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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."
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/
Or is it Intelligent Design?
You be the judge.
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
... 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
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?
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!
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.
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.
Matrix Release Date: 31 March 1999
Columbine: April 20, 1999
Parental Blame: Dateless.
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
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?
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???
See a normal person would just get annoyed and stop playing ... :-)
Sorry, but "game lengtheners" [a technique not limited to RPGs] are really annoying and drive me to stop playing a game [or at least the way intended].
A "game lengthener" is a device in a game [e.g. "strategy"] that doesn't add to the story line but takes a long time to complete [usually because you have to redo the challenge over and over and over]. GTA is famous for those with timed missions were your margin of error can be as short as a matter of SECONDS in a mission that can last minutes.
Most puzzle type games use these as well. You can tell you've been had when either you realize you're on a mission for the 18th time or you finish the game in a weekend and go "that's all?" In the case of GTA I rarely do missions and mostly just drive around blowing shit up [and finding bugs in the engine]. The missions are mostly retarded anyways "pick this up, blow that up, catch this guy who is 84 miles away".
In games like WoW where you have to "gain EXP" to level up and some missions clearly require high levels it's just a matter of getting you hooked to play more and more and eventually pay Blizzard more monthly fees.
Personally if I were to sit down to "power up" something it would be my mind by reading more books not my imaginary character on a game server...
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Some people are opportunistic enough to want to cash in on their son's death
Actually, I think this whole lawsuit is China's shield for another crackdown on internet usage. China wants to censor their internet as much as possible. If they can use "think about the children" as an excuse this lawsuit could be, and probably will be, used in the service of propaganda.
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 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
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.
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.
What was his level? Because, even in WoW, you die when you jump from a 60m-high tower. Sad anyway.
Million Dollar Screenshot
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.
Sounds like the boy is a candidate for a Darwin Award.
. . . 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
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.
... 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
Boy drowns while trying to walk on water; parents sue God.
At least now I know how to spell Jack Thompson in Chinese!
Want to find other gamers to play board and role playing game
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
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!
Didn't get that movie off the shelves.
Probably because The Basketball Diaries has a scene that's much closer to the reality (including the trenchcoat and heavy boots), and came out in 1995.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
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[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
> 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
Bullshit. Utter crap.
My parents taught me to make tea and coffee when I was a kid. We used a kettle.
The kettle boils water. When it boils, you pour water into the teapot/cup.
Boiling water is 100C. It's safe to assume the coffee I was making was around 95C.
If I can make coffee at that temperature at the age of 8, it's pretty sensible to assume that coffee being bought somewhere else might be that hot. Holding it between my thighs would thus be very stupid.
95C is not unreasonably hot for a beverage. Anybody that pretends otherwise is out to make money from that fact.
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.
This concept is oh so wrong. Coffee can indeed be too hot. All it has to be is signifcantly hotter than would normally be expected. Serving coffee at 200 degrees rather than the 160 degrees all other restaurants serve it is really a trap for the consumer.
To illustrate, everyone expects brakes on cars to work about the same. similar pedal pressure stops the cars in a similar distance. Suppose one car maker decided to adjust the brakes on its cars so they take twice as long to stop and then they don't tell anyone. The cars will still stop just as fast if you press the brakes hard enough, but still people get injured. After a few hundred rear-enders they get sued, and rightly so. There are norms for many things, and when a company violates those norms and as a result injures people, they are liable. It makes no difference whether the brakes don;t stop you as fast as standard brakes or the coffee is hotter than standard coffee, the company is liable and NOT the consumer.
During this time I saw the local McDonalds put improvised lids on their self-serve coffee pots to make it even hotter than the hotplate would make it. This made the coffee so hot it was dangerous. You had to be careful not to let the steam burn your fingers as you took the plastic lid off the pot to pour it. I knew the coffee was really hot because I poured mine, but the people in the dive-thru getting coffee handed to them had no idea how absurdly hot it was.
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!"
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!"