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Games Made Me Do It Defense Didn't Work
BuddingMonkey wrote to mention a heartening ruling from a judge who saw beyond the anti-gaming hype. CNN is reporting that Devin Moor has been found guilty of murder, in a well publicized case where the defendant stated that video games caused his behavior. From the article: "Prosecutor Lyn Durham said Tuesday that Moore knew what he was doing when he grabbed a patrolman's gun and killed two officers and a radio dispatcher. 'And he knew it was wrong,' she said."
This comment brought to you by the committee to purge the BS from Gaming...
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Have you tried your Hot Coffee lately?
Video games made me pour Hot Coffee all over my naked girlfriend!
Some people have to stop living in the past, it is way too easy to blame your past for violent action. It is important to realise that one can change if he wants to. However, David Suzuki, host of the TV show "The Nature of Things" presented a documentary about violent behavior. According to this documentary, violent behavior would be developped around the ages of 2 to 6. The key to preventing violent behavior would be in the way you correct children for unsociable behavior. The teenage years would only reflect this early teaching, but since it shows more in this stage of development, video games and movies get too often blamed for this.
Freedom is strength, Ignorance is peace, War is slavery.
...deserve to be placed in an institution.
...but, the games, if they did not cause this then games might not be dangerous to children but then the government would be wrong in spending millions of tax dollars on needless investigations and... ...it's like, if the gun manufacturers are not to blame for gun crimes but grokster is to blame for p2p crimes and videogame companies are to blame *twitch* not to blame *twitch* to blame for....
ILLOGICAL! ILLOGICAL! THIS DOES NOT COMPUTE!
...the defense used when a gang of young teenagers went around killing people in defence of their own beliefs. Oh wow. And I bet half of you believed me.
Can you imagine if the Scooby Doo gang captured a villain dressed up as... O..... Donkey Kong, and he announced "I would've never, EVER, thrown barrels at my Plumber, but the Video game made me do it. Seriously. O, and I would've gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling kids."
It's about time our legal system personnel began to smarten up.
was to try to use that defense in Alabama instead of California.
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
This is not that great of news. There is still room for stupidity: The victims' families have filed a civil suit against the video game manufacturer and two stores, claiming Moore killed the three after repeatedly playing "Grand Theft Auto III" and "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City." No trial date has been set in the civil lawsuit. Then if this succeeds maybe they'll overturn the conviction and put him in a mental health facility. I'm sure the victims' families would love that.
I'm going to make a game that ends in the player killing themself, hype it up a whole lot, and let the problem solve itself.
Can someone please tell me what happened back in the time? It seems that in this new millennium of ours, we're more and more dependent. Let me show you what I mean:
Today, we always try to sue people. Sue, sue and sue. Sue McDonalds for selling food that's not good for you, suing some salesman because you were too ignorant to see that it was some kind of fraud and now you want to sue the video game makers? P-l-e-a-se!
I think that people are intelligent enough to make their own decisions. Kids should learn how to behave and normally shouldn't go on "rampages" because a game somehow "INFLUENCED" him to do so.
I think judge has a good case.
Case closed.
(Well, not really...)
The hip way to get your IP. No ads, ever.
And it also sickens me that it has become a trend not to take responsibility for your own actions. Like blaming obesity on McDonalds.
Now I want to file a law suit. Umm, let's see...for mental anguish caused as a result of being subjected to stupidity.
"The victim's families have filed a civil suit against the video game manufacturer and two stores, claiming Moore killed the three after repeatedly playing "Grand Theft Auto III" and "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City." No trial date has been set in the civil lawsuit"
Wow... just wow...
Does anyone else see the terrible, terrible irony here? If they held their logic true, they should be protesting the guilty verdict, since it obviously wasn't his fault, the video games did it. The article mentioned them hugging the prosecutor, so they were obviously pleased.
I hope they don't get one red cent.
I'll stop being cynical when the world allows
I am a HUGE fan of Law and Order: Lenny (aka the original series). "SVU" or "CI" never made an impression on me; they just seemed "slightly more extreme and more dodads to keep the unwashed masses watching".
The final straw was last weekend, when I caught a Law and Order Criminal Intent (I think) episode- where a young man was drugging young women and doing things to them. One victim had her calf muscles cut out of her legs while she was alive. Another had a hole drilled in her skull and hot water poured in.
That was the day I swore I'd never watch the two new variants for any longer than it took to change channels. It was absafuckingloutely disgusting.
We don't do them in real life because we understand the difference between the two things.
Is that why children think there's Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, etc? Is that why children imitate everything around them? Watch a bunch of kids playing for about 15 minutes, and I guarantee you'll see something "pop culture" woven into their play. Children up until a certain age have NO CONCEPT of the difference between cartoons and real life, or video and real life. They have little developed sense of judgement, either.
Please help metamoderate.
If the "TV defense" didn't work for some man in Florida many years ago and the "wrestling defense" didn't work for Lionel Tate in 2001, what made Devin Moore think that the "video game defense" would work for him?
== BearDogg-X ==
Max Payne DID make me buy Max Payne II. Unbeknownst to me at the time, that MP II actually originated-in-my-butt and then made its way to retail stores shelves. The desire to once again dodge bullets in slow-mo while ripping my enemies to shreds with my own thrall of bullets was just too tempting. I was, your honor, drunk with the idea of being as badass as the Max of Payne himself. I could not resist the sequel, and it has since found its way into a pond.
My friends ask "why not burn the game, make it suffer"
"No" I say, for "burning is the way of the warrior. Max Payne II was a pussy. He is doomed to a watery death, where fish will poo on him"
In conclusion: I would never shoot someone, in slow-mo or not, REGARDLESS if I have the juice to engage my slow-mo or not. But video games do make me do stuff.
Another example : FFX. A- game. FFx2? 'nuff said
i don't care
I'm glad the jury was able to see through this bullshit defense pretty quickly (one hour deliberation is fast for most juries, especially in criminal court), and I only hope this follows through with the suits being filed by the family against the company and retail outlets. All the attention on violence caused by video games is actually part of what is promoting all the violence that mimics videogames. Clearly unbalanced youngsters see all the attention it gets, and that there is a whole army of people out there willing to put the blame on someone else, and then reach the rather logical conclusion that they can get away with murder if they just do it in the fashion of their favorite videogames. Now of course this is a worst case scenario and I'm sure in most cases this kind of reasoning would come after the crime rather than before, but even still. Allowing people to get off on the defense that "X (where X = anything but me) made me do it" is a slipery slope which sets the precedence for whole mountains of bullshit where people otherwise normal (or at the very least not insane) people are not required to take responsibility for their own actions, whether it be getting fat off of fast foods, hurting yourself because you're too dumb to know that coffee is hot (nice irony that we've come back full circle on that), or murdering people because you feel like it and just happen to be one of the millions of americans who likes to play videogames.
Finally! I hope this serves as an initiative for all attorneys to denegate cases such as this (and best of all IT REALLY IS) aaah! sigh of relief. Im really happy we reached this point before someone went all the way to ban "M" rated games in America (dont laugh! it DID happened to the American comic industry during the 50-60's, where did you think the ultra silly TV Batman series came from?) For all those Non believers, Millions of people (some of them real young unfortunately) watch, read or play violent fiction one way or the other however only 1% of them ever commit violent acts And those acts are ALWAYS (as in: IN ALL CASES) related to other factors such as: extreme Racism, lack of Values, extreme poverty, access to dangerous weapons or tools, mental illness, etc. They are not driven by a "mystical" force. They are not forced in to it by anyone or anything, it has been proved they commit such acts on their own WILL. (painful as it may be) and thats what this judge has FINALLY come into senses to. A good day, really. Hmm.. I wonder if Jack Thompson is considering to go back to his old job: chasing ambulances and "tripping" in his neighbors houses.
Go ahead MOD my day!
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Careful there, there are plenty of adults who believe in the metaphysical (Gods, etc) without a shred of observable evidence. We don't blame their lack of cognative abilities for this.
Speak for yourself! Some of us are willing to condemn those people for their willful mental failings.
People who damage themselves repeatly, refusing to see the cause of their pain or learn their lesson are considered mentally damaged.
Religion is a damaging force; designed for social control of the masses. Across history, it's remained a centuries old year con job, and in every era, the evils done "in the name of" past religious dogma are glossed over, because "now we know better". How is bowing down, repeatly, to the same priesthoods that betrayed and enslaved your ancestors significantly smarter than a senile own dog which keeps biting it's own tail, and howling from the pain?
To my mind, if anything, it's worse. At least the dog didn't *decide* to be that stupid.
Im glad my son is about to born in a world where a murderer CANT shoot someone in the head and come out of jail free because he blames it on a game or a movie, plus getting a few million bucks from a company as an extra bonus.
A really good day. Good job judge.
Go ahead MOD my day!
More opinions here
Hey, whatever you can pass the blame to, right? People hate to blame themselves.
--------- let's go steal some lunchboxes!
I find it very interesting that even after the kid himself was deemed responsible for his own actions (gasp) and that GTA was not, the families are STILL going to file a civil suit against Rockstar and two retailers. WTF? The families of the victims were given justice, the kid has been convicted, and they're still going to try and nail Rockstar anyway?
It isn't justice they want, it's money.
What difference does it matter why he did it? We don't put people in jail to punish them, but to protect the rest of society from them, and possibly to help them learn not to repeat whatever antisocial activities landed them there in the first place. It doesn't matter if video games made him commit murder, only if he would do it again if given the chance.
paradoxically, while the video game defense was partly blocked by the judge, the victim's families are sueing the game manufacturer. so when you want to convict the guy, video games didn't make him do it, but when you want to get money out of the game company, video games did make him do it. that's our legal system for ya!