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Need for Speed Unconnected to Fatal Crash
BStorm writes "There was a horrific crash in Toronto yesterday. It involved two 18 year olds, each racing their parent's Mercedes. One of racers hit a taxi turning left killing the taxi driver. The other left the scene. EA's Need for Speed was found on the passenger seat of one of the racers. Police are investigating the possibility that the racing and subsequent crash was connected with the game." Update: 01/26 20:53 GMT by Z : GamePolitics points out a more thorough article on the subject which quotes the officers involved as being against the jist of the Globe and Mail article. From that article: "Det. Lobsinger was careful not to blame the video game for Tuesday's accident. 'There is a small percentage who have difficulty separating reality and simulation, fantasy. It's a very, very small percentage,' he said. 'This was not the game's fault. There are millions who play this game and don't go out and do this.' The way to prevent these tragedies is to teach young drivers to have respect for the road, he said." Title changed to reflect more accurate article.
What if they found a copy of the fast and the furious in one of the cars? i guess it'd be the movies fault then right? oh wait... movies aren't a pariah subject like gaming, my bad.
The game has nothing to do with it. This was caused by a couple of people acting like idiots. Illegal street racing has been around since... well, since cars were invented.
That won't stop people from holding this up as more evidence that games are evil, though. I should take bets on how long it takes Jack Thompson to chime in.
psmylie's dictionary: Godzillion (noun) Any number large enough to destroy Tokyo
If so then the police should also give equal attention to investigating the possibility that the fatal crash was connected with cows. It's about as relevant.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Almost a flamebait-worthy article...
Anyway, who should we blame? The game for, well, you know? The Parents for allowing kids to drive their overpowered cars?
I blame the kids for being dicks, personally.
Argh.
Investigators found a copy of the video game Need For Speed in one of the cars. The game involves street racing, drag racing and pursuit racing, where players attempt to evade police.
w s/20060125/street_race_060125/20060125/
The discovery prompted police to point out the difference between the digital world, and reality.
"A game is a game," Toronto Police's Det. Paul Lobsinger told CTV Toronto. "And when you get behind the wheel of a car it's not a game anymore. And when something tragic happens in a huge crash with a lot of smoke, there is no reset button. You can't start over with a new car and a new life."
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNe
Its pretty silly to blame a video game; if they had a copy of Spyro the Dragon or Grand Theft Auto and the news hit the media this hard I'm sure they would have blamed those games as well..
"Correlation does not imply causality"
May I present another scenario? The kids were already attracted to racing because its hella cool, and that caused both the interest in Need For Speed as well as the accident
It's actually really ironic
No it's not. It's a coincidence. If he's not smart enough to know the definition of ironic how smart will his investigation be?
Developers: We can use your help.
Games about illegal street racing started in the late 70's (as far as I know) with a game called "Datsun 280 ZZaapp!". Games like that have been around for nearly 30 years, but people with both of the characteristics foolish and irresponsible have been around far longer. A better way to place blame here is on the individuals responsible first, parents next in line.
I have a few Need for Speed games and I drive a car with a V8 that's (supposedly) capable of going 150 mph. Do I race my car? Hell no! I'm not going to risk my vehicle and my life for a cheap thrill I could get by either playing a video game or going on a roller coaster.
I also play Animal Crossing, but I can't remember the last time I went out catching bugs or fishing, and I don't really have any plans to do either. Games are a diversion from real life, not a mirror of it.
Throw the kids in jail.
If the parents make a peep about suing EA under the pretense that "they are just kids and didn't know what they were doing", charge them with child negligence -- first, with providing them access to such a dangerous video game, and second by providing them access to their cars.
When can we blame Bush's war in Iraq on Call of Duty or SOCOM?
How sad is it that we have all these video games, portraying violent and reckless behavior in a realistic setting, and people are going out repeating the acts they see in the games? I'm confident that, were we to remove all video games which could possibly influence people's actions in any way, we could eliminate things like crime, insane recklessness, and war. I am certain there are statistics that show a causal relationship between an increase in car accidents and the release of 'Need for Speed'.
If you consider what else goes on in video games besides just shooting police officers, driving like an epileptic having a grand mal seizure with the gas pedal glued down, or all this rock music playing in the background of said games, the picture becomes a lot more frightening. Consider Tetris, where you stack boxes only to make them go away. The artificial reduction in inventory so graphically displayed and used as a form of amusement has to be terrifying to warehouse owners worldwide. Imagine the impressions left on young people playing that game who will someday grow up to be forklift operators. There is no greater threat to a country's GNP than a game that glorifies stacking things with the intention of destroying them.
For a better example, consider the game Doom. You are put in a world where all the lights are turned off, given a wide array of guns, and told to shoot anything that does not look like you. It is only a matter of time before kids across America start turning the lights off in their homes to conserve electricity, which directly impacts the number of kilowatt hours sold by utility companies. Not to mention the fact that shooting things that don't look like you with massive weapons is a poor way for people to socialize. It's games like this that lead to the rise in rampant xenophobia in the midwest, and prevent people from different backgrounds from achieving common goals and working towards a better world.
The game that most frightens me, with it's emersive environments, realistic use of weaponry, and insanely graphic fight sequences is one we have all learned to fear. Gauntlet. As soon as I hear 'Red Warrior needs food badly', I know that my 12 year old is headed to the nearest refrigerator to eat a massive plate of ham. The fact that he is 4 foot 2 and weighs 340 lbs is a direct consequence of playing this game filled with subliminal references to consuming massive amounts of nourishment in the pursuit of endlessly regenerating imps, trolls, things with gas masks and ghosts. When I hear 'That was a heroic effort', the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end as I know this means the kid is not going to leave the front of that television for at least another 2 hours. There is no force on Earth capable of preventing kids from playing these games endlessly, and someone needs to stand up and do something about it.
M
Guys... lets just not do the "but... how can you blame X" comments. They don't work. We can see that... guess I better break my own advice.
There is nothing linking the game to the accident, besides the theme of the game, and the kids being idiots. So what, it's about racing. So's a bunch of movies, and a big American past-time (NASCAR). If that were a NASCAR DVD, would it be blamed? Well, I suppose it's not in an "urban" setting. Ok, what about "Fast and the Furious", or it's sequel? "Gone in 60 Seconds"? I suppose they weren't specifically stealing the cars...
NEWS FLASH: TEENAGERS DO STUPID THINGS.
As a teen myself (for another month) I can say yes, that's a very fitting description. Now, these parents have some nice money (they were racing "luxary cars"), sent them to an exclusive high school (at 35 grand a year, more then I pay for out of state tuition!), and were OUT OF TOWN.
Now come on... you leave the kids at home, nice luxary car, and they go do crazy things like drive 130 kilometers per hour... oh, yea, that's only 80 miles per hour. Having played Need For Speed, I can tell you it is VERY easy to exceed that speed VERY quickly, in fact, 80 mph wouldn't win you even the first race. Hell, When I drive home, I average 85 mph, though the speed limit's only 75, and I get passed. Why? Because that's not such an unsafe speed, surely NOT racing. This is a little bit of joyriding, and the idiot driver didn't see a taxi. Now, someone is dead, and it's time to play the Blame Game.
Can we blame the boys? No, "They're very nice kids. Very quiet, soft-spoken. They both did well academically. Certainly not the kind of kids you would expect at all to be racing down a highway." If they wouldn't be expected to, something must have made them, right?
The parents then? nope, it's never the parent's fault in this day and age. Even though they were out of town. "Defence lawyer Edward Prutschi, who represents Mr. Ryazanov, said his client's parents were out of town at the time of the accident and are heading home to Toronto."
Perhaps the car then? "...Mr. Shrimpton said, adding that neither had a car at school." Damn, no history of driving a car at school, guess they weren't reckless.
Or.. wait... idea. These kids finally get out of school, feel like normal teenagers, unable to be hurt, and go joyriding. Just this once, right, since our parents are out of town. Not racing, just speeding. BAM...uh-oh... we've got a problem. Cops show up, and have to have a motive (everything has a motive). In the end, the game gets blamed.
Interesting thing to note here, no one ever says that they've played the game. No one said it was out of the package. They might've just bought it have no clue about game-play, yet that doesn't matter. Some lawyer will jump on this, make a big outcry about the horror of video games (of any genre) and politicians will all conspire and pass condolances. In the end, it'll be like every other suit, these "boys" will get sentenced, and life will go on.
Except for the man they killed. negligence, manslaughter, call it what you will, he's not coming back. That is the real travisty here, not that a game is being blamed, that's natural today, but a man died, due to stupidity. Let this be a lesson, not to game manufacturors, designers, or players. Not to lawyers, or politicians, but to parents, adults, and kids. When you do something stupid, someone might get hurt. Someone might get killed, and you have to live with it. These "boys" (legal adults, mind you) will forever have to live with the fact that they killed a man trying to earn a living, something they won't have to due to their parent's money. I hope they're happy, and I hope ya'll have fun fighting out how stupid it is to blame the game, missing the real point once again.
Rest in Peace, Mr. Khan.
Want to find other gamers to play board and role playing game