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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."
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.
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.
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.
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
This is the same thing as suing Coors or Budwiser for DUI deaths, or liver disease... addiction comes in all sorts of forms. You can't sue the maker of a legitimate product just because the person using said product has an addictive personality.
I know this comment will get me modded bad, but some idiot kid jumping to his death to reenact some scene from WoW or whatever is just a perfect example of what we call "Natural Selection." Survival of the fittest, and if some kid isn't fit enough to know that jumping from on high will kill you dead, well, oh well. The article says nothing of severe depression, or drug abuse - so he just jumped to jump? That sure isn't Blizzard's fault.
Excuse my speling.
Making The Bar Project
At first I wanted to state that Columbine happened way before "The Matrix". Upon further cursory inspection, it looks like the Columbine massacre happened less than a month after the theatrical release of "The Matrix". I never realized how close these two events really were. Interesting.
-- I have fans? Wow.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
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