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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
And just because I go around building towns near gold mines and harvesting lumber doesn't mean the game has affected me.
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.
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
Do nethack players go on a ) wielding killing spree?
I guess we shall never know.
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
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"
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"' >>
Now a kid who grows up playing violent, realistic games could tend to be lsss affronted by violence. How easy would it be for a kid to look out his apartment window to the street below and imagine getting a perfect rail shot to a person below? Or turning the corner in school and hitting the local nerd with a double-barrel shotgun blast? Now that doesn't mean the kid would necessarily consider acting it out in real life, but is that the first step on a slippery slope towards real violence?
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
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.
Therefore, NetHack players either do their deed and get away with it, or they're the people we hear about on the news who get killed by kittens after eating bad jelly.
Nitpick: eating a rotten jelly corpse could cause death by food poisoning, NOT a "killed by XXX while helpless" death. You're thinking of getting killed by a kitten after hitting a floating eyeball.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
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 =)
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."
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"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
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.
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
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 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.
I beg to differ, Ignorant Aardvark. A possible outcome is: "Blecch! Rotten food! The world spins and goes dark." After which you could be killed by the kitten.
... snip ...
pline_The("world spins and %s %s.", what, where);
//Call rotted food function
This is perhaps the most geekiest argument ever, but let's delve a bit deeper into this. I quote from the Nethack 3.4.1 source code eat.c line 1184...:
} else if(!rn2(3)) {
flags.soundok = 0;
nomul(-rnd(10));
nomovemsg = "You are conscious again.";
Eating a rotten corpse can indeed cause 1d10 turns of "helplessness".
And now from line 1277 of the same source file:
if (!tp && mnum != PM_LIZARD && mnum != PM_LICHEN &&
(The comment is my own to avoid the lameness filter).
Rotted corpses can have negative effects such as blindness and helplessness except for when the corpse is of the lizard or lichen variety. I mistakenly thought that jelly fit into one of these categories; indeed, it does not. Eating jelly can lead to death by kitten during helplessness. I was wrong.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
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 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
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.
;-)