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Suit Blames Videogames for Homicides
An anonymous reader writes "Family members of three victims of a shooting by a 14-year-old have filed a $600 million lawsuit against the makers of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. From the article: 'The $600 million lawsuit names several companies and Cody Posey, who it alleges played the game ''obsessively'' for several months before he shot his father, stepmother and stepsister in July 2004 ... The plaintiffs accuse the corporate defendants -- Sony Corporation of America, Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. and its subsidiary, Rockstar Games -- of a civil conspiracy, saying they should have foreseen their entertainment would spawn such copycat violence.'" It may or may not be a coincidence that Jack Thompson is the plaintiff's attorney.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
The plaintiff's cousin's former roommate being the lawyer would be a coincidence. That someone doing what he normally does doens't consisitute a coincidence.
No, it has nothing to do with how much money the parents are. They are DEAD. Didn't you RTFA? He shot and killed his father and step mother.
Parents have an obligation to teach their kids morals
Such as it's ok to beat children.
The kid's defense lawyers argued that years of physical abuse from his father and step-mom drove him over the edge.
And being a ranch boy, he'd already know how to use a gun, he didn't need a "murder simulator" to help his aim...
Magic doesn't work in my presence. My power of disbelief is too strong.
"If video games effected behavior, after playing pac-man we'd all be running around in the dark, popping pills, and listening to repetitive, electronic music" - I forget who said this. It does sound like a lot of my weekends a few years back :)
Marcus Brigstocke.
At least he claims authorship and nobody has contradicted him. It's in his standup set, and since that has hardly changed at all since he started, I don't doubt him.
As I posted on my blog, if you look around the courtv site, you see lots of coverage of Cody Posey's case. During a police interview Posey claimed his father forced him to have sex with his step-mother and during the trial testified that his father has emotionally and physically abused him for years. So Thompson is arguing that playing videogames is more dangerous than child abuse.
Looking at the details of the case,and reading between the lines, it basically seems that the father's side of the family denies all the abuse charges and wanted Cody Posey sentenced as an adult, while the mother(birth mother, not step-mother) and her side believes all the abuse charges and wanted Cody Posey sentenced as a minor. He got sentenced as a minor, so the father's side is basically mad about it.
The lawsuit is a wrongfull death suit against Cody himself as well as Take 2. Therefore, it seems certain that Cody's mother's side of the family will be pushing the abuse angle heavilly. Therefore, I can't imagine that this suit will actually even get to talking about videogames. I imagine that it will be mainly about excrusiating detail about the abuse.
Moreover, Sanders, the lawyer in New Mexico who is actually trying the lawsuit does not seem to be associated with a large law firm, so a) if it does actually focus on videogames, it will be Sander and Thompson against an army of corporate lawyers and b) the research I found about Sanders indicates that he is mainly a contract lawyer which doesn't seem so great of a choice for such a lawsuit.
Jack is in way over his head and is caught in between this battle between the father's family and the mother and her family. I'm really tempted to think that Jack chose this case specifically so that he could get a bunch of publicity and then when the case starts and focuses on the abuse, he can pull a New Orleans move and back away blaming family for not telling him about the abuse and accusing the horrible big law firm of ganging up on little old him.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
It all depends on the weapon. A .22 is pretty pathetic, in terms of recoil, though it can be an effective weapon due to penetrating power and accuracy. Likewise, 9mm's and .38's. A beefier pistol like a .44, .45, or .357 has surprising recoil.
.45 empty half a clip and end up more a danger to birds than their target.
.410 or something small, you're going to be dealing with significant recoil...I've seen people try to "shoot from the hip" without firmly seating the butt of the gun against their hip, and actually have the recoil jerk the gun right out of their hand.
Even discounting recoil, pistols are suprisingly difficult to shoot. A rifle target's outer ring is about the same size as the inner ring of a pistol target, and it takes a lot of practice to be able to make the bullets go where you want 'em to. They're simply not accurate weapons, and very few video games I've ever played took that into account to the degree it actually applies in my experience.
I've occasionally run across games that had something resembling an authentic sight on their weapons, but even there, there is no way to prepare an individual for the actual weight and sway of a weapon. It takes decent arm strength to hold a rifle steady enough for accurate shooting, in every position except prone. Likewise for a pistol, especially since pistol accuracy is notional for all but experienced shooters.
In games, the protagonist is often considered to have arm strength sufficient to hold a weapon steady, as well as the sort of ingrained experience you need to effectively compensate for the different recoil of different weapons. A 30.06 caliber rifle, for example, has very little barrel deflection when the trigger is pulled (despite substantial kick), whereas even a 9mm pistol has significant upward deflection after a shot. I've seen many a dumbass with a
The only weapon I've ever seen that was usually rendered with any sort of accuracy was the shotgun, but "aiming" a shotgun is pretty simple. The problem with the shotgun is recoil, ammunition, and reloading, and those are not rendered accurately. Unless you're using a
Ammunition for a shotgun is another issue...While all shotgun ammunition is lethal against humans at the right range (the "right" range for birdshot would probably involve actually touching the target with the barrel), the extreme variety of ammunition commonly available would probably confound a gamer who is used to having only one option, usually suitable for large targets (e.g. slugs or buckshot).
Then comes the loading issue...Unless you end up with a semi-auto, you're going to have to learn to work a pump slide, and it is trickier than it looks when you're in a hurry...Very easy to "short-shuck" and jam a shell. New pump shotguns also tend to have very stiff action, which can result in some humiliating moments while you're wrestling with the slide. Even with a semi-auto loading is awkward, and, unless you modify the gun, you're going to be limited to 3 or 4 shots, rather than the 10 or 12 from the game-style riot shotgun.
I've been around guns my whole life, and I've been playing games for about the same amount of time (though true shooters didn't come out until I was in my teens). My aim tends to be good in games and in rl, but I couldn't say which one came first. I'd go so far as to say that games definitely helped me improve my kinesthetic sense, but the ability to sort of "know" where you're pointing your weapon is only the tiniest part of being able to use one effectively.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Like most people when they first heard about the McDonalds case, I thought that it was a stupid verdict. Reading the facts of the case, however, convinces most people otherwise.
http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm
Here and here.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Well, Jackie-Boy got in trouble with the Florida State Bar after a flood of well-worded complaints, from among other places the Penny Arcade forums, about Mr. Thompson's conduct lead them to open an investigation. So, Jackie Boy did whatever any other mature adult would do - create a web page attacking the Bar and releasing public statements attacking the Bar (and I believe he either filed or threatened to file a lawsuit).
The articles on these are on GamePolitics - which I can't view at work because it's about games, so somebody else will have to link it.
Zagreus sits inside your head, Zagreus lives among the dead, Zagreus sees you in your bed and eats you in your sleep.
Ironically, the USMC did use DOOM for training purposes, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_Doom .
It's not just (mainly fore-) arm strength that's an issue with real handguns. There's also the variables of stance and breath control. I find that breath control becomes increasingly important once you're outside of about 10 yards from the target, and you're not gonna learn that from any game.
"The plural of anecdote is not data" -- Bruce Schneier
"Teleporting Rodents with D-Cell Battery Displacement" theory -- IgnoramusMaximus (692000)
Yeah. If this kid's father and stepmother had just beat him more than they did, then he totally wouldn't have snapped and killed them. And if people here had reported the beatings before the kid snapped, and CPS had gotten involved, that would have just made it all worse.
I mean, really, a kid snaps after repeated physical and sexual abuse and kills people, and you want to say the problem is people aren't hitting their kids enough, and those that are hitting their kids are getting reported for doing so. WTF?