Slashdot Mirror
Blizzard Sued for Death of Gamer
Somatic writes "In the latest saga over online gaming addiction in China, the parents of a 13-year-old Tianjin boy are suing the makers of World of Warcraft, blaming the game for the death of their son, according to the Chinese news agency Xinhua. The parents filed a suit against Blizzard Entertainment on Wednesday, saying their son jumped to his death while reenacting a scene from the game, the report said. The parents are backed by the anti-Internet addiction advocate Zhang Chunliang. Mr. Chunliang has spoken to 63 parents whose children have allegedly suffered from online gaming addiction and plans to file a class-action suit, according to the report."
Fun toy banned because of three stupid dead kids
Your kid is a moron. Please sue either (a) his genetic contributors or (b) the people who raised him poorly enough that he thought that reenacting a jumping scene from a computer game wouldn't result in his death. Anyway, I hope his last sight was looking up at the branches of Teldrassil. I hear it's magnificent this time of year.
Nowhere in that article does it prove that he was re-enacting a scene from the game. By this logic, any family member of someone who played the game and jumped to their death can sue for re-enacting a scene from this game. And surely, the game is not linear, so he would have chosen to jump off the cliff in game as he did in real life, no one forced him to, sue Blizzard for providing the method to fall, sue Nature for providing the method to fall.
Doom encourages two high schoolers to go suicidal and massacre kids at a school, and all we hear is a public outcry on why violent games are bad. A kid playing WoW dies and Blizzard gets sued? What's the world coming to?
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
After ruining my brother's and my friend's life and careers, I knew this game would be the end of civilization.
But what good does suiing do? He's already dead!
You shouldn't have spoiled your son with a $15 a month game anyway.
Serves them right.
Or is it Intelligent Design?
You be the judge.
It is tragic what happened to the parents, but obviously this game did not cause the boy's death. As we know there are no scenes in the game (to speak of), it is all open-ended. But they don't know how to explain themselves, ergo we are presented with slightly nonsensical statements like this. That sentence was written by a lawyer, I'd bet.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
maybe they should jump on the bandwagon and print safety labels on game boxes, like they put on coffee cups (hot coffe in your lap whilke driving = bad) and microwaves (don't dry your cat in them)!
or they just listened to him: http://www.bash.org/?4753
Columbine featured kids strolling into school and opening fire almost exactly as Neo did in the elevator scene in the Matrix.
Didn't get that movie off the shelves.
I'm absolutely cheering to hear that it isn't just U.S. parents that no longer take any concern into the well being of their children. For a while I thought we had the "The Government should Watch My Kids for Me so I can Drink All I Want." wrapped up with a pretty blue bow.
"Genius may shine aloof and alone, like a star, but goodness is social, and it takes two men and God to make a Brother."
... can be found at the Becker-Posner blog here. Gary Becker is a Nobel prize winner economist and Richard Posner is, I presume, an equally important lawyer.
It would be nice if we could get hold of the existing arguments and proposed solutions before jumping into naïve comments, fuck-the-corporations shouting and suchlike.
All determinations of time presuppose something permanent in perception and that this permanent cannot be in the self, s
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/20/142320 1&threshold=-1&tid=95
Our lawyer friend Jack from the USA would use this case in China as "proof" that video games are killing children. The sad truth is that some children are incapable of distinguishing fantasy from reality, and should not be playing video games. Darwin's theory takes over if they see something they shouldn't be doing, because whatever is wrong with their brain takes over and puts fiction to life. The results are enough to stir up other kooks like Jack Thompson.
Ban parents who buy video games for mentally challenged children! Don't ban video games!
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
I am not a lawayer, but wouldn't they need to prove that Blizzard was reckless in the creation of the video game somehow?
Anything that has a chance of bringing the wayward children back to Everquest is gold in my book -_-
-everphilski-
Why didn't he cast invulnerability, like the other kid that jumped? Oh, he was only a warrior? What a moron!
These kids today... They just don't read the game manual and class abilities in game.
Maybe it was a Chinese translation error?
I'm not aware of any 'scenes' where you jump to your death.
Perhaps he didn't get his Divine Shield off in time? http://www.thottbot.com/?sp=642 Stupid paladin...
Okay...so a 13-year-old kid plays a video game where there's magic, all kinds of non-real species and objects, all of which transpires on a place that isn't real. And from this, he develops some notion that he can fly, or survive jumps from very high up, or some other physics-ignorant notion. And some people believe that somehow, in some fashion, Blizzard is responsible?
All I have to ask is this: have the evangelical Christians been much more effective at discounting the theory of evolution in China than they have here? Kind of sounds like it...
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Please raise your hand if you ever tried to smash a brick wall reenacting a scene from Mario Bros.
Dumbass!
Natural Selection is still hard at work!
We sit here and ridicule the notion that a video game could sap someone's free will and make them do something as patently absurd as commit suicide. Okay, probably this is a case that's bound to be lost.
But this is an industry where addiction is a major problem. Some video gamers are showing the signs of clinical addiction. These things are making people sick, and what do marketing and design people do? They try to make them more addictive, of course.
Heck, your whole MMORPG industry is built on the concept of "levelling", which some smart lawyer is sooner or later gonna figure out is nothing other than intermittent behavioral reinforcement. Then they'll find that the games like that have whole "support" industries of addicts encouraging others in their addiction.
Snicker, call me a troll, but take a look at the tobacco industry for a second.
Better make it a few minutes -- I'm gonna finish this level before continuing my rant.
Have families of persons killed while drinking and driving successfully sued alcohol companies? Have families of victims of gun violence successfully sued gun manufacturers? What happened when McDonalds was sued for causing obesity?
The tobacco industry was successfully sued. What was different?
I think the real question is, how do you keep your game from getting into the hands of the fraction of the population that suffers from mental illness. Millions of teens play the game and don't want to kill themselves re-enacting a scene. It's not about the software company. It's about the player. I assume this kid would have eventually found some other way of escapism to do himself in with. Didn't the parents realize by the kid's behaviour that something odd was up *before* he killed himself?
Suppose a man wishes to have sexual intercourse with a video game CD, and proceeds to place his penis into the hole in the centre. Now let us suppose that while thrusting, the CD manages to tear his cock's knob off. Should the video game designers and the CD pressers be held liable for creating a dangerous product, one so heinous that it resulted in a man losing his glans penis?
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
And, if you jump to death to reenact a scene from a video game, you are basically a lunatic that could have been affected by anything. Lets ban everything that could give kids the impression that flying works, including pokemon.
Dvorak on Doomtech
Kids do stupid stuff. Heck when I was a Kid me and a bunch of others would climb to the highest point of the playground. a good 10 Feet and Jump off it and onto the pebbled ground pretending that we were He-Man, and those who didn't fall on their face, or have their hands or bent their knees the least won. Looking back to it It was really dumb and we could have easily got hurt or killed ourselves if we fell the wrong way. If it wasn't He-Man we would probably do it pretending something else. Kids do stupid things, they lack good judgement skills that is why 8 year olds are not allowed to vote or drive cars on public roads, it is not that they can't physically do it, but because they have poor judgement skills and left on their own they will more often then not make poor decisions. Older Kids are at an age where they work off their old phobias and see what they can do with their new found abilities. If the kid played Tetris he would probably still jump off the cliff pretending that he was his favorite piece.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I'm not sure if such an organization exists but there should be an organization that sues the parents in cases such as this. Where were the parents? Slacking off? Don't say that parents can't keep an eye on their children all the time becuase that is bs. Both my parents worked and they still managed to keep me from inserting things up my nose and jumping out of windows.
The fact that lawyers in Communist China are being allowed to file frivolous lawsuits to chase after the money is good news that capitalism is being warmly embraced by that society. It won't be long before the government passes a law banning Shakespeare because he advocated killing all the lawyers.
There is no fact but I assume the parents bought the game for the 13-yeard old kid right?
:D
Isen't it their responsibility to see what their kids are doing?
Even if they did see WoW I dont think they would go : "Omg you'r gonna hurt yourself , no more WoW for you".
Btw they can shut down WoW in china for all I care
I could see Blizzard potentially being sued for promoting unhealthy addictive behaviour. The game is designed to take as long as possible while still keeping you hooked. I'm glad I quit after I realised I was spending 3 hours at a time instance grinding for slightly improved items...
Fell to his death after jumping? Should have had gnomish engineering and a parachute cape before playing around BRM. Or slow fall. Or safe fall. Or feline grace. Or blessing of protection. Or levitate. He was probably a fricking hunter or something... Moron. Get what you deserve. Of course, maybe he was relying on mana shield but forgot about the patch causing mana shield to no longer absorb fall damage... so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt I guess.
There is no way in this world to prove that the child in question re-created a scene from a computer game, unless he left a detailed suicide note detailing that he was mimicing a fictional world.
Perhaps the world could do with either a) less irresponsible parents or b) less stupid children, or my personal favourite c) both.
I mean seriously, I'm going to consume babies and then sue the Vatican because a passage in the Bible inspired me to do so*. Would I get away with being such a moron, of course not. A much preferred headline would have been: Parents imprisoned for failure to properly raise a child.
* Here is the passage:
"And the king said unto her, What aileth thee? And she answered, This woman said unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat him to day, and we will eat my son to morrow. So we boiled my son, and did eat him: and I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son,that we may eat him: and she hath hid her son. -- II Kings 6:28,29
C17H21NO4
dumbass theres gravity and fall damage in WoW. Thats right the game accurately shows the consequence of jumping off really high shit. Maybe if he played the game more he would have known not to jump. Come to think of it if he hadn't stopped playing the game he wouldn't have been able to jump off anything he'd be safely sitting on his ass in front of a puter
LFG!
... why did stupidity and lawsuit-crazy lawyers have to be part of it?
I thought the article was going to say he died while at boarding school from a blood clot (caused from lack of physical movement 20 hours a day, everyday, for a few months) that went to his brain and killed him. You could almost feel the parents' anger at something like that.
Perhaps Zhang and Jacky boy could hold an international summit.
So now you can sue somebody for *showing* you stuff that might result in death IRL? Or for telling you a fantasy tale about how people grow wings and fly?
And needless to say, I was in a bad mood when I read this. I'm already embarrased to be a gamer, an American, a Christain, and a part-Chinese(I'm part-Chinese, part-Japanese, part-Hawaiian and part-Irish). If stuff like this keeps up in our world, I'll end up ashamed of the human race.
I dont know about you but if I didnt do my homework, clean my room, take the garbage out and so on, Mom would like clock work un plug the Nintendo...Have parents lost their authority?
... so next will be movies... books... the news... the discovery channel - "hey that animal is eating another animal, maybe I can eat you then!" ...
Retards..
Your child is a moron!
From TFA:
"The Chinese government has already said it plans to restrict gamers to three hours of consecutive play, using a "fatigue technique" in games. After three hours of play, the online game would lose some player power, and after five hours, the player would lose most power. After that, there would be a delay of five hours before the game could be accessed to its full capacity."
I'd be curious to find out if this proposal might actually enhance gameplay. This could be the first good thing to come out of China's Government... you'd be forced to spend the time you have to play doing worthwhile things that are fun instead of being able to 'grind' players up the rankings...
On the other hand if this was forced on the Game Developers and Distributors legally, ie. they have to build it in to their system... it would set a very bad precedent for all products of all types.... think cars and driving, or cellphones or TV viewing. Imagine a curfew system for using anything electronic, where you can only use it during preset times and for pre-approved purposes (well I guess you don't have to imagine it, just move to China and try using the internet). China's attempt to regulate the people's behavior is going to backlash in a major way soon, IMHO. They want all the benefits of a free market but all the control of a closed market... can't have it both ways...
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
And lo-and-behold the ESRB warns of "Blood, Suggestive Themes, Use of Alcohol, and Violence"/T for Teen... so I guess my 15 month old won't be playing - but she clearly has more sense than their 13yo child: she's terrified of heights.
Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???
Both parents and kid deserve a darwin award. Kudos to the kid for removing himself from the gene pool
Blizzard should ban all chinese players. That way they avoid lawsuits AND keep out the gold farmers in one fell stroke!
It's only a matter of time before people are suing the Darwin awards people for their late family member's not make the list. On-Topic: How in any state of mind can you actually believe that a video game could cause your child to act out some weird disturbing fantasy? I think it's a case of the parents having shoddy genetics in the delusional sense, and passing it onto the child. Then the child grows up with delusions out the wazzo, and ends up being the leading cause for his own death. Maybe the Neo-Cons are right, and we should pray for the appocalypse now. Well at least the gene pool could use a little thinning.
Yes, I said it.
he parents filed a suit against Blizzard Entertainment on Wednesday, saying their son jumped to his death while reenacting a scene from the game
Ahahahahaaa!! AHAHAaahahahaha! *breath* Ahahahahaaahahaha!
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
As for the lawsuit itself, if it succeeds, well there goes just about everything, from Calvin and Hobbes through the Narnia books to the Iliad. Perhaps tort reform should involve the Athenian idea that lawyers bringing frivolous lawsuits should be expelled from society for a period.
Pining for the fjords
It's true. I've seen two kinds of oneline game addicts. One is playing online games for money. The other is a simple addict. The former, I guess, is in less dangerous situation since their sole purpose is making money by selling game items. They know when to stop and how to manage themselves.
But the latter is in quite a dangerous situation. In South Korea, I already read a dozen of newspaper articles reporting a death of a game addict, usually saying "a guy died of heart attack while playing online games for a week without sleep, eating nothing". This might sound funny but this has happened and is still happening.
Your ego is Matrix!
Can I have his stuff?
nt
This seems highly amusing to me. A kid with no sense of reality. who seems to think that he could survive uninjured from such a fall, decides to make such a jump. The parents decide to sue Blizzard over the game.
Honestly though, I'd never let any kids I have in the future do anything this dumb though. I'd be sure to make sure that they know the difference between reality and fantasy, and that what they see on TV, movies, and in games isn't always real. However, if any of the kids I have do die in such a manner, I'll be sad yes, but I wouldn't sue the game manufacturer. The blame would rest on me for not looking after my own kid, and also on my kid for beleiving he could do such a thing.
Ah, you found me!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I wonder when he jumped if he said like Mario "Yahooo".
Hey, grief can do strange things. While I agree that blaming the child's death WoW makes no sense, the parents are grasping for answers. Sure, we can sit back in our armchairs, and ridicule them, accuse them of being bad parents, and in general find ways to lay the blame on them. However, imagine what they are going through. They lost their son, and are seeking meaning. The person we ought to be reserving our anger for is the so called "anti internet activist". Here he comes, and sooths the parents, saying it is not your fault, it is that evil internet, and you can make them pay for what they did to your son. I imagine the parents are not too familiar with the net, so they, their judgement clouded by guilt, sadness, disbelief and anger, accept what this guy says, and they become pawns in HIS crusade. Remember Columbine? It was not that long ago that seemingly intelligent aduylts blamed death metal and FPS games as part of the cause of the massacre. It doesn't make sense to those of us looking in from outside, but it does happen. People always seek reasons why their loved ones die.
I kinda feel bad for mentioning this, considering the context,
but I just saw this really funny picture over on [H]ardOCP
For the Horde!!!
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I would compare this case more to suing gun manufacturers than to suing tobacco companies. In my opinion, the tobacco lawsuits were actually reasonable: People were claiming the tobacco companies actively suppressed research into the addictive and carcinogenic nature of tobacco; thus, people bought the product, got addicted, and came down with cancer, all the while thinking what they were doing was reasonable safe. Thus, there were ample grounds for a lawsuit.
This case, however, is a lot more like the nonsense over suing gun makers for what criminals do with them, suing bars over deaths caused by drunken drivers, &c. -- someone's just looking to place blame on a tangentially-connected, and -- coincidentally, I'm sure -- well-monied third party.
Liberty in your lifetime
Among other things, you misspelled epitaph.
If you're going to post nonsense, at least spell check it first.
Now that research shows that demographics in both countries are identical, practice has shown that the mentality of parents' in both countries also have very much in comon.
Give them the illusion of choice and they will blindly follow for they choose not to make one.
Someone somewhere is trying to say, in a not-so-subtle manner, "I damaged your reproductive facilities and yet you, in what could only be described as defiance, engineered a way to fix my "fix" (pun intended all the way) and procreate. Now, I am finishing my intent and removing your genes from the pool you are polluting. Please do not attempt this again, or you yourself will be removed forcibly. Thank you and enjoy your stay."
... did I test these things with my own finger in a socket or kite on a power line? No, something inside my head, the something that was missing in this kid's head, told me it was best not to do that.
/. word-image for posting says, "saintly" ... lolz.
Listen, I saw Wiley E. Cyote get electrocuted hundres of ways
Hah, the
Parents are responsible for keeping up with their children. I have 2 kids myself. I know what they are doing, what limits to set with what they do, and when they should do something else. If parents think they can just sue someone because THEY weren't responsible enough to pay attention to what their kids were doing, much less where they "learn" the things they do, they are sorely mistaken.
I hope they get into court, and the judge and jury bitchslap them for being morons, and throws them in jail for contributing to the death of their own child. Maybe then people will wake up and smell the coffee.
shakespeares estate is being sued for causing every death related to failed relationships, loss of authority, those resulting from the acts of monarchs and anything poison related...
I am very sucseptible to "let's have another drink"
If only we could sue parents for not tending to their children...
I'd like to see if my version of the scene doesn't end up in death.
Story here.
anti-Internet addiction advocate Zhang Chunliang. Mr. Chunliang
NO NO NO it's Mr. Zhang.
Chinese names go:
Family name Given name
We really need to learn at least a little bit about 1/5th of the world's population! The mistake above is like calling the president Mr. George.
Fancy handmade instruments at The Camel's Back
In the past, gambling addiction used to be the main bane of Chinese families. Gambling is seen as a relaxing past-time especially for guys and has an aura of danger that many find attractive. Kids get taught how to gamble from a very young age and play with family with pretend money. Working class guys find it a relaxing past time. Old men and women and housewives play mahjong. On the high end you have the romance and danger of the "God of Gamblers", Shanghai and similar environs, and lots of guns and cool guys. Fun for all the family, every sex, every age and every niche of society from high to low.
So I guess you can say that Chinese do tend to be susceptible to behaviour related addictions. In fact, if what I read about how MMORPGs work is true, there is an element of gambling in it.
I wonder if in the future gambling will be replaced by MMORPG as the addiction demon that stalks Chinese families...I doubt we'll ever see loan sharks bashing up MMORPG addicts though. Also, I seriously seriously seriously doubt that'd we'll ever have shows about "The God of MMORPG". You know, after watching these Chinese shows romanticising gambling, I have to admit all the kids developed an obsession with card games and card tricks, so I guess it's probably for the best we'll never get "The Shell Game - MMORPG version"...World of Warcraft, Patrick Tse Yin or Chow Yun-Fat, my god, the horror, the horror...
Mod parent up - more people need to know what happened.
First, the person burned was the *passenger*. Secondly, the car was stopped at the time for her to put some cream & sugar in it. Third, McDonald's coffee is served 40 degrees hotter than that of other fast food restaurants. The temperature that other restaurants serve it at *would not* cause third degree burns.
And the very large sum of money that she was awarded initially totalled less than a day's coffee sales for McDonalds. And that was reduced significantly, as well.
I don't like the comparison, because McDonald's did screw up, and this kid screwed up. Blizzard just made a kickass game.
Truely. Because the parents of these three kids plainly weren't watching what their kids were doing, and not teaching them the difference between fantasy and reality. Where is the parent's responsibilty? Where was the guiding hand?
What happened with these kids isn't the fault of the toy being played with in a proper manner, its because they were 1) not old enough to understand the difference between fantasy and reality and needed more parent involvment to watch over them, 2) not mentally stable enough to understand, which good parents should have been able to pick up on themselves or should have been pointed out to the parents by a daycare, if used, or an education institution, which should have indicated to the parents the toy was inapropriate to begin with, 3) they weren't watch because the parents didn't care what the child played with, such as a hammer (could of been a sharp kitchen knife), and/or 4) was old enough they should of understood the difference between fantasy and reality but wasn't paid enough attention to by the parents to teach them the difference.
The toy company now loses a product line and the profits from that line, as well as losing money on a product recall which shouldn't have to be done if the parents were actually doing their job to begin with. This action doesn't only effect the company but also its employees. Could there be lose of jobs because of unneeded expenditures or the loss of profits not to mention the fun of kids that have been properly raised and taught. Many people and kids are getting punished for the misuse and inproper use of three kids that weren't properly supervised and/or taught.
The state(s) in which the parents reside should investigate and possibly sue the parents for child endangerment.
The toy company should sue the parents for the losses they encur, both for their employees and for the good kids that lose out because of what has happened.
I was walking around a few weeks ago and I saw a brick hanging off the edge of a building. I figured if I jumped up and hit it with my head, that I'd get a mushroom. Instead, all I got was a painful welt. Who can I sue for that?
But that would KILL the supply of cheap labor for Chinese kids power-leveling WoW characters. Seriously. You can pay to have a kid log onto your character and advance it hella-fast. They also tend to sell a lot of gold.
Am I the only one who thinks this is utterly ridiculous? Maybe instead of suing a company that had nothing to do with the death, the parents should go take some classes on how to be PARENTS?
The real issue here isn't about games, it's about basic human freedoms.
I'm sure the average slashdotter is familiar with the Chinese governments love to the internet and student demonstrations. Students who wanted more freedom decide they had enough and made this big protest in Tiananmen square. Now the same age group is hanging around in cyber cafes to play world of warcraft, among other MMORPGs. When young kids get together they talk, even if their playing games, in an oppressive regime that's dangerous. So the government is breaking up these social breeding grounds. Their being smart about it though and hiding it the anti-gaming sentiment that's playing out in the western world. THIS IS A SMOKE SCREEN. More often than not the western media is missing the point I think.
How pathetic is this. Would you like Blizzard to take care of raising your kids as well? If you can't raise your kids and take care of your kids well enough that they don't go jumping out of windows then you don't deserve kids. If your kid is dumb enough to kill themself because of a game than I say survival of the fittest...and your kid must have been pretty dumb and unfit.
It is survival of the fittest, and hell there are already too many Chinese people walking around.
Warcraft is fun for a while, but it gets old fast. But I guess games are as addicting to me. I am a notch above that on the evolutionary chart.
The kid was dumb not a killer. So it would be The suicidal little bastard's parents.
My gut reaction is that it's pretty silly... but then I remembered a couple times where I think my mind was left pretty warped after playing games for way too long.
...right? :)
In class once after an all-night Jedi Knight LAN party once, I dropped a pencil and my first thought was to hit the F2 key to force-pull it back. That was weird... but probably as much because of lack of sleep as anything else.
The second struck me as much more serious. As a druid in WoW, I liked to get around in Stormwind by going sealion form in the moats. Usually I run out of a building and jump right off the edge into the water. One day I came out of a RL building on campus where there's a terrace, and for a few seconds it seemed totally logical that I should launch myself over the edge to get where I was going faster. It was really scary when I realized that I was seriously considering it, and would have fallen two stories or so. I stopped playing WoW shortly after.
That's not to say that Lucasarts or Blizzard are necessarily at fault. I was probably playing the games far more than was healthy. But I like to think that I'm not weak-minded... surely other people have had experiences like this. Right?
Maybe before a parent can sue someone for something that happens to their kids, maybe the parents should be investigated to see if they were being responsible parents. Did they pay enough attention to the child? Were they involved in his/her life to know what was going on? Did they know what is actions were like outside of the house? Did they teach their child the difference between reality and fantasy? Did they know if the child knew the difference? Did they know what the game, their child was playing, was about and if they didn't approve of the game, why did they let him/her play it?
Don't blame and try to profit from others when the fault might just lie at home.
Is Mr. Zhang Chunliang much different from Mr. Jack Thompson?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
spel chek thsi beeyoooutch!
He 'jumped to his death while reenacting a scene from the game'? I play World of Warcraft, and you know what we call people who jump of cliffs and kill themselves? Idiots. Or 'N00bs', if we're feeling a bit less mean-spirited. This guy obviously had no clue what he was doing, and if he played the game, he most likely played it very poorly and didn't really understand the entire concept too well. I hardly think he's a very good example of the typical World of Warcraft player.
Reality is just like a video game, except you only get one life!
That kid forgot to stock up on light feathers, which are used as a reagent for the slow fall spell.
You know it makes sense, a little reminder from jointm1k.
Monkey See, Monkey Do
leads to
Monkey See, Monkey Sue.
Star Wars Galaxies had fatigue. It worked great. Until you had people whine about it and it got dropped to do nothing. Then simply removed from the game.
Did we export the culture of human irresponsibility along with the rest of our culture, or is this human nature?
remember the wisdom of Mahatma Gandhi: If enough peasants die horribly, someone will probably notice
When you fall and crater in video games your screen tints red. But if your character held up a small sign that read "Ouch!", you'd know not to do that.
I am surprised no typical /. conspiracy theorists did not bring that up.
Would you consider tha chance that the kid was totally normal, and simply fell out of the window? Than the parents are just trying to make a buck ?
OR:
How did the parents know that he was "re-enacting" a scene from the game? Were THEY playing the game and the kid just watched?
Now if they saw or played the game, they should have realised that it was dangerous and just forbid the kid to play it. I have motorbikes, quads, drill machines and whatever else dangerous stuff, if I know it is dangerous I do not let my kid play with it, simple like that. If I do fail so it is my responsibility.
This is just another retarded case of let's blame games practice.
How many people sued the makers of superman ? Or mary poppins? I mean I knew a kid who broke both her arms trying to parachute with an umrella. She landed in front of our garage entrance in fact. She was stupid but not stupid enought to make 1st jump from the 3rd floor, and the first floor jump did not kill her.
Now I ask again: why not sue movies? I mean how many kids movies feature people flying, shooting, killing. Or how many homes are without a channel blovking device with password control for non-suitable content?
It is a joke. Kids see more violence on a day staying home and watching TV that I can experience playing grand theft auto for hours.
I totally agree. There are two basic related disfunctions in society today. First are the people that are blaming the rest of the world for the results of their bad decisions. Second are the friends and relatives of the first group that got themselves killed as a result of their own poor decisions - they're blaming anyone that was even remotely connected to the deceased as somehow being responsible for their death. People need to take respsonsibility for their actions, and they need to accept that decisions made by others were their responsibility. The whole world is not made for your benefit and protection, and the whole world is not responsible when you screw up. Take ownership of your actions.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
You are confusing something here. Blood, gore and violance are OK on TV. It is a naked boobie or ass that has to be merciless banned.
Evidently, you can. :^(
...I didn't know they had these kinds of bleeding hearts there...
Yes, in China!
Slashdot - where to disagree, is to be a troll
that you need to blink before hitting the ground to mitigate damage.
That's like suing the rail-road company because their son stepped in front of a train. Geez.
Actually, I wonder if any kids ever died while trying to leap out of trees using bedsheets as a shuba, like in the old game Below the Root. Now that would be ironic. One of the best non-violent video games of all time, getting blammed for causing kids to kill themselves.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, download the Vice C64 emulator right now and cruise on over to c64.com to download the game. Its worth a week of your time. I always wish someone would do a remake.
Now it is "Games Don't Kill People, People Kill People"
Shitheads.
Sounds like the problems in the 80's for Dungeons and Dragons. Parents trying to blame their kids' suicides on a game. Which also sounds like all the uproar over heavy metal music..."Playing the record backwards you can hear Satan. The music is making these kids be violent and do drugs and commit suicide."
The times have changed but people have just found new things to blame for their problems. No one takes personal responsibility any more.
Chinese Kid: "leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeroooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooy JEEEEEEEEENNNNNNNNNNNNNKINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN NNNNNS!" /jump
I think it's only appropriate to post the quest he must have been reenacting.
http://thottbot.org/?qu=1149
I can't think of any others that have you jump from a cliff. They might as well sue the Tauren that told him to jump while they're at it.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
What was his level? Because, even in WoW, you die when you jump from a 60m-high tower. Sad anyway.
Million Dollar Screenshot
A Chinese translation for the words "Jack" and "Thompson"
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
3 crackheads down the street who started their life long pursuit of illegal drugs eating magic mushrooms has sued Nintendo. They claim years of playing Super Mario Brothers in their mom's basement restructured their minds to make them addicted to mushrooms. They are also considering filing lawsuits because their pyromania stems from what they call, "a life of throwing fireballs at their enemies."
Nintendo could not be reached for comment as they were too busy wondering what the fuck is wrong with this world.
If they don't find someone else to blame, they'll have to blame themselves. And we're talking China here, too. Unless they can distract their repressive communist government by pointing the finger of blame elsewhere, the government might decide that it is, in fact, their fault and treat them accordingly. Now MY fascist regime would respond by pointing out that pointing out that the manner of their child's death and subsequent completely retarded lawsuit against a third party indicates that I don't want any combination of their genetic material in my country and then permanently revoking their breeding license. Though in all liklihood they would never have got one in the first place in MY regime. I suppose that China's repressive communist government is probably somewhat nicer than I am...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Somewhere... someone was on the way down screaming Leeeroyyyy Jenkiinnssss
Yeah, right. Because we all know there's a lot of cordless bungie-jumping in World of Warcraft. It's a goddamned epidemic I say.
I have always been an advocate of taking the warning labels off of everything, abolishing bullshit lawsuits, and letting natural selection run its course. Some people are too stupid, or too damned messed up, to live. That's just a fact of life.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
Oh of course not. It's never the parents fault for neglecting their kid, then acting dumbfounded when they submerse themselves in an alternate reality to get away from the crappy life you've given them.
Ok, to be fair, there's actually 2 possible reasons why the kid did what he did.
1: You're bad parents
2: Your kid (was) a moron.
Christ almighty, I'm getting sick of these lawsuits.
rip off yet another American invention. "For the Children" is OUR excuse for spreading fascism. We invented it, we use it constantly, we depend upon it. Go make your own, dammit.
Anti-Internet is cooler! All bow to Zhang Chunliang, the advocate of anti-Internet addiction!
Sounds like the boy is a candidate for a Darwin Award.
I'd like to know exactly what part of the game he was re-enacting. The part where even my UNDEAD MAGE dies from jumping off cliff? Pfft.
Personally, I approve of the controls on selling violent games to minors.
[...]
Do we really want liability for companies who make violent movies?
There's a thing about US cartoons that has been annoying me for years.
There seems to be a law that no real guns should ever be shown in kid's show (remember how G.I. Joe and Cobra used to shoot lasers out of their M16s and AK47s?), that a hero on a motorcycle shoud ALWAYS wear a helmet (wolverine with a helmet, or worse, spiderman, gets on a hog, pulls a helmet out of his ass, puts it on, and when he jumps off the bike to start freefalling off tall buildings while being shot at with heat seeking missiles, THEN he takes off the helmet!), or the worse: THE WORST of all: No consequences. Ever.
When G.I. Joe's army is shooting at Cobra's army, from 15 feet away, with automatic weapons, NO ONE EVER GETS HURT.
This is dangerous. Much more dangerous than watching violence: It's watching violence without consequences.
I'm sure this comes from the "thik of the children!" censorship mentality: That watching violence would breed violence (hit: Being the victim of violence is what makes you violent, duh). And it's counter-productive. It does not a dress the real cause, but it creates a sense that vilence has no consequences. That's scary wrong.
The old japanese anime show would have deaths... watch UFO Robot Grandizer: When the giant robots fight in a city, people die! Children are orphaned!
But never in a US show: No consequences. And less and less in jap shows, since their market extends to the states now, they're starting to censor at creation rather than let the maniac censors of america butcher their shows when they're sold overseas (like that is gonna stop 'em... check out gamepolitics.com for Jack Thompson's stance on japanese culture corrupting American Youth).
In fact, if you can ever get your hand on the Earthworm Jim cartoon plot episode, they do a great joke on this (jim throws a were-puppy monster at a bus full of orphans, and then draws attention to the fact that none of the kids were hurt).
Stop treating kids as if they were stupid: They are young, ignorant, not necessarily stupid (although, obviously, some are). Teach them that violence makes victims, not that violence has no consequences. Stop trying to shield them from the reality of the world, because the world isn't as safe as you'd like to pretend it is, and it will hit them hard if they are unprepared.
You can't take the sky from me...
I consider this further evidence that some people can't handle a free (virtual) market.
If you jump off a high place in WoW don't you take damage?
They got sued because they deliberately made their product more adictive.
There all kinds of ways in which a vivid imagination can be a boon, so it is quite a hard task for evolution to sort out one trait while keeping the other.
The problem of virtual experiences that cannot be reenacted is a somewhat new one. And how do you know evolution won't select for parents who sue the creator of such games =)
Did someone submit the kid to Darwin Awards yet?
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
. . . umm, okay . . .
Now I've never actually played WoW, but from what I hear it's entirely online, meaning that Blizzard didn't create this scene, the child himself did.
www.linuxpenguin.net
WoW has a much easier levelling curve than most other MMORPGs, including all the popular ones that came before it (except maybe CoH?)
Anybody can get a character to 60 in WoW in 200 hours of play, something which is not even *close* to true of games like EverQuest.
People play the game not just because it's addictive, but because it's *fun*. You get to interact with hundreds of other people in a fantasy world, raid dungeons in small groups (5) or large groups (20 or 40), and do all sorts of fantastic stuff.
To compare this to something like drug addiction or tobacco addiction is misleading. MMORPGs don't have nearly the bad health effects of those other addictions. They promote social interaction too (over the internet). Most people who play MMORPGs spend at least some of their play time grouped with their real-world friends.
MMORPGs have redeeming value in that they offer experiences which you can't get in the real world. When was the last time *you* went and killed a giant dragon with 6 of your friends? Just like movies, they offer temporary escape and fantasy fulfillment, but they also offer a larger social context in which you can make friends, interact with (or battle against!) other people you've never met before, get into casual (pick-up) groups with random people, and generally do lots of fun stuff.
Frankly it baffles me that people would rather lie around and watch TV, or go down to the mall and sit there yapping with their friends, when they could be doing something *interesting* like playing MMORPGs. If MMORPGs are "addictive" then you must concede that not all addictions are bad. Its cheap entertainment too, a month's subscription to a MMORPG usually costs less than ticket and popcorn for one 2-hour movie, and most people will get 20 hours or more out of that subscription each month.
Ok kiddies, listen up: 1. You can not fly. Not possible. You do not have hollow bones. You can not use wax to make wings. They will not work. 2. Television/Video Games are a made up environment for the people that can handle it. If you think you can go into your school with a bomb/gun thinking the when it goes off, everyone will magically reappear, then you are wrong. Entirely. You will kill people. And they will never come back. Ever. 3. Cops will chase you if you go 200 mph on the freeway. You will go to jail. 4. If you jump off of a three story building, then you will most likeley get hurt very badly, and/or die. Ok, Next. Lets adress the parents: As adressed to the *cough-cough UNSUPERVISED CHILDREN cough-cough* Video games are fake. If your child can not handle the complex ideas in a video game about killing someone and not being able to do the same in real life, then that child does not need to play the game. Folks, it's all about parents paying attention to their kids. Of course, if your kid goes and jumps off a cliff because he did it in a video game, that means the parents are either not watching what their kids play/do. OR the parents think their child can handle it when they can't. Oh, and don't blame it on the company that made the game. Specific laws are set so that you can see what the content of the game is before your kids see it. ESRB baby, ESRB. Same goes with childs toys. Warning lables say wether or not supervision is needed, and if there is or isn't any small and swallowable parts in the toy. Even movies! They have very clear ratings that say if it is or isn't appropriate. And besides that, use freakin common sense.
Chances are if someone is going to do something with an item and you hear that phrase it's a bad idea and someone should stop them before someone gets hurt/killed.
And "Parental supervision required" is not a suggestion and people are responsible for their own action. If some kid dies from doing something the rest of the world considers dumb the state should sue the parents. If a kid drowns in a bucket or a (home)pool, it's not the bucket or pool maker's fault, it's the fault of whoever should have been watching the kid. You might be able to sue an Internet Cafe owner if someone dies after playing for 50hrs without a break, they can cover themselves from any denial of service attacks/suits with a couple limit of 4hrs signs.
This article is talking about kids, it's their parents who are responsible for their well being, NOT the tv. GTA is rated M, if you buy it for your 13yr old, you're asking for trouble. Anything in excess is a bad thing, if your kid wants to play a game 15hrs a day, it's time to get them a football or model rocket kit w/ FAA permit.
F7 doesn't work, ignore spelling and grammar
... when Bill Gates was talking about games, DirectX, and DOOM. See the video clips of it on AQFL. Notice he has a trenchcoat too. This presentation was way before the movie and tragic event.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
and WoW doesn't?
Dont get me wrong this kid was a damn idiot and I agree with all the above comments. But you have to admit that WoW is a very addictive game and I'm sure Blizzard have, and will continue, to make the game as addicting as possible.
But this doesn't sound like a case of addiction. this sounds like a moron kid reenacting something he saw in a video game. He may very well have been reenacting something he saw in 1 of a million movies, tv shows, or books. This kid was 13 years old. I dont know about China but here in the US 13 year olds know that when you jump from a high place you get hurt or die; i think video games and movies have taught me that lesson better than anything.
All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be. -PF
It's a "Jump to Conclusions mat". You see, you have this mat, with different CONCLUSIONS written on it that you could JUMP TO.
Can anyone tell me what 'scene' he was recreating? The cinematic stops just short of depicting a druid jumping over a waterfall. Otherwise, I cannot think of any in-game event that demonstrates jumping from a great height.
Priests, mages, and engineers are given spells and gadgets to slow their fall, but the game never actively encourages anyone to jump. If anything, these powers combined with falling damage should discourage kids from dangerous leaps.
There is no such thing as an addictive personality. The mechanisms for addiction (ie, DOPAMINE RECEPTORS) exist in everyone's brain; it's just a matter of finding something that helps you cope, and then abusing it. You, too, will be addicted, easy as pie.
thought he had the Sony Rootkit installed, so he could cheat "The Warden" and henceforth, cheat death.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
If you don't see the difference between doping nicotine with substances meant to enhance addiction and have a very playable game then you're an idiot. What the fuck do you think they're doing, dropping subliminal messages into WoW?
What I wonder is how they know that the kid was reenacting a scene from the game. I mean, was the kid dressed up in a fricking elf suit with feathers pasted to his arms or something like that? Did they sit and watch while he said "look mom, I'm a harpy" and jumped off an embankment.
If one of your kids pulls a glock out of dad's sock drawer and shoots the other while pretending to be "John Wayne" do they sue the makers of "stagecoach."
Darwin never counted on the lawyers...
I had trouble finding the Terms of Service for World of Warcraft to reference them. But I actually read it when I installed it, and I'm sure that it had an age requirement of 18 to play.
So how could blizzard be held reponsable for someone using their product in a way that was not intended hurting themselves?
I don't wish to sound cruel but what was stopping the parents, at any time confiscating the game from their 13-year-old boy. Does the concept of personal responsibility not function anymore.
Boy drowns while trying to walk on water; parents sue God.
It's about friggin time these parents get off their lazy asses and take matters into their own hands, instead of not properly taking care of their kids and then crying the blues and sueing left right and center when something bad happens. As far as I'm concerned, these morons killed their own kids through shitty parenting.
The kid most likely worked for a farming agency (yantis etc) and the parents are really pissed about the loss of income.
Sad but true.
Kung Pao!
Stupid people should not be playing video games, the same way they shouldn't be allowed to have guns etc. If a stupid person gets hold of a gun no-one blames the manufacturer!
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
At least now I know how to spell Jack Thompson in Chinese!
Want to find other gamers to play board and role playing game
I saw hot coffee and now i got a kid on the way I WHANTA SUE!!!!!!
I wish there was a setting when installing a game that would limit the number of hours it would let me play. Sometimes I need help too :)
There aren't actually 'scenes' in World of Warcraft, it's an mmorpg. The only thing I can think of is the window to Molten Core (which you dont have to use any more) but then this person would have to be functional enough to be in a level 60 raid guild
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
Dear Blizzard,
I'm sorry, but your game is just TOO good. Please stop being so awesome.
3,
Chinese Lawyer Dude.
1. Establishment of a World of Warcraft Account.
While the legality of such an agreement is obviously questionable, the agreement seems to put liability squarely on the parent who registered the account.
(If you want to read some other crazy stuff. Read the entire ToS. Its damn scary. I wouldn't be supprised if they showed up wanting my first born.)
I do security
...at least America isn't the only place where people don't understand the concept of being responsible for their own actions.
I was beginning to think we had the market cornered on idiocy.
Sigh. No matter how many times we go over this there is alway some moron who decides to blame the Internet, video game developers, television, movie directors, recording artists, consumer product manufacturers, book authors, people "who don't have enough Jebus in their lives" or some other parahia (sp) to futher their personal agenda.
What's next for China? The Jack Thompson world tour?
Are they going to blame video games and the Internet for school shootings and violent behavior but deny that it was their own fault because they sucked at being a parent?
If the Chinese government is going to lay down the law, why not do the people of China a favor and punish this twit.
In Communist China, you do not ban video games. Video games ban you!
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
Stinkin' 13-year-olds were ruining the game anyway!
That would be "Mr. Zhang" as in China the family name comes first. You insensitive clod.
Some say he is made with ascii, others that he is eyeballed daily by millions. All we know is, he is known as the Sig
Seriously, how many of us have seen people jumping out of airplanes? Jumping off cliffs, jumping off roofs.... I can thinkg of hundreds of movies that show the same thing. Is this any different?
by his parents.
"I don't need drugs to enjoy this, just to enhance it" - Otto
"training yourself"
The WoW academy opens in each country, and to get a level up or more preficiency on a weapon, you have to go to the center and train In Real Life in battleaxe, longsword, bow, close combat etc...
You get certified levels, and the levels are reported in the game along with your personal profile -then you can use your character, that have the same characteristic as you, and get it at the dummy that told you you were a wimp last week.
I'm sure the local Wicca chapter will be happy to train you in basic spell casting and such 8)
As an alternative, I propose a combinaison home bicycle with included eletro-simulators you must patch everywhere on your body.
If you want your character to run, you bicycle harder, when your character trains to get an upgrade, the electro-simulator makes your muscle work harder...
And in fighting, you get to feel the blows with a nice electrical shock of varying power depending on the adversary "dice-roll".
People playing 8 hours or more a day will either get a perfect body or a massive physical collapse, BDSM players will go for losing as much as possible...
Also, you get a new generation of highly trained martial art practitioners in the streets, proficient with everything from saber to long bow, making it safer for everybody (except for that level 23 necromancer, that is getting too good for everybody's tastes).
The marines can directly know where to put you after seeing your stats in Couter Strike, the local mob can tell if you are more of a pimp or a drug smuggler, and use you accordingly...
Yes, I can definetly see a market for this 8)
(I know, there are some things like the Power Joystick and such, that forces you to train to get to play, and those shoes with a walkometer...I still like my idea best 8p )
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
Most building codes have restrictions on the size of holes/gaps in fencing material. The goal is to prevent a toddler from trapping their head in the hole.
How could the kid possibly think he'd come out alright? I mean, even in the game jumping from heights can kill you, and if it doesn't kill you it hurts you quite nicely. Therefore any kid attempting a re enactment must be trying to hurt himself, because that's the only thing that ever results from a jump in WoW. If you try to disregard this fact, then you must also disregard any connection it may have to WoW.
I think that's actually a pretty strong case for Blizzard. The kid obviously had a mental problem if he could see the jumping but not the hurting.
Before idiot 'murkian kids would have done this but now it proves freedom is on the march as it was a chinese kid.
so one can reasonably expect it to be served at any temperature up to boiling. Simple physics limits the maximum temperature. McDonald's is not, and cannot be, at fault for serving "too hot" coffee, regardless of the serving temperature others use. The OP burned themselves.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
if the game is so addicting, then why do they let thier children play it? Its not like the children have a job, where they can pay the monthly fee and the inital cost of purchasing the game. so why should the game manucatures (sp) be responsable for the lack of parenting?
I have never felt that jumping was such a big deal in World of Warcraft..
However Morrowind, (and the fact that jumping soon became one of the quickest ways to get around certain areas) did actually leave me feeling (at some level) a compulsion to leap between levels of the local mall.
The 'reflex' feeling seemed to be coming from the same part of my brain that occasionally has me reaching for a 'space-bar' (jump) when a pot-hole gets in my way while driving.
Still, i can't imagine how distracted/drugged i would have had to have been to actually -jump-!
Obviously, in the context of this story, a half-dozen Slashbots are going to grab their cat and prepare an entree with it the manner which you described. Come on, what were you thinking!? They'll no doubt end up suing Slashdot and depriving us all of one of our favorite drugs.
Join Tor today!
...that he was reenacting a scene from WoW? Did they ask him post mortum?
I hope it wasn't the jump from Tanaris to Un'goro because that'll kill most players except priests and skilled mages.
O RLY?
it's fine, learn2litigate
Warning labels, etc. need to be REMOVED. Let nature take it's course and it will eliminate these kind of morons from the gene pool - perferably before they can breed. Last time I checked, Blizzard wasn't nature.
WoW has a concept called rest, when you are logged off inside an inn, you character gains "rest". The net effect is that you gain experience twice as fast until your rest bonus is expended. In beta, they'd played with that going even further, that you'd start to go in to a fatigued state where you'd get less and less experience unless you went and rested. It was ultimately scrapped, but was considered.
Star Wars Galaxies had somethin that was actually like this. As you fought, your character had a fatigue stat (I don't remember if that's what it was called, but that's what it was) that would build up. At first it did nothing but as it got higher it started to really interfere with performance. Eventually you had no choice but to stop. The only way to cure it was to head to a city and hang out in a cantina. If there were entertainers there (players could be entertainers) watching them would make it go away faster.
Eve had another function that put limits on your grinding and that was that skills increased based on realtime spent, in game or out. You specificed a skill that was to be worked on and your character would start working, and continue to do so regarless of your presence. However there wasn't any way to accelerate it, it simply took a certian amount of actual time.
Personally I like the concept to diminishing returns in games, though probably because I'm a casual gamer. I think it's a nice idea to set it up so that you CAN grind all the time, but you don't get a whole lot for it over simply playing a bit every day or so.
However that's more a balance issue than a compulsive behaviour prevention one. Some people will get addicted to games, just like some peopel get addicted to gambling. If you change the game dynamic that won't change anything. They'll just be the ones grinding all the time, even if it gives them only a 1% gain over playing casually because it's not about that.
it's too bad they won the BnetD lawsuit ... otherwise the headline might have read "Gamers sued for Death of Blizzard".
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Subliminal messages don't work anyway
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
There is an extreme difference between psychologically and physcially addicative problems. Some people are such that they find things like games or gambling, or even collecting card addictive whereas most people don't. That's tragic, but doesn't mean we should try and ban things. You do not have progress as a society by banning anything that's a problem for any one person because you end up banning everything.
That's very different from nicotene. That's addictive to basically everyone who tries it. There are rare people who cannot get addicted, byt they are 1:10,000 or less. Everyone else, if you try nicotene for any amount of time, you WILL get addicted, no questions asked. Worse, it's a physical respone. Your body actually has a need for the drug, and exhibits symptoms of withdrawl, same as if you withhold anything critical to survival like food or water.
Some peopel will just take any kind of escapism to an excess. That's something that needs to be treated, not the entertainment itself.
So here's something to try: Find the number of people addicted to nicotene in the US. Now find the number of people addicted to games. Then, find the number of deaths caused by each per year. When the nubers are anything even near each other, then let's talk. Until then, please stop with the fearmongering.
The Beloved Party handed down execution orders for the parents, on the grounds that they wasted precious state resources raising their One Child to be so completely braindead. The deceased child will be eulogized and immoralized as a state hero for sparing the national gene pool from further corruption.
(If you're gonna have a police state, have fun with it!)
Whoops I misread the headline as Blizzard of Oz sued...
Autonomous Retard -- Is your camp safe? UnsafeCamp.com
Parent sues pet store owner.
... natural selection.
Parachute Cloak
Binds when equipped
Back
30 Armor
+8 Agility
Requires Engineering (225)
Use: Reduces your fall speed for 10 sec.
Grr! Arg!
Is there any documented evidence, i.e. pictures or video, that shows Mr Jack Thompson and Mr. Chunliang in the same place at the same time? Hmmmm....
I know more than you drink.
the kid obviously never took a physics class, this is so ridiculous, one would almost believe the Chinese Govt set this up in order to push the ban of MMORPGs in their country, or at least a limit to their gameplay. for most MMORPG people who say that WoW is filled with fast-food type gamers, i guess this and the multiple deaths in china show that to the chinese, WoW is truly their escape from reality. in no way is this blizzard's fault, it is just sad. seriously. if the parents were smart they would have at least wondered why the kid never went outside. this type of escape from reality doesnt happen in less than a year, in most cases. this is probably something that the parents should have noticed in their child who was playing more video games and eating rather than going outside and participating in activities. the parents should have forced his ass into a recreational activity that is school sponsored, like everyone else's parents have done since the industrial revolution.
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I love it how no one could even think of turning off the computer on their kids nowadays. Did anyone else besides me have parents who said, "You've watched more than enough TV. Turn it off" ?
These parents who think a game will affect their kids development more than they can aren't fit for parenting.
and I love seeing how far the McDonalds Coffee is Hot lawsuits are going to go.
Boxes of toothpicks have instructions now. Need I say anymore?
I wouldn't consider the mad hatter mad. Just reality impaired. He sure can make a mean cup of tea.
i asked mine if he would do that and he thought i'd lost my mind for even asking.
[rant] I've played many games, and have gotten addicted to quite a few of them, my roommate and I spent an entire year playing games online together, we also hosted dnd games, and L5R games (another style of dnd game http://www.l5r.com/) and in the past 7+ years, none of my 20+ friends who have played dnd/l5r or anything with us have; committed suicide, tryed to re-enact, re-create anything that we've played out in our games. Now, that being said, I'm sure there were quite a few of us who have thought 'wouldn't it be cool to be able to blink, and turn invisible.' or something along those lines. But than again, who hasn't thought that. AND! to that end, why is it a games fault, look at tv, look at movies. I find it incredibly funny, and insulting as a gamer, that the most graphic/gory/destructive tv show is on every day, at least 3 times a day, on almost every single channel, News. My perspective on games, and their effects on people, is a rather simple one. It goes a little something like this.
A famous mom once said "I don't care what 'Jimmy' said, if little 'jimmy' jumped off a bridge, would you follow him, and jump as well."
sorry if anyone's name here happens to be jimmy. or jim, or anything like that, no reference meant
Now I'm sure almost everyone on these boards has heard this saying at least once, and can appreciate it's meaning. = just because so and so did that, what makes you think you can to.
I'm really quite sick of horrible parents trying to find an easy scapegoat for their own incapabilities.
Lets break something down here
car accidents attribute to the most deaths (aside from accidents, natural, and wartime) in the US (according to disastercentre http://www.disastercenter.com/cdc/ and yet parents/family members/relatives never seem to sue car manufatcurers (aside from when the car actually has a defect). MADD is trying to get stiffer penalties to alcohol makers when their product is found to be the cause of car accidents causing death, but that has so far failed, for a reason, it's not the manufacturers fault, it's the fault of the user.
However, when it comes to kids doing incredibly stupid things, if it can be even remotely related to a game they played, BAM instant lawsuit.
It seems that recently, lawsuits are fast becoming the replacement for good parenting. If a parent has a problem with their child, they immediately blame it on the most recent game that their child played.
I'm shocked that parents of dead soldiers aren't suing makers of games like America's Army, or Battlefield, or Counterstrike? I'm sure that's in the works somewhere.
Anyways.
I really don't see how a Game can force a child/teen/adult, person, to go out and do something incredibly stupid. It really makes you wonder, what happened to good ol common sense.
In the case of WOW vs. flying chinese child, I wonder. Where were the parents, where was the parenting that says, jumping off the balcony is not smart. Where were the parents saying "are you done your homework?" For that matter, where were the parents when this kid bought the game, ignoring the fact that the game is intended for teens (yeah I know T=13 plus) but still, I wonder if the parents know anything about the game, aside from the fact that it's made by that american company that they're suing...???
I'm really quite appalled that soo many parents are turning to the courts to help back them in their failures to parent properly. [/rant]
Where are the good ol days when babysitters were real, cute girls, that every kid loved having over, just for a chance to "cop a feel" not games, or TV that "implants bad thoughts in childrens heads"
I really must ask the question. If games are soo bad, why do so many parents turn a blind eye when their kids go out and get them??? OOPS I forg
"The parents filed a suit against Blizzard Entertainment on Wednesday, saying their son jumped to his death while reenacting a scene from the game, the report said."
;)
He should've been a druid! Half damage in cat form with the right talent!
My email addy? should be easy enough.
> Sue yourself, idiot.
I tried to sue myself, but then I counter-sued for undue distress and emotional damage. I then added another lawsuit because I defamed my character, but unfortunately, I had a much better lawyer than I did, and I could not recoup damages once I won. I'm upset that the court awarded me judgement, but I'm afraid that I'll find other frivolous charges to sue myself with. My other suit is still pending, but my lawyer says I have a pretty good chance that I'll drop my charges if I'm willing to settle out of court. I'm currently demanding $500,000 but I'm negotiating to see if I'm willing to come down in my demands. So far, I'm not willing to budge, and I insist that I just don't have that kind of money readily available, but the worst case scenario is that I might garnish my wages for the next 20 years if I win the case. My best hope is to try to discredit me in front of the judge and make my lawsuit seem really stupid, or better yet, make me appear to be of unsound mind.
Solomon Chang
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
Well I've always thought terrorists were stupid for going after heavily defended targets. All they have to do is hit the WoW datacenter, EQ and other online games and the implications would rock the world with mass suicides and social breakdown! lol sadly, this is true because the actual effect of that would strike fear in a lot of people.. .loose my 60 mage! OMG! lol
1. He should be nominated for a Darwin Award.
2. That's one less chinese farmer to worry about selling Krol Blades.
Who cares about the ozone layer?...thanks to CFC's I can write my name......IN CHEESE!!!
Blizzard can win the court by saying; Your son forgot to turn on his "slow fall".
When you lift weights, you gradually increase the weight. When you do many activities, you increase the difficulty as you increase your ability.
You could create a conspirary theory detailing 'levelling' as a behavior intended to addict, however it's been around since NES games and earlier... long before MMORPGS. Sometimes there's a line between "make interesting" and "make addicting." Sometimes whether something does one or the other depends mainly on the person involved in the activity as well.
For those parents who have not taught their chilren to recognize a fantasy role playing game from reality should be arrested for child negligence.
My 5 year old knows that jumping from a high surface will hurt when you land. Some kids are stupid, some people can't understand that. I meet stupid adults all the time, weren't these stupid adults once stupid children?
Look at it this way, psychic hotlines exist even though the first question any caller should ask the phychic to answer is what color shirt and socks you are wearing, but they do exist and so do stupid people. This kid was a stupid person. We should be grateful for two things, 1) he died before producing any offspring and 2) he didn't hurt anybody else while killing himself.
Some would call this event a tragedy. Others would call this evolution...
That's nature's way of getting rid of the gene pool of extremely stupid children.
Any kid, boy or girl, who hasn't figured out they can't fly by the age of 13 has either had a very, very poor education or has some major mental handicaps. In either case they shouldn't have been allowed to play a Rated "T" game as it should have been obvious to the parents that even though they might be aged 13, they obviously didn't have the full mental capacity of a 13 year old (or a 3 year old for that matter). I feel bad for the parents in this case, but blaming the gaming company for your bad parenting is an obvious case of passing the buck. I truly feel for any parent that loses a child so, I have 2 of the little buggers myself, so don't think that I don't feel sympathy for what they are going through. I'm simply trying to state the fact that kids don't gun down their school mates, commit suicide and/or acts of murder or try to fly unless there are some major underlying problems other than the game, music, movie, book or whatever other form of media the parents, lawyers and politicians try to blame it on. Just one Hoosierbillys opinion as usual ;),
Jason
Jay Dale "If you're not living on the edge then you're taking up too much space!"
MODS ON CRACK! Are you out of your minds???
However you look at it, that IS informative as much as this IS "news for nerds, stuff that matters".
Maybe you didn't get the memo: Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory
In other news, an 11-year old boy from Michigan killed a classmate when he became enraged and performed his level 4 limit break, Omnislash.
Grammar Lesson: you're is a contraction of "you are"; your means you possess something; yore means days gone by.
I was a kid before kids wore bike helmets. When I was 13, I'd be gone for five hours, biking in three states, talking to winos under the bridge, and flying down steep hills at 35 MPH with no thought of my fragile unprotected skull. When I returned home:
Mom: "What have you been doing all day?"
Me: "Riding my bike."
Mom: "Dinner's almost ready."
I think she believed I was biking around the block in our middle class suburban neighborhood for five hours.
A couple of years later, I bent the tines on two forks and pushed them (individually!) into a 120 VAC electrical outlet. Then, I tossed a pad of steel wool onto the fork handles from across the room. It was a great shot - truly a zen moment. There was a bright flash of light and a sharp electrical crack. The lights went out and the air was filled with the pungent aroma of iron oxide and Brillo detergent.
It's all good fun. Life is risk. What's the point if it isn't fun?
The problem with warning labels is they're all so uniformative. I want to see a warning label on a bottle of ammonia that describes in detail what chemicals should not be mixed with ammonia, what proportions they should not be mixed, and what processes should not be used to avoid producing explosives such as ammonium tri-iodine. "Warning - Coffee is hot" How much fun can you have with that?
>> My ultraviolent Linux switch video.
My son plays video games - plenty of them too. He plays WoW, GTA, and about a half dozen games that involve various levels of mayhem. He laughs hysterically at the images of bodies dropping, sans heads, with the appropriate level of blood splatter to boot.
But he is a major-class wimp when it comes to seeing the real thing. My wife, my daughters and I can sit in the living room watching a Discovery television program on surgery techniques, where flesh and bone are exposed and articulated for the camera. No problems for us. My son, however, gets noticeably queasy and has to leave the room to avoid getting sick.
I took him in to the podiatrist to have him examined for surgery on his feet. The doctor described in detail the procedure they will be following to correct his bunions. That process involves cutting wedges out of his phalanges and shaving the metatarsals. I watched my son as the doctor went through his description and noted the loss of color in his face, his agitated state, and his breathing. I thought he was going to vomit in the examination room. And all the doctor was doing was talking.
When we got in the car to head back home I asked my son why he was unable to deal with the descriptions of cutting and shaving bone when he could watch people blown to bits playing video games.
His reply was: "I know the difference between fantasy and reality".
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Oh please. There are no interesting arguments in that letter at all. To say that there are is just being small-minded and not taking the facts into a consideration.
First of all, comparing a police shooting to a school shotting is a waste of time. Especially when there is no context. How close were the police? How close was the school shooter? There is no proof that violent video games make you a better gunman. If that were true wouldn't baseball games make you a better batter or fielder?
Hand-eye coordination is one thing but to think that one specific type of it gains grounds in a different specific type is rediculous. I.E., just because I can fly a chopper in Battlefield 2 doesn't mean I can fly one in real life. And just because a mother, father, or community has mental anguish over a tragic incident there is no reason to start laying blame on things that have no logical link.
Trying to keep violent videogames away from people they aren't the target audience for by restricting sales won't work. If the parents didn't know what games their kids are buying they won't know what games they will have to buy for them. It might keep a few kids from getting an M-rated game but it's not going to keep someone from getting shot or making poor decisions that lead to them getting hurt. The plain fact is that parents think video games are Pong, Frogger, Joust, Mario, and Zelda. They still think that games are simple kids toys when in reality are cross-generational entertainment - just like movies, television, and books.
Parents usually pay attention to what their kids watch on TV and what movies they go to so why not video games? This is still up to the parents.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
Cigarrette smoking is still legal.
Frog blast the vent core.
Poor kid cast his spell succesfully, enchanting the item with great magical properties. Too bad the leather was inferior and did not hold the enchantment long enough for him to descend from the tops of Teldrassil safely. :(
http://www.tgdaily.com/2005/11/22/suicideclaim-wor ldofwarcraft/
We dug a little deeper into the story and also translated the original Chinese language newspaper article. Turns out he thought he could meet his night elf hero if he committed suicide.
He wrote four letters and one hand-written note to his parents saying goodbye. He also logged onto WoW and told his guild buddies goodbye.
There is no part of the game that makes you commit suicide, but there are two quests where you can jump off a mountain or building. The Alliance one is in Feralas and the Horde one is in Thousand Needles.
Maybe I should sue the creator of Pulp Fiction for putting it in someone's head to rape me in the arse!
that i get matched with noob teammates all the time in Frozen Throne. This post 1.14 AMM sucks a big one.
Help! I've fallen in a karma hole and I can't get up!
Mr. YongLingLiang, you never actually PAID for Warcraft. You bought it on a CD with fifty thousand other pirated games for a few yuan.
*blink* *blink*
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
Ok this may offend you but its the truth:
The REAL reason he jumped is not because of WoW... no, its because of his NINJA ANCESTRY! Since he is Chinese he related to his ancestors and took the tok' i tawinawa rights of trial test. By jumping he wanted to see if he was a ninja at heart. Evidently he was not. Infact he was a total moron, he never even recieved a black belt and he attempted the rights of passage!
Im sorry if I offended you chinese people (my dead cousin is chinese so its all good) but really its the goddamn truth.
F*cking ninjas....
..I'd like to see the good that has come from video games and other such things. People get insperation from media, games, and people surroundign them. Hell if it wasn't for Doom, I wouldn't have learned near as much as I did about networking while I was in high school. I've played countless hours of violent games, and haven't killed or harmed anyone. As a matter of fact when I had a bad (as a kid) I could go home and play some of those games to rid myself of the aggression. I wish studies wern't so lopsided. I'm sure that people in all kinds of sports and other professiona have enjoyed the benefit of better hand eye coordination, and reaction time due to playing video games when they were young. IMHO because of the percentage here (ie 4.5 million users, 1 has died) this kid would still have done himself in, albet for a different reason. Who know maybe I'm wrong and we all need to live in a Brady Bunch world....
I think the parents need to wake up and realize that they are responsible. They should have limited the amount of time that their child was playing WOW. Where were they when their kid was being sucked in by the game? I personally know people that have lost their jobs because of this game, because they were addicted to it. Call Blizzard and file a suit right? No. It is these individuals' faults. They were late to work, one person was late 14 times in a month. Aye aye aye....
Geoff
geoff@nearsphere.com