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Take-Two Interactive and Sony Sued Over GTA
An anonymous reader writes "Apparently Take-Two Interactive is being sued by the parents of two kids who killed a man. I remember reading about the killing incident a few weeks ago, but this is the first I've read about an actual lawsuit. The part that I found most interesting was that Sony will also be named in the lawsuit because GTA was exclusive to their console." Update: 09/18 16:27 GMT by M : The Independent has moved/deleted the story on their site, breaking our link. We've already mentioned this story anyway.
IAXM (I *AM* Ex-Military), and I don't seem to remember combat training for shooting floating eyeballs and zombies with RPGs...
Strangely, shooting a gun required things like using sights rather than just pointing in the right (compass) direction... Ah the old days...
For us carnivores, "Sucking the marrow out of life" isn't a transcendentalist philosophy but a practical instruction.
The part that I found most interesting was that Sony will also be named in the lawsuit because GTA was exclusive to their console.
Does that mean Microsoft can be added to the lawsuit in 2004? They have tons of cash and would be a great target to add to this frivilous suit.
Do you want to back that up with some evidence?
Even if it's true, it isn't against the law to give out ideas. In fact it's a constitutional right.
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George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney are in for at least $300 mil for setting a bad example for our youth by starting a violent unprovoked war in the middle east
CNN owes $500 mil for it's gratuitous, jingoistic, spoon-fed-propaganda coverage of the war
I figure that the parents of the kids gotta be in for about $2.5 billion apiece
And Joshua and William Buckner, since they are the ones who actually committed the crime, are in for $400 billion each.
It's a standard reaction on behalf of the parents and a sad one. There are kids who will go out and do terrible things, but violence is not exactly a new thing in human history. If anything, todays' societies are remarkably non-violent compared to past ones.
For the parents - especially of the killers - it's an attempt to find blame somewhere. I feel sorry for them: since Freud's time, parents have been told "you are responsible for the way your kids turn out", when in fact many studies show that parents are amazingly irrelevant to their children's character. One long twin study showed approximately 50% coming from genes, 45% from unknown sources but presumably peer influence, and 5% from parents.
There is violence in our genes, but it generally needs a certain kind of culture to bring it out. The place to look for the causes of such killings are the youth cultures these kids hung-out in. There is no evidence at all that violent games or movies influence children, but it seems clear that violent children prefer to express themselves through violent games, virtual or real.
Court cases like this resolve absolutely nothing, because they divert the discussion in meaningless directions. Let's ban all violent games and movies... OK, will that change anything? Take a look at (random selection from a large pool) Uganda, where the kids watch no movies at all, yet 10,000 young (5-12) killers roam the north.
It is very difficult to change a violent culture, but it is possible.
The first thing is to understand the way violence is propagated. Like all youth cultures, it goes from youth to youth, bypassing all adult control. You have to work at this level, thus.
The second thing is to understand how individuals get drawn into violent behaviour that reinforces itself and finally becomes habitual. Can a young man turn to authority for fair protection? If not, he is more likely to use his own force for self-protection. Can a young man who uses drugs turn to authority for help? If not, he is likely to resort to retribution and violence. Can a young man escape from a violent or oppressive environment? If not, he will eventually give up on himself and "go postal", taking his own life but first taking the lives of as many of his peers as he can, in an attempt to regain some face.
I think it's clear that the rigid and somewhat intolerant mentality of adult-youth relations in the States is a large part of the problem.
Banning violent video games goes further in the wrong direction. Now we make criminals out of those youngsters who want such games. Excellent.
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I usually rant on about how rediculous I find these lawsuits and get pissed about how people just can't seem to take accountability for their own actions. "Oh, Billy just shot you? It doesn't matter that I didn't train him proper firearm useage, had one readily available to him, and didn't teach him it's wrong. I'm suing a game company."
However...the part that REALLY scares me is the fact they're suing Sony because that was the console it was on. So when people start suing movie directors and studios for violent movies, does this mean they'll also be able to sue AMC theaters? Unfugginbelievable...
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Aren't games that are rated mature supposed to be only purchased my adults? Can we then safely assume the childrens parents bought the game?
I've actually heard a mother in EB say something along the lines of "I'll be mother of the year when I buy my child this game" when buying GTA3.
And the manufacturers of the gun which they used - which means the NRA shoudl back Sony on this one, for fear of setting a precedent they really wouldn't like.
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I'm sure the plaintiffs will contend that merely rating the game as mature doesn't absolve the defendants of responsibility. They would propose that further steps could have been taken...
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Well it would be a great idea, but shouldn't be needed.
.22 rifle the kids used could have had a gun lock and none of this would have happened. What makes you think that the parents who let kids stockpile guns in the garage or make .22 rifles easily accessable would bother locking out the M rated games on their PS2?
I mean yeah it's a nice feature in case the kid borrows the game from an older friend etc.
The point is that the kids should not have had access to that game.
Personaly I think this whole thing is BS. I played Wolfenstein when I was 9 or so, then moved up to Doom and Doom 2 when I was 13ish, Duke Nukem at 14, Quake at 15, I was in tournaments at 16 in Sin (won some nice money too..). At 21 now I still play FPS, although they're somewhat dull these days.
To date I have NOT had ANY desire to go out and kill random people. Sure there are some people that I would absolutley love to ventilate, but I always wanted to kill the few people that I passionatly hated, long before I touched a computer game.
My parents NEVER monitored which games I played, my parents NEVER monitored which movies I watched.
Yet I have NEVER had ANY problems with the law.
Seriously I think the ONLY influence that computer games had on me is that I drive faster than the vast majority of people due to years of addiction to Need For Speed and Motorhead(Play it! Best racing game ever.). I suppose this is a "bad" thing, but plenty of non gamers drive fast, and do it drunk or show off or do stupid shit.
The fact is that games alone don't make kids want to pick up a gun and kill people. Kids at 14 and 16 KNOW the difference between fantasy and reality. It's preposterous to suggest that they do not. I knew the difference between a game and RL at 7 when I played DukeNukem (the 2D version). And yeah sure I thought it would be cool to be a super tough guy and go and save the world. But I certainly did not think that I "was" the super tough guy. But then again I thought it was kind of cool to be Superman also but I never made any attempts to fly.
In the end I don't think the censoring will help. Why? Well it's like the gun locks. There are plenty availalbe, but parents still don't bother with them. The
In the end though, it's really the kid who is in control. I watched all the porn I wanted at 8, played all the violent games I wanted, there was always some alcohol in the house and never monitored, I had my first beer at 8 or so also, and I hated it. Still I never had any problems. I knew when I did "right" things and "wrong" things and I could tell the different levels of how "wrong" something. Plus I certainly had no trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality.
The whole point is:
STUPID KIDS DO STUPID SHIT
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The game store is supposed to check ID for MA-rated games. I think the question should be, "how did these kids come into posession of this game in the first place?"