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Suit Blames Videogames for Homicides

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the people-no-longer-responsible-for-own-actions-film-at-11 dept.

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.

24 of 623 comments (clear)

  1. Absolutely no chance of success by malsdavis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This suit has absolutely no chance of success. Apart from being naive in its entirety, it would go against many precedent cases.

    "Sam Donaldson's New Mexico ranch sued the makers of the video game ''Grand Theft Auto: Vice City'' on Monday, claiming the crimes would not have occurred had the teenager never played the violent game."

    He would never have shot them if he didn't have access to the gun either. Simply put, since gun makers aren't accountable for unintended actions carried out with their products, neither are game makers.

    "The game trained him ''how to point and shoot a gun in a fashion making him an extraordinarily effective killer."

    By that rationale, most action films would also be complicit in many homicides. This accusation has been thrown out of court so many times I won't even bother to cite individual cases.

    "The plaintiffs accuse the corporate defendants [...] of a ''civil conspiracy,'' saying they should have foreseen their entertainment ''would spawn such copycat violence"

    Again, gun and knife makers know their products can be used to commit homicides in the wrong hands yet can't be held accountable so neither can the game producers.

    I'm sure however their lawyers - who probably strongly encouraged them to pursue the case - will still get paid regardless of the absolute certainty that the case will fail.

    1. Re:Absolutely no chance of success by garcia · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "The game trained him ''how to point and shoot a gun in a fashion making him an extraordinarily effective killer."

      Guns aren't difficult to use and, as you already pointed out, movies and TV also show you exactly how to hold and fire a gun that makes you just as effective. This comment is nothing more than hype to confuse the media and eventually the jury.

      The only difference I see between typical gun cases and video game cases is the money behind the gun cases coming from the pro-Second Ammendment folks.

    2. Re:Absolutely no chance of success by JBHarris · · Score: 5, Insightful

      While I agree with your statement that this case has no chance of success, I come to my judgement based on the premise that those most DIRECTLY responsible are to blame.

      First, the child.
      Then, the parents that allowed him to play a violent game 'obsessively'.

      There really is no one else to blame. Not the gun manufacturer, not the game developer/publisher, not even society.

      To propose reasons as to why a person would commit a crime is to de-criminalize the perpetrator. It matters not WHY someone did something wrong, what matters is that they did it. To tell them it isn't there fault is to take away thier humanity. If we start down the road where a video game can make someone less human, then I propose all those people that blame video games for their actions be killed in the most inhumane way possible. I mean after all...they are less human by their own admission.

      On a completely different note, the child must not have learned too much from the video game. If he had studied the game closer, he would know that a flame thrower will get rid of all the police and if you find a blue star power-up it makes all the police attention go away....I bet he didn't even look for a blue star. n00b!

      Brad

    3. Re:Absolutely no chance of success by arth1 · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Guns aren't difficult to use and, as you already pointed out, movies and TV also show you exactly how to hold and fire a gun that makes you just as effective.

      More effective, even. At least in a movie you learn about recoil and sometimes even aim adjustments, and the bangs are much louder (not nearly what they are in real life, though -- unless the kid had been subjected to real gunfire before, his head ringing and being half dead after a shot must have come as a shock).

      Regards,
      --
      *Art
    4. Re:Absolutely no chance of success by general+scruff · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Guns aren't difficult to use

      Ok, I can agree with that, however, it is an entirely different thing to point that gun at a human being and pull the trigger. I'm sure you are familiar with the anecdote regarding the percentage of soldiers in WWI that couldn't bring themselves to shoot another human being. Target practice at that time was a simple bullseye. When the target was changed to the sillouitte of a human, the percentage of those able to fire a gun at another human increased greatly.

      Now, instead of a sillouitte, we have a highly graphic representation of what killing someone is really like. You see them moan, hold thier abdomen, and cry out in agony. If you see that in a video game continously, what happens when those with the predisposition to violence finally snap? Now, instead of feeling remorse at the first dead victim, they feel like they can keep going because their brain is used the hearing the painfull pleas of a dying person.

      I don't think that violent video games are the only cause of all violence, and I don't think that everyone playing them will cause violence just because, and I certainly don't think that $600M will make any difference either way. But don't say that violent video games can't and don't cause ANY harm, because I will just right you off as biased, unreasoning, and ignorant.

      --
      As a rule, I never trust dark brown ketchup.
    5. Re:Absolutely no chance of success by bmw · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Oh please... When it comes to video games and movies, I am one of the most violent, sick and twisted individuals you will ever meet. I love to torture, maim and kill. When it comes to real life, I am one of the most kind, caring people you will ever meet. It would be impossible for me to shoot or stab or bomb another human being and even attempting to do so would make me sick to my stomach. Violence in video games and movies does NOT desensitize you to violence in the real world.

    6. Re:Absolutely no chance of success by Damastus+the+WizLiz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I still blame parents. I have played video games all of my life I have never picked up a gun and shot someone. My parents taught me the line between fantasy and reality and reinforced it. My father taught me how to point and shoot a gun at the age of 5. He also taught me to respect them. If parents can't monitor what their kids are doing and teach them the difference between TV/Video games and the real world then how can children be expected to know. More so, if parents don't want them exposed to this level of violence then it is up to the parents to not give them access. How can anyone blame the maker of a video game for anything when it's the parents that put it into the kid's hands in the first place?

      --
      I often have trouble remembering which way is out of bed in the morning.
    7. Re:Absolutely no chance of success by russ1337 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You forgot an important point (1 a); Avoid responsibility for your own actions

      I'd say the killers parents hold some of the responsibility for their childs actions. They should have recognised violent behaviour from the game coming though to 'real life' and should have taken action - teaching the child that acting like that is unacceptable. Of course this does not happen 'in real life!!!

      There is no way the killer went from 'normal kid' then played a bunch of GTA and became 'insane murderer'. He would have developed his violent tendancies over time, and his parents should have picked up on this.

      And where the fuck did a 14 YO get a loaded gun from? - They have a lot to answer for.

    8. Re:Absolutely no chance of success by LWATCDR · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "There really is no one else to blame. Not the gun manufacturer, not the game developer/publisher, not even society."
      Really?
      I don't blame the game developer but then is it really wise to develop a game the rewards acts that is anti-social?
      Think about it this light. How many times have we praised a movie or say a book like 1984, Brave New World, Gentleman's Agreement, Uncle Tom's cabin, or of a number of other acts of fiction because they made us think?
      If a book or movie can move people in a positive way then it is logical that a book or movie like, say the Turner Diaries can move people in a negative way?
      If a book or movie can "change someones life". Then it can change someones life.
      If a book or movie can do that then couldn't a video game?
      I don't think it can only work one way. If art and literature is important because it can convey powerful messages then it is only logical that it convey powerful negative messages.

      --
      See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
    9. Re:Absolutely no chance of success by russ1337 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      >>> "The game trained him ''how to point and shoot a gun in a fashion making him an extraordinarily effective killer."

      [Scene 1]

      Defence Attorney: "Can the member of the Jury who have not played a First Person Shooter video game raise their hands"

      Defence Attorney: *Identifies little grey haired old lady*

      Defence Attorney: Jury member number 3, can you please aim this Plastic 9mm glock at the Judge.

      Defence Attorney: *hands old lady the replica*
      Little old lady: *points gun at judge*

      Defence Attorney: "where the heck did you learn to point a gun!??"

      Jury Member: " oh, on the news and from watching 'Cops'"

      Defence Attorney team: *high-fives*

    10. Re:Absolutely no chance of success by Kadin2048 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Where is the Bar association?

      Um, I think they were last seen heading for the direction of the bank. Follow the laughter.

      --
      "Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
    11. Re:Absolutely no chance of success by berashith · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If the person is predisposed to violence, then the safeguard that you mention is inherently not there.

      If the person is not predisposed to commit a violent act, then the safeguard to which you refer is already in place and the act will not be commited. This is entirely independent of the game, and entirely dependent upon the person commting the act.

    12. Re:Absolutely no chance of success by Chris+Burke · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "[Grand Theft Auto: Vice City] trained him ''how to point and shoot a gun in a fashion making him an extraordinarily effective killer."

      Bwa ha ha ha ha!

      This is one of those real nice litmus test statements. If someone for even a millisecond considers that this statement might be true, much more so if someone actually utters it themselves, then they clearly have no idea what they are talking about, they have never touched the game, and quite probably have never touched any video game except maybe Pac Man twenty years ago. They're just making shit up because it sounds nice in their lawsuit.

      Seriously. There is no way GTA teaches you how to shoot a gun. You hold down the target button until the guy you want to shoot has a green reticle over him, then you press fire. There's no aiming involved, there's no skill in holding a gun, hell you usually can't even see your character's hands since it's a 3rd person view from behind him. This game teaches you nothing.

      At least when some ambulence-chasing retard claims video games train people to kill, they at least pick one which involves aiming.

      '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.

      So he was obsessed with the game and played for months before killing his family, eh? Well there's no family killing in GTA; if he was truly inspired by GTA he would have gone after cops, mobsters, or hookers. Sounds to me like adorable little Cody already had a target in mind and his obsession revolved around that!

      There's really only two options here.

      One: Cody was a perfectly innocent fourteen year old boy with no thoughts of violence until he witnessed them in GTA. In this case he may have been innocent but he was also batshit insane, and had he been exposed to the baneful influence of Warner Brothers cartoons he would have killed his family by dropping an anvil on their heads then saying "Th-th-th-th-that's all folks!"

      Two: Cody was not an innocent fourteen year old boy, he wasn't obsessed with GTA he was obsessed with slaying his family and GTA was just his focus/outlet. If GTA never existed, it would have been Natural Born Killers, and if not for that it would have been something else. A book, a movie, a play, a song, whatever, it doesn't matter, because that's not what drove him. His own motivations drove him.

      Let's see if TFA can help us distinguish which of these might be the case:

      Posey had told police he shot his family after his father, the ranch foreman, slapped him for not cleaning horse stalls fast enough. Prosecutors described Posey as a ruthless killer, but his lawyers claimed his father had abused him for years.

      Oh, lookie here! Seems like ol' Mr. Posey may have been slapping his boy around for years! So let's consider this again, which sounds more likely: Video games drove Codey Posey to kill his family, and without video games he never would have committed violence. Or recurrent child abuse drove Codey Posey to kill his family, and without recurrent child abuse he never would have committed violence.

      And now the boy's extended family -- who were either astoundingly ignorant of what went on, or knew and never did anything -- have enlisted Jack Thompson to help them get $600 million from a video game maker who is only tangentially related to a case about teen violence and child abuse. That's just low. That's a disgusting, sick way of cashing in on a broken family that nobody else tried to fix.

      Fuck you, Jack Thompson.

      --

      The enemies of Democracy are
    13. Re:Absolutely no chance of success by StarvingSE · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Why is it that video games in arcades (yes,they do still exist) and in movie theaters don't take any heat in these lawsuits?? I would think games like Time Splitters or Police Trainer where you actually have a physical gun and shoot things on the screen would teach you more about operating a real gun than the auto-aiming goodness of GTA.

      This is just a ploy to make a buck off of a successful game maker. The damn game has an "M for Mature" sticker on it for a reason. Why don't the plaintiffs start being parents and not stock guns within easy reach of their children.

      --
      I got nothin'
    14. Re:Absolutely no chance of success by Chris+Burke · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm sure you are familiar with the anecdote regarding the percentage of soldiers in WWI that couldn't bring themselves to shoot another human being. Target practice at that time was a simple bullseye. When the target was changed to the sillouitte of a human, the percentage of those able to fire a gun at another human increased greatly.

      Yes, but there's an important distinction: The soldiers knew they were training to kill other people, knew that the silhouette that was their target was designed to represent the real humans they were training to kill, and thus were consciously building an association between those targets and the real humans they would eventually shoot.

      Sane people are easily able to distinguish between reality and fantasy. Training a soldier to kill involves deliberately and consciously eroding that barrier to allow them to train on fake targets. And don't forget to say that while the percentage went up, indicating that the training was better, there was still a large percentage of soldiers who were still unable to shoot on real targets.

      Soldiers -- professional killers, deliberately trying to gain the ability to fire on real humans with the full encouragement of their superiors, still find it difficult. But video games do this automatically and subconsciously in normal teenagers? Whatever.

      If you deliberately use a video game with human-esque targets to train yourself to be able to shoot real humans, then sure it can have the same effect. But so could drawing a cutout of a human torso, handing it on the wall, and pointing at it while saying "Bang!" because it's pretty much the same level of realism and real connection. At the point at which someone is using video games to train themselves to kill in real life, then they're already lost.


      Now, instead of a sillouitte, we have a highly graphic representation of what killing someone is really like.

      Emphasis mine, and you've got to be kidding me. Have you ever actually touched GTA, or even seen a screenshot?! You'd have to be insane to think any depiction of death in a video game is what it is really like. There is no video game in existence that approaches the reality of something like Saving Private Ryan, but apparently that isn't responsible for training our teens to murder.

      But don't say that violent video games can't and don't cause ANY harm, because I will just right you off as biased, unreasoning, and ignorant.

      Oh please. Neither you nor anyone else has shown that violent video games cause ANY harm in someone not already intent on violence and that any other form of stimulation wouldn't have caused equally. It doesn't matter if it's a video game, a book, a movie, or a silhouette they paint on the side of the barn -- a person with murderous intent will find a way to steel themselves for it, GTA or no.

      Saying otherwise because you just assume video games are different and magical means you're just biased, unreasoning, and ignorant.

      --

      The enemies of Democracy are
    15. Re:Absolutely no chance of success by illumin8 · · Score: 4, Insightful
      My personal favorite for arguments like this (that the game trained him how to shoot a gun) is that they use it for EVERY case, including the ones where the game could NOT have trained him to use a gun (Like GTA).
      I'm going to quote some Eminem lyrics here for extreme truth:

      They say music can alter moods and talk to you,
      Well can it load a gun up for you, and cock it too?
      Well if it can, then the next time you assault a dude,
      Just tell the judge it was my fault and i'll get sued.
      --
      "When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
  2. Negligence lies with the child's guardian by Cyphertube · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ok, so if the 14-year-old playing the rated "M" game (for those 17+) was playing obsessively for months, then I would argue that the fault lies with whomever was responsible for him. This sounds like the fault of parents/guardians to properly raise the child. Any child that plays ANYTHING obsessively (as in, to the exclusion of any other interests) clearly has some kind of mental/emotional problem and should have help sought for them.

    Failure to parent and seek help cannot be blamed on Sony, Take-Two, Rockstar or anyone else. However, the direct consequences of allowing the child to continue to act in an obsessive manner can be blamed directly on parental negligence.

    File for summary dismissal based on their own grounds for the suit.

    --
    Linux - because it doesn't leave that Steve Ballmer aftertaste.
  3. Sue the parents, not the game developers. by Merph · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Notice that it was a 13 year old, playing a mature rated game (17+). If anyone is at fault, it is the parents who let him play the game.

  4. Rated M by max8061 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why not sue whoever was letting a 14 year old play a rated M game for hours on end? No, we must sue the ones with the most money instead. Great logic.

  5. Re:Mod parent down due to intelligence deficit by twistedsymphony · · Score: 4, Insightful

    3) Jack Thompson sees this on the news and calls the family up telling them he knows where the blame "really" lies.

    Also not a coincidence but IMO it's the most likely of scenarios.

    --
    Collector's Edition
  6. Jack Thompson has made me so angry by rk · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I've decided to climb a clock tower and take out half my hometown with a sniper rifle. I never would've done this if Jack Thompson didn't do what he does. As such, he is completely responsible for the deaths I cause.

  7. Agreed by Khammurabi · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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
    So...the father and stepmother let him play GTA "obsessively" for months, and now those same parental units are dead as a direct result. I know it sounds terribly cruel by implying this, but in this case it looks like bad parenting and improper gun control killed them.

    If I left my kid alone to watch slasher movies and Ted Bundy documentaries ad nauseum, should I be surprised when he starts mimicking the behavior? If I allow my kid to visit chat rooms without occasional supervision or education, should I be surprised if a pedophile tries to introduce him or herself?

    I realize that parents want their kids to be happy, but you're their parent, not the birthday clown trying to entertain them. Sometimes you just have to be a bastard for their own good.
    1. Re:Agreed by adwarf · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There is no way they can blame games for this. Thompson is just trying bring as many cases as he can to civil trial and blame them on games, hoping that he can brainwash enough people who only hear the headline, "Violent Video Games Blamed for..." Cody Posey was a sick individual. He watch his mother die in a car accident at age 10 and was sexually and physically abused by his father and his step-mother. He probably would have been found been found innocent if he hadn't shot his step-sister so that she wouldn't tell on him and then try to hide the murder. In the end the courts found him guilty and charge him as a juvenile because, "There is evidence that the situational nature of the violence makes it less likely that the respondent will pose a future danger to the public." [courttv.com] Basically thecourt says the killings were a result of the abuse and that Cody was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. Not a desire to kill ignited by video games.

  8. an anecdote and an opinion by Scrameustache · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It would be impossible for me to shoot or stab or bomb another human being and even attempting to do so would make me sick to my stomach.

    I used to think, back when I was a small, angelic child, that I could never punch someone. Then this kid kept pestering me, and he got a fist to the forehead, knocked him on his ass.

    It's a question of when push comes to shove... I never seeked out agression, but when it came, it found me unwilling, but quite able.

    Violence in video games and movies does NOT desensitize you to violence in the real world.

    In fact, I think that violent movies and games are usefull in reducing agressive tendencies, through catharsis.
    When I'm stressed out, and I feel like dragging jerks out of their cars and forcing them to swallow their turn-signal levers, a good violent flick will calm me down. Then I can drive and tolerate the ubiquitous stupidity for another day.

    --

    You can't take the sky from me...