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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.
This reminds me of a woman I met a few weeks back. She told me she plays WoW but that she doesn't get too far in the game because she refuses to kill anything with a humanoid shape. In essense if it walks on two legs, has two arms and a head centered on the upright torso she will not kill it.
She still enjoys the game, but she realises that she will never get too far. It's the same thing with GTA.
By the way, in GTA:San Andreas you get to fly a plane. Why haven't we seen an increase in plane thefts if GTA is such a good tutor? In the many Spider-man and Batman games we see characters seinging from roof to roof. Why have'nt we seen an increase in morons trying this if video games are like Jedi and have so much influence on the weak-minded?
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
1. Establish that the perpetrator is, in fact, a victim.
2. Empower government to enact legislation, or, better still, a full-on program, to "correct" victimization manufactured in step 1.
3. ????
4. Profit.
The moral of this story is "don't feed the sharks".
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Could the editor have in mind scenarios like the following?
1) plaintiff blames videogame makers and seeks out a well known crusader against violent games to represent - jack thompson
2) plaintiff blames videogames makers and heads to their nearest lawyer who happens to be jack thompson, the well known crusader against violent games
in scenario 1 it is not a coincidence that Jack Thompson represents, in scenario 2 it is a coincidence that Jack Thompson represents the plaintiff.
As far as I can tell, the editor knows exactly what a coincidence is...parent doesn't have a clue. Read some books mate and you might understand english a bit better.
SURELY NOT!!!!!
I see. So if he was 18 and on his own, it would have all been ok?
I find several things deplorable:
1. People love laying blame on ONE thing as the cause of something. The game isn't at fault, but it may have been somewhat of a contributing factor. I know when I used to play some of those cockpit racing games at a Dave and Buster's, when I got in my car it felt a little weird. Gamers want to say that games have no impact on what a person does, but I think they do. So do movies, music, advertisements, etc. If they had no impact, then these things wouldn't exist. They have positive and negative IMPACTS. But they aren't the sole cause of anything.
2. That violent games like these are so popular. I loved Quake, and Half-Life, etc. They were violent as hell. But I wasn't obsessed with them. I hate the fact that our society is obsessed with violence as entertainment. Just stop and look around. I may be a small part of it, and I am not suggesting that getting rid of these video games will solve it. It just kind of disturbs me when I step back and look at it. I guess when you glorify war, and turn a blind eye to the reality of it, there isn't much else you can expect.
3. Our legal system, and what it has done to our society. Dispicable. It has tainted people to the point where nobody is willing to admit any fault with anything, for fear of being sued. The maker of these games can't say "yeah, ok, it is a pretty ruthless and violent game. But we certainly aren't responsible for this kid's actions." They have to say "We have a sticker on it! He shouldn't have been playing it anyway. It has no influence on people... Where were his PARENTS! It is their fault, not ours."
4. All of these reasons roll together nicely into one package - and nobody will sincerely mention that this is a tragedy, and people were needlessly killed. See items 1 - 3.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
That implies an inherent responsibility exists in the handling of a video game rated mature. By calling the parents the responsible party in this manner, you are tacitly accepting that the video game itself can in fact alter moods and behavior in a manner at least partially consistent with that which Thompson decries. If this were not the case, the parents would also hold no responsibility for giving him the game, because the game would not have had any impact on the outcome of these events.
If you accept that the parents are responsible for ensuring that children do not get hold of M-rated video games, you must also accept that retailers must be regulated on the matter of M-rated video game sales, which is not a view consistently held by people who express opinions such as the one you just did.
Rejecting any other conclusion is logically inconsistent with the reality of regulations. We regulate numerous items deemed to be dangerous, and you have tacitly accepted that M-rated video games are dangerous, therefore you must other take the position that there should be no regulation on any of these things, or that video games should also fall under this type of regulation.
Wheeee! Logical consistency is fun!
P.S. I have no idea where you fall on the matter of regulation, I'm just using your posit as a jumping off point because, regardless of what you think, most Slashdotters who say the type of thing you just did also argue against regulating sales of M-rated games.
(Cue some bozo who pretends to understand how a logical argument works and thinks that the first argument posited must be unerringly perfect, rather than a starting point for discussion, in 3... 2... 1...)
How do I plug my keyboard and mouse into a sniper rifle so I can aim and fire?
What!?!?!?! You mean I have to actually run around with the danged thing instead of sitting in a chair?
Yeesh! Next thing you'll be telling me is shells don't appear in magical floating boxes as I wander the streets... :p
Seriously, maybe it's time to yank the lawyer's bar. Too many such morons waste the time and resources of the public courts, hoping to leverage cash for the lawyer's firm. After all, what have they got to lose? If they don't win the case, they just try to get the plaintiff to pay their fees.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
You're missing my point...
I'm not saying playing those types of games will make you violent. I'm saying that quite possibly, those who ALREADY have that predisposition to violence will find it just that much more easy to enact thier fantacies after they have seen it done numerous times before. Any mental safeguard there may have been before, has been eroded over time by violent images.
You have a valid point and I'm not trying to say that video games, movies, music and other media don't have any affect on us. They most certainly do. However, I think that how you act throughout your life is still far more largely influenced by the people you interact with. You said yourself that it is the people that already have a predisposition to violence that have a problem with this stuff... Well, why do they have a predisposition to violence? Some of it may be genetics and some of it is probably the people around them and what has been done to them. It may be a mental illness. Regardless of what the real causes may be, I think it is ridiculous to be blaming someone's behavior in life on any kind of video game, movie, music or art. These things certainly affect us as they are an expression something (anger, sadness, humor, etc.) by another human being (or beings) but how we interpret these things is what's important and where do we learn that? That is what we should be looking at.
Let me lay in with my experiences with gaming and how they IMPROVED my life and helped me see a worlds beyond the closed walls I lived in for 16 years of my life.
My mother was, and is still unfortunately mentally unstable. She became increasingly so as she grew older. She didn't have the skills or the capacity to take care of me, her two sisters and ailing mother on her side. Unable to coupe with work and what it took to take care of a child she kept me locked in my room when I wasn't required to go to school. She, on many occasions tried to take me out of school, and it was only at the behest of school officials and councilors, and my own force of will that I was able to come back and finish high school.
Being someone well under the poverty line, single with a child, with 3 other people living in the same roof, government money rained in. Every way money could be fleeced from the welfare department, family children services, my estranged father was used. Which should have been a life line. It should have paid for school, college, doctors, and necessities. But being someone in her diminished capacity she squandered the money on collectibles from her youth, a house well beyond she could afford, and new cars. The one thing she did for me is kept me occupied, and the best way to do that in the late 80's through the 90's was with gaming systems. I had every system the day of release and a large library of games. I also eventually got a computer with Internet access.
And that's what saved me. Where I come from, there's close to no jobs, no good schools, and almost no growth. The majority of people extort welfare and usually turn to drugs and theft to get by. Being manager of a Sonic's or McDonald's is a big thing around here. Outside of that the only thing you can be is a nurse at the local hospital (Phoebe is the largest private real estate owner and only truly successful business in the region, other manufactures are all shutting down or not hiring) or join the Marines. Ask anyone from here and they'll all tell you the same thing, you don't get anything out of life, you'll never leave town, and you shouldn't try. Above all, you should never try, you just waste the energy it takes to get up in the morning to go to crummy job to get by.
All of those people grew up in almost the same environment, whether it was substance abuse, or general poverty, one way or another their parents and household was broken with few exceptions. But all of those people just feed the cycle. They drop out, they smoke weed, they have kids before their 21, they work at Burger King, they hate their life.
But I didn't, and you know why. Because when Crono, Marle, and Lucca found Lavos bringing the world to an end in the future, they didn't go Well shit, life's a bitch. and went home and smoked crack. I wanted to go to school, watched the History Channel, and used the Internet to learn (and, gasp, didn't look up porn all day). Why? Because Snake knew 6 languages, had a vast knowledge of culture and history, and was a motherfucking bad ass. I wanted to be that bad ass. Anyone who wishes they could be Solid Snake should know what Manhattan means. And after I finished school I've worked non-stop to start my own business, which is about to come to fruition instead of sticking with some shithole job, I've spent my time and money working for something that will pay off better in the long run. And take a guess why? Because Tommy Vercetti did that's why. He didn't take lip from anyone who was in his way, he didn't do drugs, and above all let anything get in the way of what he needed to do to climb to the top.
Games did more than give me good role models when there wasn't any at hand ether. If it weren't for video games I wouldn't have been exposed to classical music, and would have been stuck with this watered down rap and rock companies push on us these days. I wouldn't have learned how to read and write as fast as I did without a hands-on parent. I wouldn't have been exposed to a plethora
How do you reconcile those two?
Violence in video games is not real. Violence in movies is not real. Real violence is real. Real people get hurt. Pretty simple, huh?
When I see a bunch of people in a movie get mowed down by a machine gun, I know that the director yelled "Cut!" and all those people got up and asked how it looked. I can watch the bloodiest scenes from any game or movie and giggle the whole time. But I loathe reality TV because the humiliation and pain is real. There is more desensitization that goes on watching a single episode of Survivor than in playing all the GTA games put together. Nor will I watch Jackass; I know that they are doing it to themselves deliberately, but I can't stand watching people who are really in pain.
Not much of a fan of the skater videos where the guy lands on his head or his nuts either. Hell, I don't even watch boxing anymore, because I know they're pounding each other's brains into mush.
There seems to be a general confusion of fantasy with reality in all of these conversations, and those who object most strongly to fictionalized depictions of violence share the same inability to distinguish the two that these crazed snipers do. Find a way to address that, and you've got something. But until we do, the world is going to have people in it who will be provoked into snapping by anything. But if you ban everything that might set the idiots off, if you build a foolproof world, you will only succeed in populating the world with fools.
Actually, if you had read up on the case, it isn't, ultimately about that. Thompson may think it's about that, but it's not. What it's about is the family of a sick bastard (Cody's father) who would fit quite nicely into the Roarke family from Sin City trying to cover for the fact that a family member did things which, had the authorities found out about this earlier (and a good forensic investigation team gotten involved), would have gotten him arrested and imprisoned for life for sexual abuse of a minor, assault and battery (of said minor), and various other child abuse charges - and would have gotten that kid out of that home.
You want to know how low Jack really will go, when the rubber hits the road? We're about to find out. That is, of course, provided that Sony and Take Two have done their homework on this case - if they have, then there are numerous expert witnesses who could provide testimony on the psychological effects of the abuse that the real victim in this case, the boy who commited the murders, suffered at the hands of his birth father. Calling the forensic investigators from this case to the stand should bolster their defense as well. Jack might be able to argue that GTA helped provide the motiviation, but unless he completely ignores the disgusting conduct of Cody Posey's father and argues that Cody was either:
- Lying and made up his claims (and injured himself to back up his claims of abuse) or...
- Telling the truth, but was pushed over the edge by GTA, not getting stuck by his father for not mucking the stalls fast enough then...
Jack will have his work cut out for him.Zagreus sits inside your head, Zagreus lives among the dead, Zagreus sees you in your bed and eats you in your sleep.
A .45 really does not have all that much more kick than a 9mm, especially if the latter is being fed hot (+P or +P+) ammo. The differences between the two are far less pronounced than the differences in two like-calibered pistols that are of different weights. A light pistol = more felt recoil. I've fired quite a few .45s (including variants of the most venerable Colt 1911) that feel less kicky, at least to me, than a Glock firing 9mm simply because the Glock is made from lighter weight material. Barrel length and porting/compensation are also important factors that influence felt recoil and muzzle flip.
You're dead on about the inaccurate portrayal of pistols in games, though. So often in even modern FPSs, the pistol is just a less damaging version of a rifle...just as accurate at distance, same ballistic characteristics, only less powerful. In real life, engaging anything with a pistol at distances beyond several tens of yards or so is not terribly practical.