
Why is their physical build and height important to this article? I don't need this information to know that, for whatever reason, these kids were messed up.
Again... why do the authors feel that this information is important to me?
This, along with the revelation that the oldest of the three had lost his mother and an older sister, are fairly quickly glossed over and not even mentioned as potential sources for this kid's problems. Typical media...
And Jack Thompson is an ignorant fuck...
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
When I see a psycho killer attempting to Bunny hop, wielding his knife, to run faster then I'll know he was influenced by video games.
... are an obvious counterexample to the idea that naming yourself after a violent video game means you're a violent group.
;-)
Does this lawyer think that video games make people go out and kill people?
I'd hazard a guess that violent video games will only inspire people to kill for real if those people are already pretty fucked up in the head. Like Cannabis, they act only to multiply what's already going on in there, good or bad. If he wants to make a real difference I recommend moving from law to head shrinking.
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
The thwarted murder of Miami lawyer Jack Thompson has been linked to hostile replies a to Slashdot article read by the computer game players who are accused of the crime. "The suspects called themselves 'Nerds that Matter'," said the Miami Chief of Police. "There can be no doubt that the suspects were incited to this crime by the Slashdot website."
Slashdot readers were quick to point out, however, that most computer game players read Slashdot. "What kind of news website do you expect video game players to enjoy? Slashdot or accesshollywood.com? Computer-game-critic-killing computer game players were here long before Slashdot."
paintball
That article was "written" by four journalists. It's a sad state of journalism when it takes that many people to come up crap like that.
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
>It's a very simple logical fallacy.
Yep, its the old causation vs. correlation fallacy.
America has already been through this when Dr. Frederick Wertham (a popular quack-ish psychologist from the 50's) wrote a book arguing that comics caused all sorts of deviant behavoir. This killed the comic industry by turning it into kid's stuff, more or less. More info here. Better details here.
I think this is the favorite meme for hack journalists. If a kid goes psycho then make sure to print how he dressed, what music he listened to, and what games he plays and start the witch-hunt! I was very surprised to see that almost 1/3rd of a AP/Reuters article was about these things and not what actually happened.
I doubt a "Comics Code Authority" self-censorship will take place again, but the kneejerk mentality is still there with some people. Hopefully we've learned something in the fifty or so years since the Comics Code was created.
You've made a good argument how violence in movies or video games could create more violent people. The thing you haven't shown at all is that this theory is correct. Persuasive arguments are very easy to make. ......Until one of us shows actual evidence that the theory is correct it's all just a pissing contest .....
It's surprising how often sceptics about the link between portrayals of violence and the actuality of copycat violence often shelter behind demands for unusual levels of evidence. In ordinary life, people tend to judge that when there is a striking similarity between the individual characteristics of what first of all one person does in public or shows to the public, and then what other people do shortly afterwards, it _is_ evidence of copying -- absent something that would reasonably account for the similarity even if the activities were independently conceived. What else is fashion?
Copycat violence has been well known at least for a couple of hundred years -- an early example followed Goethe's book 'Sufferings of Werther' that was followed for a time by a wave of similar-pattern romantic pistol suicides among disappointed young men. There are many much more recent examples where striking similarity between the characteristics of the prototype or image, and then of the violence that followed after it, make the inference of copying overwhelmingly probable.
The way that many people nevertheless resist accepting that this kind of copying is a fact indicates that there is something specifically causing that resistance -- and in some cases I suspect the cause of that resistance is probably $$$$.
So if the kid plays video games, its the games fault. If a kid listens to rap music, and enter a gang, its the rap artists fault. If a guy reads a book and starts a revolution, its the books fault. Where does the blame end? I don't belive we can blame any one thing for violent bahavior, any more than you can blame one specific thing for the Russin Revolution, or Hitler's conquest of Europe. I think there are several reasons, some of which have been said before, America is being so damn stupid about these things. First we need to look at the person. These are mentally unstable people who found something, or someone, to connect with. The fact that these kids may or may not have connected to a video game has nothing to do with their behavior. It could have been some Metalica music, or a book, or a movie. These kids had issues long before they started playing video games. Second, whats with the blame? Well, America is built on blame these days. 20 years ago we didn't have all these stupid lawsuits where criminal sue the people whose home they break into, because they were hurt inside while robing the place. I mean, all we need to do is turn on the news to see another instance of 'Shuffle the Blame.' Its part of moden society. The fact that we chose video games, or more over media violence in general, is because its an industy not a person. We focus on the people being hurt, and the big mean industy thats turning our kids into killers. It works, people go for it. (I once watched a show looking into the war against violence in the media, and how a lot of it is done by groups who are actually targeting sex in the media, but its easier to go after violence because of the negitive spin. The end result in their minds, is to get rid of the sex). Violence is all around us naturally. The fact that we don't see more kids break out and kill people is quite interesting indeed, especially in America. You dont' have to look to Video games or Movies for violence, just watch C-SPAN. Gulf War coverage. If you watch long enough you can probably see real people being killed in the streets, blood and guts all over the place. I was once watching CNN and saw a guys brain covering half the street. If thats not shocking to a child, than Doom should be fine. Quite frankly the problem has to do with something that no one wishes to talk about. Parenting. Parents are spending less and less time with their children, and allowing TV and games to take its place. As with these children, or the columbine kids, had their parents noticed the fact that they painted their room black, maybe this could have been avoided. I dont' know. There really isn't one answer. People want strait answers, but there isn't any answers. Some Mormans came to my home at 9 am one day (got me out of bed). I walked down thinking it was the UPS guy with my RAM, so I only had pants on. Scared the two ladies half to death. They asked if I read the bible, and I said that I did (which is true). They wanted to know if I'd noticed a decrease in the values and morals in this country. "Well, only being 21 years old I really havn't had a long enough time to grasp the situation and assess the state of our values." They didn't know what to say. They handed me some booklets and left. This got me to thinking, whose values are we looking at? The Christian right? The European Liberals? Old School Jewish Laws? Do we regress back to Victorian Era ideas on morals and make our women cover up their feel so we men don't go crazy over them? (the weirdest thing is that during the Victorian Era we saw the first pornography pop up, and it was selling like mad. There was a whole giant underground network of porn! People are never as pure as you think) I guess every generation longs for the 'Good times' of yesteryear, only they had the same issues we did back than. Different issues too, things we may never think of. I mean, those damn dirty Romans! Or Bristish, for that matter. Lets get all violent and kill them. People were just as violent in any other time
The RIAA fined my dog for barking too much like the Back Street Boys. They later came back and shot my dog for looking
And funny how, in Denmark with 5,1 million and extremely strict gun laws we had 36 murders in 1996. Wouldn't that equate to 0,7 murders in 100,000?
... and btw murder rates are about the same in Sweden (61 in about 10 mil, same gun laws).
Funny how that works in completely the opposite way
(http://www.mm.dk/filer/Tabeller_13_11.PDF - page 11)
Is neither video games nor guns. It's the nature of our society that becomes more and more competitive, leaving people frustrated and unable to cope with it.
Free purchase of guns makes the problem a little bigger, but that's it. Look at the UK: guns are not free, but they have a problem with knives (to the point that there are public advertisements of giving your knife to the nearest station!!!).
Look at other countries that people play video games. There are not any spree killings. Why ? it's the society, that's why.
I've read a few reports on this now, some blame computer games, some say they were emulating the Matrix... ... What gets me, is people are intent on blaming some form of media, as opposed to looking at the real problem, of how three kids managed to get hold of 2000 rounds of ammo and a bunch of guns, thats more then just a case of picking out Dad's hand gun from his draw, thats ALOT of hardware they were packing.
./ also seem to focus on Games/Films rather then the huge amount of equipment the kids had.
And its not just news reports, all the comments I've read here on
I saw the light at the end of the tunnel... But it was just someone with a flashlight bringing more work.
Mech Commando? Do they mean Mech Commander maybe? A unit-level RTS. And he posted advice online! Dear god, he must be some kind of psycho. It's not like pretty much everyone who games does that at some point. How do these kind of journalists get jobs?
The top link (of two, the other one is a coincidence) on Google for Mech Commando is the Philidephia Inquirer article itself, so they can't even use Google
I've just learned that another headline killing has been linked to video game violence. Douglass Williams, it turns out, was an avid Warcraft III player on Battle.net. So much so that he fell under the delusion that he was a human rifleman infiltrating an orc encampment (the factory) and taking out their peons (his co-workers).
In related news, George W. Bush has been known to enjoy a quality game of Risk...
I think this may be the first known case of shameless Googling. I'm not sure what that means, but apparently it means that if you know there is a game and you know what it is called, then you can find it using Google. That's pretty shameless, I'll agree!
George W Bush and his "Enduring Freedom" campaign that gave these kids the belief that violence would solve their problems as well. I think he has a bigger influence on their lives than Quake 3 or Warriors of Freedom will ever have.
"Jack Thompson, a Miami lawyer and outspoken critic of violent video and computer games"
He probably got is ass waxed in quake back in law school, so now he is a critic of these games...
The one thing we have GOT to do as a society is stop blaming everyone else for our problems. It's not some game's fault. It's not MTV's fault. It's not some "gangsta rapper's" fault. It's the fault of the parents and the kids, plain and simple. First of all, the dad was an IDIOT for not locking down his firearms collection. Second, the parents obviously didn't spend a whole lot of time a) learning good parenting skills and b) implementing them. Finally, the kids knew better, and chose instead to be criminals.
They should ALL be locked up...
As others have already posted, this is not a case of "we played this cool game and decided to kill some people." Rather it is likely a case of some unstable individuals (or one unstable 18 year old) who had access to guns but not the understanding that it is wrong to kill others. This same individual also played violent video games because they found them to be fun.
Lets ban parents because clearly they are the root of this evil.
Imagine what would have happened instead if the parent had had guns but had also instilled in the children that to use them on humans was wrong. And I'm not talking about a sex education video here. I'm talking about a life of growing up knowing deep down that to harm another was wrong.
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
"or is there genuine evidence here? "... this answer is simple... "NO"
*--- Sometimes a majority only means that all the fools are on the same side. ---*
Cicero was right. Oderint dum metuant.
/. is a member of the US Congress. We don't have the authority to directly vote on this military campaign, or the use/non-use of landmines, or the use of DU shells, so it's not really "our" action any more than it's yours, except by virtue of passport. Hate on the States all you want, but don't start with that "all of you are personally responsible" BS.
Might not be a terribly fuzzy policy, but what the hell, it works...even seems to have prevented global nuclear annihilation (MAD and all that jazz).
Please cut this "your war" crap - i seriously doubt that anybody on
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
"I thought you'd like to know that I am a warrior, I am fighting for mankind's freedom. Freedom from this society"
Funny, he didn't mention any dwarves or elves (as in the actual game). In fact that statement has nothing to do at all with the Warriors of Freedom game. This is clearly just a coincidence at best. But this comes from the same guy who said a sniper learned to shoot using Halo(without ever actually touching a gun), so I'll keep playing NBA Street and I'll be Lebron James in no time. Sure. Using that logic I'm just going to start practicing my pimping skills by playing Leisure Suit Larry all day. Hope it works.
here's my tale:
My extremely well mannered 3 y/o (at the time) son got hooked on Power Rangers at a baby sitter's house where he spent 4 hours a day for a few months before we got him back into Pre School.
The Power Rangers continued at the house (the Pink one is, after all, really hot; and have you SEEN the villianesses?) The boy was emulating the Power Rangers' moves on the screen, mostly spinning himself to the ground in bizarre death scenes. Then the kicking began. A lot of kicking. A really disconcerting amount of kicking. We took the Power Ranger tapes away and sure enough a few weeks later so did the kicking.
I can say in this particular case the violence was definitely a manifestation of what he was watching. A quick switch to Bob The Builder and a sparing amount of Sponge Bob Square Pants and now my son is mostly non violent.
Except for the kid across the street who he beats to a pulp about once a week. But that kid is asking for it.
This
Some people have this impression that it's easy to
legally obtain a handgun. First of all, you are
going to have to pass a criminal background check.
Most of the time in most states, this means ANY
felony, crime involving domestic violence INCLUDING
a misdemenor, and sometimes even a DUI will
disqualify you from purchasing a firearm. The great
thing about the background check is that the type
of unstable person that that's worried they'll fail
the background check is already too afraid to
go through the process. Assuming you pass the
background check, some states REQUIRE you to
register your firearms. The catch-22 is that
they'll require a valid ID from THEIR state.
But wait, there's more. Assuming you have a
valid ID and you start driving to Washington
to "do some killings", the second you cross
the border you are breaking the law again
UNLESS you've taken the time to get an
out of state permit for your firearm. A lot
of states don't even offer these. They only
offer them to residents. Some states don't
issue carry permits at all (NY). So in the
end, you are probably NOT going to buy your
weapons in Indianapolis then drive to Washington
if you are hellbent on killing someone. You'll
end up breaking and entering to steal a gun, or
buying one illegally from someone that sells
illegal guns if it's that important too you. On
the bright side, if you do try breaking and
entering to steal the gun, there is a good
chance the lawful gun owner will do the rest
of us a favor and put your out of our misery
with said gun.
Some people have this misguided impression that
you can just go buy a handgun at a pawnshop
or gunshow and they won't do any sort of checking
on who you are. It doesn't work that way.
"Daddy's invisible catch-all shield" is in full
effect making sure only a certain type of person
is allowed to become a Fed, Senator, President,
Governor, Handgun owner, and anything else
of any importance.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
We all know that when a kid goes on a killing spree, violent video games will be blamed.
But why is it that when someone does something wonderful, their good deed is not credited to the fact that they were a fan of video games where the ultimate goal is something wonderful, like saving a hostage or rescuing your kid sister?
I'm willing to bet that at least one of the soldiers that rescued Pvt. Jessica Lynch in Iraq had at one point in time played Zelda or Mario Brothers, where the goal is to save a princess. Why wasn't that connection mentioned?
$8.95/mo web hosting
Would think that he/she is immune from the influence of TV, Radio, Movies, and Video Games. To what extent is the only variable. Most all people, have been numbed. What you are willing to look at is inherently worse than what your Great Grand Parents would be willing to look at.
Is this an improvement to society?
The weak will be affected to a much greater extent, than the strong.
Should the weak control what the strong see? No, but maybe the strong should consider the cost.
Get a free ipod.
Please go and argue with www.m-w.com, I'm quite bored with this discussion:
Main Entry: irony
3 a (1) : incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result.
Reminder: find a new sig
Yup, it was the Matrix and that video game all right. Ban them and we'll all be able to sleep well at night.
The schools that tolerated harassment of students of a nature that would get an adult fired from almost any workplace had NOTHING to do with it. The pathetic social support system in the USA, and the general lack of good low-cost mental health programs had NOTHING to do with it. It's the games.
"People should tell bullied kids to gang up and beat the fuckers senseless - then there's no need for shooting innocents. If you can't gang up, you do what I did - everyone is alone sooner or later - and those who have IQs only marginally above chimps don't understand the concept of mechanical advantage vs. bone. Or something as simple as a knife in the gut and the ability to remain silent. Just don't do it on school property so your future remains intact."
You're mentally ill. You just - in a single paragraph, mind you - claimed that its okay to assault and greviously injure someone (including a "knife in the gut" which has a signficant chance of being fatal). Thats completely insane, period. If the agression against you is anything at all to remotely justify violence like that, then you can get police involved to arrest these "teasers". If its not violent, then you dont need to stab them. Christ man...
"Stumble before you crawl"
Going to say it right here this thought isn't my own but a well known comedian. What videogames did Hitler play in his youth. Or Stalin for that matter? Lets take rock music, what devil worshipping rock bands did they get into at a young age? None. Some people are evil, some are good. We don't need video games to teach us to kill. We already know how to do that from a young age. These kids were just retards simple.
Where ever you go, there you are.
The motorist, Mathew Rich, 33, of Deptford, said he had left his wife at her mother's house and was turning onto Kendall on his way to work at Philadelphia International Airport when a youth in a long black coat stepped in front of him.
Of course, ever since Columbine teenagers wearing black coats are violent criminals. Just like anybody who has a little bit darker skin is a terrorist.
"I thought you'd like to know that I am a warrior, I am fighting for mankind's freedom. Freedom from this society,"
So they really didn't call themselves 'Warriors of Freedom' they just came to a rather dubious conclusion.
"In a sense, these guys probably were acting out a game," Thompson said.
I serioiusly doubt it. It is more obvious to me, from just readint he quotes from his letter, that the kid had some serious mental problems. Obviously, he was depresed or enraged or something. But I doubt that video games actually caused them to do that. Video games may have influenced some of the methodology of carrying out their plot (i.e. the swords), but I highly doubt it. However, I dont' think that the absence of video games would have changed anything. Bottom line, this was not a game for these kids. They were seriously disturbed and they all realized the gravity of their intended plot.
But this article did what it was intended to do, which was to smear video games publically. This is enough to get groups like MAVAV all fired up. Of course, what will really tell the truth about this incident and any connection to games that it may have will be told in court. If one of them comes out and says so, then I'm sure that we could begin to draw a resonable conclusion. However, I highly doubt it. The sad thing is, when the trial is over the report will be a little 6 line column on the last page of the paper, so that the real motivations behind this crime will never be known. The general public is just left pointing a finger at games/music/tv.
--
Adobe's anti-counterfeiting softw
The owner of the gun is required to ensure that they are secured properly. If dad is the owner, and dad didn't lock them up in accordance to local, state, and federal laws -- than there may be charges pressed against dad.
Like any tool that can cause damage, owning a gun requires a certain amount of responsibility. In fact, most of it is spelled out in the law. If dad didn't abide by those laws, than the very well may find himself in court.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
You're talking about a different phenomenon from nearly everyone else here. In fact, the post was a response to a post which specifically set aside copycat violence. Copycat violence is a very specific type of crime, and is much more rare than non-copycat violence.
The game Doom didn't involve making pipe bombs in your garage and then planting them around a school before unloading your guns into people (in fact, the only 'person' I remember in Doom was John Romero's head on a stick, the game was about fighting demons to save the earth from Hell's wrath). Yet people blamed Doom when a couple of teenagers (one of which was legally an adult) did just that.
Whether or not exposure to violent media is responsible for the actual violence is the question. Even studies of copycat violence can't tell you whether or not a copycat would have committed a violent act in the absence of violent media.
As for your claim of 'how often sceptics about the link between portrayals of violence and the actuality of copycat violence often shelter behind demands for unusual levels of evidence':
It's not a demand for unusual levels of evidence, it's a demand for any level of actual evidence. Not 'violent people play violent games', not 'oh my friend watched Beavis & Butthead then walked around saying 'fire, fire' and lit his cat on fire'. If you're going to say that people that play violent games become violent people, then show some evidence. Don't show me that 50% of people imprisoned for violent crimes polled said they played violent video games. Show me that 50% of people that play violent video games commit a violent act. You can't even do that, because if you could, there'd be millions of people in the US alone killing each other because they played Grand Theft Auto or Doom. Fortunately, less than 1500 people were victims of homicide in the US in 2000, so either everyone really sucks at Half-life, or it doesn't translate well into reality.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
Grrrrroooaaaaarrrr!
Playing cute anime-style non-violent video game makes Morbag want to CRUSH LAWYERS!
Ah! Then obviously it's the new Matrix video game that caused this! It couldn't possibly be the movie!!!!
"For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert"
'nuff said.
"What kind of games do you expect psycho killers to enjoy: doom3 or oregon trail?"
Actually, playing Oregon Trail made me into a cannibal. "Donner? Party of 81?"
Freedom: "I won't!"
...that it's not the damn games or movies.
Japan (there are many other stats to show this) has arguably a far more graphic and violent media than the US, and yet we are still a much more violent society. How can this be? It "be" because the games are not at fault.
I think it's already been said here, but there is something seriously wrong with the person to begin with if a video game can provide the catalyst for murder. When things like this happen, I can't help but realize that these kids (in this instance) would have found ANYTHING to quelch their "desires". If this was 1900, they would have found Tarot cards (I'm making things up now) or whatever to be at fault. When is it the parents fault? When is it the individualists society's fault?. In THIS particular case, it could have been video games, but I seriously doubt is was the reason for the violence. The reason lies in what made them vulnerable to be swayed in this manner, because it certainly does not happen elsewhere, even in places with more graphic violence being portrayed.
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
So it's not the kid's fault? Please. The kid is old enough to know what he's doing. Even if his father is a perfect son of a bitch, the kid knows it's wrong to kill people, and that whatever problems he has don't make killing other people right.
To say that he's young, and doesn't understand the consequences of what he's doing, is to insult the intelligence of others his age.
Blame his father for being a bad parent if you want. I will blame the kid for taking the weapons and threatening others.
Blaming his dad is just another form of the same reasoning that blames the video game.
Hot Damn! It's the Soggy Bottom Boys!
Amen!
This just showed up in my morning newspaper. Simple cause and effect that shows that video games don't have the corner on the violence market.
Should board games be outlawed next?
when disenchanted youths would call them selfs super mario brothers and run around and jump on people and eat mushrooms...
mmmmmm... mushrooms... I think we blamed it on the mushrooms back then.
I must in return call you out for a bit of spin yourself. Your points:
> The weapons were locked in a closet
I must agree with the other posters who commented that if this kid had never fired a gun, he should not have had access to them. If he didn't break the lock to get them (he didn't), then they weren't secured properly. Securing firearms is the complete and sole responsibility of the owner of those firearms. Period.
> The majority of the (whoo scary) 2000 rounds of ammunition were a few 500 boxes of ancient target rounds.
Spin point one: twenty to thirty years old does not qualify as "ancient" in any sane sense, and thirty year old rounds still fire correctly in most cases. Spin point two: what difference does it make how old they were? Are you implying that being shot by a thirty year old bullet pack would somehow be less injurious than a new round? Also, the guns and ammo were fitted to each other. I'd frankly be less worried if the son had grabbed an old gun and new bullets, since they're less likely to be compatible. If the guns were antiques, why did he keep period ammunition? If he had to keep ammo for the gun, why did he keep it with the gun? Rule one for keeping people from using your firearms without your say-so is to separate your stores of ammo from the weapon. Again, this is very irresponsible gun ownership.
> The "kid" was 18, a legal adult.
Irrelevant. His guns, his responsiblity. Nobody thinks he should be charged with conspiracy to commit assault, they think he should be charged with criminal negligence. The "kid"'s age does not change that.
> Blaming the parent without knowing the full facts is just as idiotic as blaming video games.
I agree. However, there are enough facts available in this case to pass judgement.
Virg
Be really careful with that baseball bat theory. You need to make sure your case is super air tight before you try that. A very wise man once told me there is only one victim in a courtroom and you can decide if it's you or him.
I saw this early yesterday and posted an analysis about it early. Some newspaper reports are trimming the article leaving out the parts of Jack Thompson. The blame is really with the writers of the Reuters article for not checking facts first in the rush to get the article out.
The Philadelphia Inquirer needs to be honest with themselves here. Over the past decade, which has caused more violence and property damage-- The most bloody, violent game in existance or international football? How about winning the superbowl? Riots anybody? Ah, can't forget hockey.
Funny, I don't see anybody rushing to put content rating on these popular sports even though they've caused more violence than any game of Postal, Quake, etc, nor do I see them trying to ban sports based on the potential reaction of the fans hometeam winning.
Ah, I just love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning...
You need a FREE iPod Nano
The real lesson to this story is this: If you're planning a murderous rampage, you should call yourselves the "Bad Dudes". That way, if you're stopped by the police, they'll think you're just on your way to rescue the president from ninjas.
I take drugs seriously.
I did hear on the news that the kids were using a Magic Sword... if they were also using,say, a Golden Axe on their little Adventure then I think they really might have a case.
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
The Legend of Zelda has caused me to break pots and mow grass. I should sue.
I was just saying to a friend Monday, wondering when the first story was going to come out blaming video games or movies...I was 2 days early.
I'm going to plan a killing spree under the name "Pajama Sam". That way, it can be said that it isn't only violent video games that make people kill. And my cousin is really annoying when he plays that game.
running around in Diablo 2 with my buddies from clan and my Zon who was hardcore level 99 got killed by a cow on hell so I was like shit man I am so pissed, let me get my dads gun and kill some kids at school that I don't like.
NO NO NO
Ave Molech Setting
Sounds like an informative post but its not.
1) How much higher are these murder rates? Are they only 5% higher or are the astronomical? 65 is higher than 64, but that doesn't statistically mean anything.
2) How close are those strict law states close to states without strict laws? It's like fireworks, if you want them, go to a state that makes them legal and easy to get. Blaming your neighbor when you contribute to the problem is not fair.
3) How many of those states have local city statutes with strict laws but lax state laws? How easy is it to get a gun 2 hrs from the city? The most common place to get a gun is from a delinquent not in the city, but out in the country where he can steal or buy a handgun cheap and sell it for two to three times the price to a delinquent in the city.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Playing a violent video game probably is not enough to set someone off - it is playing the game, being depressed, the repeating teasings at school and whatnot.
The article does talk about that - that these youths where some of the rejects - some of the most picked on people in school. That is something of a common factor in school shootings - Joe Blow gets teased, put down by teacher, whatnot and can't handle it therefore he goes nuts... The critics aren't trying to say that violent video games are the main cause - simply a help.
More or less - someone should have checked these youths for depression a long time ago...
There is always a frontier where there is an open and willing mind
First of all, Sinn Fein is a political party.
Second of all, it means "Ourselves Alone".
"America has done some terrible things. But I know that Americans don't cheer when innocents die." -Dave Barry
Unarmed civilians *are* the most helpless victims possible. Including but not limited to full grown adults.
It's not about the targeting. Adults are slightly easier to hit than children, although slightly more likely to survive a small caliber round. Children are more vulnerable because they can't run away as fast, they're less mentally focused when deciding to run away (choosing wrong direction), and they're unlikely to crouch quietly if they find a good hiding spot. They're short, so the front of a crowd won't shield the rest of it (not like bullets won't penetrate some anyhow)
Plus, there's the matter of their physical in-offensiveness. If a murderer wades into a crowd of victims, or turns a corner and smacks facefirst into a disoriented civilian, he faces a risk of his gun being pulled away. That's particularly important when reloading. The more adults present, the more likely one of them can overpower the attacker. Children pose no such risk.
There's no sport in it.
If a potential mass-murderer wants "sport", he should setup with a sniper rifle outside Fort Knox. That's sporting!
Police officers are woefully unprepared for an attack like this, and as such are more likely to get themselves killed than anything else.
There's little reason airport guards would need that much firepower, except to respond to a major attack that is well organized and well armed. (Which requires a different caliber of personnel than the common terrorist groups can recruit just now... but no matter). An enemy like that will attack with surprise, so the first guards they meet will be killed regardless of their armament. The airport should leave their normal guards with light armament (pistol + nightstick), and station any personnel with heavier weapons in concealed rooms. They should be able to monitor the terminal floor by camera, and reach it quickly if an attack occurs, but their position should be hidden from civilian users of the airport (some of whom may be terrorist scouts)
Striding back and forth with an SMG all day might make tourists feel like they've got powerful protectors, but it just ensures the attackers will be careful to kill that guard in the first volley.
If games really effected you in that powerfull of a way, Bill Gates would be lobbying congress to pull Monopoly
You don't see "The Sims" players going out and getting a real life. Do you?
found inspiration in violent computer games.
Need I say more? They may have found inspiration in violent computer games however that doesn't explain why they wished to do it. If violent computer games where not available they would have found that inspiration elsewhere.
What I really wish to know is exactly what actions where they going to take that were specifically inspired by that video game title. Where they going to have a real capture the flag match. What was the specific event? It can't be just the violence because I can find that anywhere.
Movies
The news
Magazines
Comic Books
Fiction Books
Non-Fiction Books
What's the point?
It is meaningless to blame violence on anything other than the people. Do you honestly feel that if we where to remove all violent material across the board we would wipe out violence within our society? If you do you are very foolish.
If the heart longs for violence you will not change it by removing access to voilent material. You have to change the heart.
If you really want to be a killer as you described, the Marine Corps is the way to go. Haven't you seen "Full Metal Jacket"?
"What makes the grass grow?"
"Blood! Blood! Blood!"
"Without me, my rifle is useless; without my rifle, I am useless."
Happy people make bad consumers.
Striding back and forth with an SMG all day might make tourists feel like they've got powerful protectors, but it just ensures the attackers will be careful to kill that guard in the first volley.
Oh, is that what that's supposed to make me feel? At AUS (Austin Intl. Airport) for about six months after 9/11 there was a soldier (NG, most likely) carrying an M-16 standing in front of the security checkpoint. A god-damned M-16. That didn't make me feel safe. It scared the piss out of me. First, there was the thought that a jittery Weekend Warrior who was out to Fight Terrorism would panic if I dropped my Leatherman as I went to put it in my checked baggage and fill me with lead. Second, there was the thought that all I'd have to do is walk in with an easily concealable Saturday Night Special (this was outside security, remember), shoot that soldier in the head, and then I'd have a nice M-16 to play with in a now under-guarded airport.
The fact that the soldier was a short non-scary woman probably didn't help. And yes, I know that's somewhat sexist, but sorry she didn't look threatening. I've known lots of women that could look threatening, but she wasn't one. If I saw me at my overwhelming 5'6" and 150 lbs standing there, I'd have been thinking the same thing: "If anything happens, this guy is going to be killed and his weapon stolen and used on me."
The enemies of Democracy are
From here:
A botched carjacking early Sunday morning led to the arrests of the three, who prosecutors said planned to kill three local middle school students and then turn their weapons on random victims.
I don't think the issue is really that they played too much violent video games -- I think the point could be made that (thank god) they didn't play quite enough GTA3.
Once again.
-- Repeat with me: "There is no right to profits".
"Warriors of Freedom"?
sounds more like they have been listening to Bush's speeches than playing video games.
"The direction controls are the same in Nethack as they are in vi." "Yeah, I hardly ever die in vi anymore."
hmmm....
He said a sword was "not a typical of weapon of choice in a carjacking" but is a feature of the game Grand Theft Auto Vice City, which includes carjacking.
Has this jackass even USED the sword in Vice City? Its one of the worst weapons in the game! I mean ya, if you *happen* to do a lateral swing, and the person *happens* to be standing right in front of you, you can get a decapitation, but usually you have to hit someone 2-3 times to kill them.
A muchbetter choice is the chainsaw. With it, you get instant kills, and you can even mow down an entire group of people.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
I'm so tired of this. Millions of kids play violent video games and 2 or 3 kill people. If you take away all the violent video games you'll have millions of kids and 2 or 3 will kill people.
Idiots. This country is full of idiots. They should all be killed. With a BFG or a rail gun or ran over by a crazy taxi driver or beat to death in a car jacking or something.
seriously though, if you are a violent killer, please, PLEASE, think about who you're going to kill. Kill teh terrorists or the RIAA or hte MPAA or some of those Patent_Wait for someone else to develop technology_Sue for licenses companies, or spammers, or people trying to censor, people trying to steal from the public, people deforesting, people making hte world a shittier place. Quit killing random people, school children, classmates, girlfriend, teachers, parents and homies. No one cares if they die. IT doesn't help anyone and it makes us want to kill you in return. Take your psychotic killer instincts out on the real scum of the earth.
Surely I'll be blamed for the next rash of killings. Whatever, they were gonna kill anyone, I simply asked them to spare the innocent and focus their anger on the real bad guys. You might be mad that you lost your CEO/Lawyer, but Susie's mom and dad are happy that bobby killed the lawyer instead of his girlfriend, so f-off.
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
I made a sad attempt at humor, using the topics of another teen shoot-em up and video games, and you mod me down as off topic?
Maybe its time to switch websites, or make moderators pass a basic logic test before moderating. Or maybe my mom modded me? Mom is that you?
Well first of all I'd admit that if there's no 'signature' of similarity, between the characteristics of a violent game and some later violent event, then of course we are not talking about evidence of copying there.
I'd also agree that it's irrelevant when any proportion of people imprisoned for crime tell that they do some activity that is also done by a lot of law-abiding people.
Otoh, I see no need for the proof you demand of some percentage of the population (50%?!) converted to violence from any cause before there is reason to believe that the cause has operated and can operate again. I think you are demanding exactly an unusual level of evidence. I'd say it is some evidence of copying when even a single person uses characteristic features like some model of violence.
There were examples of copycat violence using the odd characteristics of the film 'Clockwork Orange'. More recently, a popular TV soap had a dramatic episode of attempted suicide closely followed by a surge of real attempted suicides with similar features that made local hospital staff complain to the soap producers for the strain they had put on already-heavy-loaded hospital services. (IMO they were not speculating wildly without evidence about an unproven cause, they were using their common sense.)
When book, film, TV soap, and in other examples, real violence reported on news, have all made models for temporally-linked copied violence, it sounds improbable and in need of evidence to claim that video/computer games are somehow different and will be exempt.
But in a given case evidence may or may not be there. If the 'Warriors of Freedom' show an independent source for their name that's believable, and there's no evidence they knew of the game of the same name, then I'd say those facts did not amount to evidence of copying from the game in that case. But if they did see the game, the similarity of names would begin to look to me like evidence supporting with at any rate some probability that they were motivated to copy and did copy in that case. How is that unreasonable?
Copycat violence has been well known at least for a couple of hundred years -- an early example followed Goethe's book 'Sufferings of Werther' that was followed for a time by a wave of similar-pattern romantic pistol suicides among disappointed young men.
And I expect someone immediatly called for legislation to ban Goethe's works and force all authors to portray suicide as ugly and messy (or, better yet, not portray it at all).
Also see this web site, with its disturbing imagery, for the "Young Warriors of Freedom".
The Victory Church cult, the group behind the Young Warriors of Freedom, is militant. See their newsletter. A few quotes from the above "church newsletter", which contains a direct reference to the "Young Warriors of Freedom" mentioned above.
Note the repeated mention of "end times". David Koresh's cult in Waco was also an "end times" cult, preparing for the end of the world.
Could those kids have been drawn in by this cult?
In my memory of things, they always want to blame something, and dont want to take resposibility for stuff. From AD&D being devil worship perverting young minds to take the blame away from bad parenting of a heroin addicted teen, to KISS meaning kids in satans service and blaming heavy metal rock for the behavior of bad people, to claiming Harry Potter and Sabrina the teenage witch are warping our childeren, to lazer tag teaching childeren firearm combat skills, to cops and robbers encouraging children to become authoritarian cops, or anti-authoritarian criminals. Stating that coin operated video games teach childeren to gamble, that wine coolers encourage underage drinking, that car racing games and movies encourage reckless driving in teens. What other excuses are there? How about McDonalds made me fat! Or the president didnt call that a sex act! Maybe this one, the lawyers and their friends told me that I didn't have to pay for what I stole, as long as I can convince the court otherwise. Or maybe, Bill Gates and the crooked CEO's can blame Monopoly for their behavior. How about Red China or the Homeland Defense Agency (et.al.) blaming the book 1984 for their totalitarian ideas! Maybe Osama Binladen and the Taliban have an excuse too. Maybe, they played too much Risk and wanted to build up a New Persian Empire. I would blame the hippies for what I see as extremely irresponsible politics, but then, I would be making them into a scape goat too. Video Games are just the next victim. Though I am curious what excuse reality TV is going to be used for. Can anyone else add to the list?
- Kid's mom dies.
- Kid's sister dies, a few months later.
- Kid's younger brother is constantly ridiculed by schoolmates for a deformity.
- Kid is constantly ridiculed by schoolmates for his clothing and gait.
- Kid has video games on his computer.
- Kid allegedly hatches a plan to steal a car and kill former schoolmates.
Conclusion: Video games inspired his supposed killing spree.Given his history is this the only possible cause? This article mentions the mother, sister, brother, and teasing, but never suggests that those might be causes.
The article also fail to mention that millions of people play video games without going on a killing spree. Just last night, I played Medieval: Total War, and I feel no urges to send an army of peasants into Aquitaine.
It looks like yet another example of the media drawing the conclusions for the reader.
Don't you mean Ultima Online, and all those other trade-skill overloaded MMORPGs?
Errrr.. the First Noble Truth of Buddhism is "All life is suffering." I doubt any serious Buddhist would claim that life is fair. Actually, he would say that one of the reasons we suffer is that we feel that life should be fair.
Happy people make bad consumers.
Otoh, I see no need for the proof you demand of some percentage of the population (50%?!) converted to violence from any cause before there is reason to believe that the cause has operated and can operate again. I think you are demanding exactly an unusual level of evidence. I'd say it is some evidence of copying when even a single person uses characteristic features like some model of violence.
50% was partially a number I pulled out of my ass, and partially based on the idea that roughly 67% of the population aged 26 and under plays at least some video games in the first place. Again, though, copying is a different area from just stating that exposure to violence leads to violent activity. In many cases copying is a simple result of someone wanting to commit violence, and taking the example of some form of entertainment (or in most copycat cases someone else's violent act(s)) for the manner in which to commit those acts. Some people go around thinking that they want to kill a particular person, and aren't sure of how they should do it, and then see an episode of some crime-drama on TV and decide that they can do it that way.
What isn't known is whether or not people performed a violent act because they were exposed to violent material. Just because they chose to copy something they saw/read/heard doesn't mean that they were not going to commit a violent act without the influence of the material.
There were examples of copycat violence using the odd characteristics of the film 'Clockwork Orange'. More recently, a popular TV soap had a dramatic episode of attempted suicide closely followed by a surge of real attempted suicides with similar features that made local hospital staff complain to the soap producers for the strain they had put on already-heavy-loaded hospital services. (IMO they were not speculating wildly without evidence about an unproven cause, they were using their common sense.)
While they may have been using common sense in figuring out that these people were imitating what they saw, the common sense ends there. People that commit suicide, especially (but also other violent crimes to some degree) are often looking for attention, or are asking for help. Doing so in a way shown by media brings the attention of the press, meaning they get more attention from their action and/or more/better help.
When book, film, TV soap, and in other examples, real violence reported on news, have all made models for temporally-linked copied violence, it sounds improbable and in need of evidence to claim that video/computer games are somehow different and will be exempt.
I'm not saying that video games are exempt, I'm saying that the evidence linking media in general to violent acts is flawed, because it is not proof that the media was the reason the acts occured. Copycat crimes are examples in which people utilize examples from media in their crimes, not examples of people committing crimes because they saw/heard/read them. Anyone that's taken basic logic or science courses (especially psychology) and understood those courses knows the difference between the two (A causes B vs. A is evidenced in some people who have committed B).
But in a given case evidence may or may not be there. If the 'Warriors of Freedom' show an independent source for their name that's believable, and there's no evidence they knew of the game of the same name, then I'd say those facts did not amount to evidence of copying from the game in that case. But if they did see the game, the similarity of names would begin to look to me like evidence supporting with at any rate some probability that they were motivated to copy and did copy in that case. How is that unreasonable?
And again, the thread was not about motivation to copy, but about causality. If they took the name from said game, then they chose the name and went with it. That still does not say that if they hadn't played the game they wouldn't have gone out and called themselves something els
-PainKilleR-[CE]
Oh my! I've used the name of a game that can be played on line and in which the object of the game is to find the biggest gun with which to blast your opponents. I must be an incipient mass murderer. Oh oh! I've used the phrase "mass murderer" that must be what I am. Good grief! I've used "I" seven times. I must be egotistical.
are teams .. not one kid :P
.. the fact that these kids might have played a violent video game has about as much to do with their choice of expression as a bowling class in colombine.
.. the news is 'FACT' not 'ENTERTAINMENT' right ?
Not to mention they are generally protreyd as SAVING lives (hostages etc) than evil midless killing of civilians.
But otherwise i mostly agree with you
I would say, that full blown media coverage of other related events had more to do with shaping their plans than 'vice city'.
After all
--Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum, non erravi pernicose!
The anti american sentiment is stong with this argument. old muntions and war of any sort are dangerous and damaging to the enviroment. there are islands in the south pacific we pumped so much steel jacketed artilary and bombs into that to this day compases don't work there. Lead shot from shotguns kills the ducks that eat it. copper jacketed bullets lodged in trees sometimes kill said tree, cause enviromental harm. oil from destroyed vehicles leaks out and drains into the ground water. damaged sewage systems overflow into rivers and stream causing new outbreaks of cholera.
And the USA uses depleted uranium rounds that cut through tank armour like a hot knife through butter. The after effects may be toxic but ending a war quicker limits the other nasty after effects of war on the enviroment and the civilian population.
War is hell and should only be used as a last resort, but once we go in we need to go in hard and fast. and the wars we do fight need to be terrible enough to make everyone stop and think before we let it come to war again.
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
And when I declare myself "postal" and start shooting everybody, it's because of the USPS. People, take responsibility for your kids. What happens to them is only YOUR honor or fault.
As the father of a growing geek I am constantly looking for signs of any psychological effect of his inevitable games playing and on more than one occasion have discussed with him the violence in them. On every occasion he has put me down saying "don't be stupid it's not real like the stuff on the news".
He's right - the one image I remember most vividly and probably always will was that of a man on his knees, clearly begging for his life ( there was no sound ) as he was shot through the head in a summary execution. Was this in some computer game ? no it was on a six o'clock news report of troubles in Africa ! At no point did anyone say shooting someone in the head is a bad thing because it's assumed we all know. Children don't but then they're insignificant to news network demographics.
We dramatise and sensationalise exactly the same behaviour in reality that which we condemn in non-reality because bad news is big money. Have we seen lots of tv coverage about how the fact that we are still fighting injustice and crimes against humanity is a sad reflection on our ability to evolve ? Has the need to fight terrorism been portrayed as a sad reflection on our ability to live together ? No we portray it in a glorified, gung ho, us against them manner with lots of shows about how efficiently we can kill people these days.
Worse still we now have the epidemic of Reality TV shows which seem to be immune to any kind of censorship. My son has asked me on more than one occasion if this is real because it's so extreme he thinks it can't possibly be so, now tell me which is the more scary !
No doubt recreational activites such as computer games can contribute to the mindset that allows someone to go out and kill but I'd be willing to bet that other aspects of our lives that we willingly accept do also.
The Swiss have 3 times as many guns as people and computer games are freely available yet their incidence of armed crime is virtually nil !
Note: Oregon Trail was obscenely easy if you simply stocked up on bullets at the beginning. If something's a problem, you shot it. If you needed food, you shot it.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Oh, and U.S. readers should remember that Congress shall make no law restricting freedom of speech.
Am I blind, or is there absolutely zero indication in the article that these kids even knew the game Warriors of Freedom existed? And what about this conjecture that they were acting out scenes from GTA? Just because they had a sword? Christ, the kid liked anime, knew karate, but no, it was GTA.
And this lawyer, making his living by spreading such 'video games kill' propaganda, doesn't seem to notice the millions of people who are able to play video games without maming their classmates or co-workers...
And the common thread in this and other school killings is perhaps not that the perpetrators play video games, an activity partaken by the vast majority of children these days, but the social situation of the offenders? Hello? In America, if you don't fit in, those who do will never let you forget it. Ask anyone that doesn't fit in and went to a public school. The majority don't have this problem, and tend to not kill their classmates. A minority of students who do have this problem tend to kill their classmates. I'm not making excuses for these kids or their actions, only suggesting that if it looks, walks and talks like a horse, its probably a horse, though this lawyer guy would try to convince us otherwise.
But in this situation, I guess there's no money to be made by connecting the dots.
-Nick
The fault with this logic lies in the fact that the exact same logic can be used to dis-prove that your statement is true.
Like so: One million people go to see (insert currently popular gun violence movie). The next day, one individual, for whatever reason, goes on a killing spree.
While it is potentially correct to say that the movie influenced the person in question, it is a numerical certainty (truth) that the movie did not incite 99.99% of the attendees to kill.
-------------------------
As easy as herding cats!
I can remember way back in my freshman year of High School, way before Columine or any of the precursor school shootings. Me an my freinds were geeks (of course), half of us wore only black, and the other half wore whatever smelled okay to their unsensative noses. All of us were much maligned by the student body, picked on by those oh-so popular folk who could play football, but were doomed to trailer parks. And all of us listened to heavy metal and were obsessed with Doom leached off of BBS warez boards, and the newly arived Doom II. In the library we always used to plan, in EXCRUSIATING detail the deaths of the entire student body, sans ourselves. Usually we were more creative about it, though, forcing the administration to fight in the football feild, and mounting the heads of the cheerleaders on stakes as a warning. Vats of acid and razor blades, poison gas, shot guns, drugs, disease...
Obviously this never happened. Most of us have lived through school, moving on to such diverse fields as engerneering, system administration, psychology, library sciences, the military, and such. Only one of us ever became a menace, and they was due to drugs, not Doom. I'm sure that we, as social outcasts, were not alone in this plotting and schemeing, many other geeks of today (who were the nerds of yesterday) probably had the same passtime. (oh, and I forgot worshipping the devil by proxy, D&D and V:tm) And I'd say that before Columbine became a media circus, many would never have tried it, it was a cute mental diversion.
Also, looking at all the HS libraries I've ever seen, the munitions and military tech sections are the most browsed by adolecents. Hell, me and one of my comrads used to sell soft and hardcopies of the Anarchist's Cookbook to our classmates, for $5 a pop, with good success. And none of them (our customers) ever blew up the school either.
And, I'm sad to admit it, I WAS a violent person, not a bully, but I had temper problems. And till, I never caused mass violence, because it was *WRONG*, my parents were strict (even if I was spoiled), they instilled a strong sense of right and wrong, real and unreal into me. They taught me to read at an early age PERSONALLY, and thus taught me the difference between Stephen King and the real world. They taught me why hurting animals was wrong, and by proxy people. And yes, my parents allowed me to play on the C64 and 8086 unsupervised, since it was arcane to them. Yes my mom took me to see Silence of the Lambs when I was young, and gave me my first novel to read, Stephen King (forgot title, the one with the Mist), and yes, she read me Poe's The Raven as a child to put me to sleep. But...
In my opinion it was having a stay-at-home mom that saved me. Not being in day care, not learning life from uncaring strangers just doing their jobs. Yes, this is un PC, but who cares. Everything I learned was a moral lesson (both parents are atheists too), as apposed to school, where everything has NO moral value. Sure, we're all so egotistical now, mommies (or daddies) career comes over little billy, so off we send 'im to daycare, or we plug him infront of the television, or on the internet, or infront of the PS2.
The only way to renormalize our children is to RAISE THEM, by hand. Parents are the only people with a chance of doing it right, and its not our teachers job to moralize children, nor should it be. Adult egotism is the problem. If your kid has a problem it is easier (and cheaper, factoring in wages lost) to dope them up, than to fix it, by hand. Doping someone doesn't fix ANYTHING, just the symptoms of an underlying problem. (And don't even get me started on giveing children ridalin, then telling them just to say "no!")
Eh.... Sorry for the rant.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
They missed a pocket in Batavia Illinois.
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
... that you are good at video games for the same reason you were good the first time you picked up a gun ? :-P
You know, talent?
That being said, I'm pretty good at FPSs and I am deathly scared of firearms.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice