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Student Arrested for Making Videogame Map of School
tanman writes "A student at the Houston-area Clements High School was arrested, sent to an "Alternative Education Center" and banned from graduation after school officials found he created a video game map of his school. School district police arrested the teen and searched his home where they confiscated a hammer as a 'potential weapon'. ' "They decided he was a terroristic threat," said one source close to the district's investigation.' With an upcoming May 12 school board election, this issue has quickly become political, with school board members involved in the appeal accusing each other of pandering to the Chinese community in an attempt to gain votes."
This royally pisses me off. I always wanted to build Quake levels for my high school, because it would have been the perfect multiplayer map. Two or more routes to any given place, wide halways, two floors, balconies, stairs at the end of every hallway...it would have been awesome.
But I never went through with it, because Columbine was still fresh in everyone's memory, and I was afraid that exactly this sort of thing would happen.
It's not a fear of terrorism that drives this sort of thing, or even a fear for our children. It's a fear of our children. We're so scared of the little guys that the instant they bring school into their video game hobby, we freak out.
This kid doesn't deserve to be arrested. He doesn't deserve to be thrust into "Alternative Education". He deserves to have someone ask him why he built the school in a video game. Let a psychologist evaluate him, and then either medicate the kid or let him go back to class.
(And someone should offer him constructive criticism on his level building techniques.)
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Oh, that's right: never.
I'd read the article, but it's been Slashdotted.
Friends don't let friends line-dance.
When I was a young'un, I created a Quake map of the local Laser Tag joint. I even was working on a mod that changed the weapons to behave more along the rules of the game. Even worse, my mod gibbed you if you tried to illegally cross the center barrier. (*gasp!*) Should I have been arrested as a terrorist? Maybe I was planning to run in with a Phazer pistol and start shooting the place up?!? Actually, I suppose it's worse than that, because I did actually run in and start shooting the place up with a Phazer pistol. Oh noes!
I'm sorry, but the idea of creating a school map for you and your friends to play is something that goes back as far as Doom. Kids create these environments because they're familiar, not because they want to go shooting up the place. Only Jack Thompson believes that unbalanced people "train" for killing on these games. The truth of the matter is that ole' Jack is full of sh*t. His claim on Fox news that a previous shooter had created maps of his school turned out to be bunk. He had created maps for Counter Strike, but nothing even vaguely related.
If this map disturbed parents (which is an understandable concern given recent events), then the school's action should have been to evaluate the individual, not immediately kick him out of school. Pretty much all of the shooters in recent history were known to be mentally unbalanced prior to the shootings. An evaluation of the individual's mental state and school records would clarify if he was a threat or not. If not (which it doesn't sound like in this case), you ask them to discontinue the behavior, delete the maps, and go about school as usual. But instead, we give these kids a real reason to hate the faculty. Way to go guys.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I can't help but be overwhelmed by the terrific amount of stupid going on just down the street from my place. It's amazing. It's a rare story where you can root against everyone equally and perfectly.
So where can I download this map? I'm certain it'll be pretty popular within the next few days, so I want my copy now...
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
As someone who made maps of campus for Doom back in college, I can attest that students have been doing this for years without ill-effect. It's a natural reaction to want to create a game map of places you know, especially somewhere you spend hours on a daily basis. This is purely reactionary BS on their part due to the current environment surrounding violent video games in our country. I doubt they bothered to check if he was troubled or someone to be concerned about, and simply jumped to conclusions.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
Oh, wait it's not Russia, it's HERE. Christ, this is scary.
When I was going to high school, we had war games. Not simulated, but real - in person, on campus. And it was not the idea of some demented student, it was organized by the PE coaches.
The gym was one fort, the bleachers on the eastern side of the football field were the other. Each structure had a hose nearby. The gave us a bunch of balloons, and we had water balloon wars.
To the best of my knowledge, none of my classmates has committed any mass murders in the several decades since then.
I worry that policies as mentioned in TFA may actually increase violent incidents like Va tech. We were allowed - even encouraged - to burn off frustrations in acts of simulated violence. Then we dried off, went back to class, and were rather good students.
Today, young men are being denied symbolic outlets for violence. It come as no surprise to me that Chu did what he did. I worry that there will be more.
I have heard of cops falsifying search records, but that notwithstanding how can anyone justify classifying a hammer as a potential terrorist weapon? I hope this kid's parents have a lot of money so that they can get some justice for their son.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
I remember back when 100% of my free time was spent playing 4-person Goldeneye on the N64, I wished there was a level for every single interesting building or structure I went into. I would have LOVED a map of my school, or even better a major international airport, as in Die Hard 2.
Oops. Brought up airports and level design in the same topic. My name just moved up a few spaces on the govt. list. Better leave some extra time next time I fly. After all, these games are only functional as "simulators", right?
Getting diabetes AND salmonella would be a bad weekend.
Jedi Knight 2 had a map of the Raven offices. Same for Blood and Monolith.
FTA: "Speakers at the FBISD Board's April 23 meeting alluded to the Clements senior's punishment, and drew a connection to the April 16 shootings at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, in which a Korean student shot and killed 32 people."
In which video games *WERE NOT INVOLVED*. But that clearly doesn't matter. Something bad happened involving people under the age of 21, and as such video games must be at the heart of it.
-lw
Mods: Disagreeing with me != my post Offtopic / Flamebait.
World without hate or war, invaded. Tragic?
It sounds to me as if half the school board members and police need psychological councelling. The kid is fine, but he will probably do better in a different school with normal people.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Please take heart. Not all of us adults are such utter fucking morons.
Not that you'd know it from the comments on the article, where a depressing number of people say they hope he has learned from his "mistake."
I bet he has. He's learned to keep his activities secret from the authorities if he values his freedom. He's learned a little bit about what it's like to live in an increasingly paranoid, authoritarian society, where innocuous activities that harm nobody can get one declared an enemy of the people. He's learned that politicians have no compunctions about advancing their own careers by ruining the lives of the people they supposedly serve.
His mistake wasn't making the map. If FPSes had been around when I was in high school I would have loved to play on a map of the school; unlike a bunch of adults, it seems, I understood and understand the difference between video games and reality. His mistake was not being sufficiently clandestine when he shared it with his friends. Hopefully he will take this as a valuable lesson about the value of covering his tracks thoroughly in his daily life.
But I have one question for the school board. Did they bother to make sure that he weighs as much as a duck before they took action against him?
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
I made a quake map of my middle school, though I only got as far as making the Gym..
who didn't?
* I want to create something
* Hey look, a tool to create something
* Crap, what do I make?
* Well, I'm in school all day, so I'm pretty familiar with that.
* Arrested.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Yank your kids from public school. Homeschool or send them to a private school of your choice. If enough people do this the whole public education system would collapse and implode. Then we can figure out how to best spend those property tax revenues.
Normally, I would oppose such a suggestion. Were the US run like typical European democratic-socialists the schools would probably be responsibly managed. But with one political party fighting to destroy public education, and the other party in the pocket of the public school bureaucracy, there's no voice left for the kids being ruined by these bullshit political non-events.
I honestly think government can do a good job of providing basic public services. But right now, the US government cannot. At least not until the leaders of our political parties come to some basic consensus on the role of government. Until then, it will be one crazy situation after another as they duke it out. All while citizens and their kids get fucked by the very public institutions that were ostensibly created for their benefit.
The Spiderman 3 game has a realistic map of New York City.
Are the devs terrorists?
Add to this a mix of fascist officials and craven lawmakers who choose to ignore rights in search of appearing to address the security problem (insert Ben Franklin quote here).
You're right, it's a culture of fear, but it goes beyond our children. It's the technology and to a large extent, a media-inspired culture of fear... of EVERYTHING.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
You know your country is _totally_ screwed when:
a) You can get arrested for "acting suspicious" and owning "potential weapons"
Feel free to add items to this list.
An overreaction is when you lock up someone for life when they stole a loaf of bread. This doesn't even accomplish their stated goal - to protect their school from an unbalanced and violent individual.
Let's assume for a second that they are right. The guy is violent, mentally unstable and is using his home grown CS map to practice his planned killing spree (which was apparently to be carried out with a hammer). What do they do? They merely transfer him to a different school. In no way, shape or form do any of the school's actions prevent him from entering the school again and carrying out his assumed plans. At best, they've moved the problem to a different place, and put others at risk that hadn't been at risk before. At worst, it really pisses him off, and he escalates his planned violence (pipe bombs really aren't hard to make). Any which way you look at it, the actions of the school and the police were completely irresponsible.
Factor in that the guy had none of these plans to begin with, and you're looking at a massively incompetent school administration, board and police whose only goal is to cover their ass. They don't care whether what they did solved any issues; all they wanted was to have something to point to if the student does go apeshit and the inevitable question of "who's to blame?" rolls around.
The US is going down the shitter, and attitudes like these towards kids and education are the reason why. Way to ruin your future generation.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
...taking this story so seriously. Have so few people ever experienced how an event in the real world is reported in the media? Nobody does this just because someone made a video game map. When I was a kid I created D&D scenarios based around my school that were full of violence and so did plenty of other kids. This is entirely normal behavior. (Normal modulo being a D&D player, that is.) Almost certainly this guy had a history and the video game aspect has been brought to the foreground by journalists for some other reason. Over the years I've been involved in many stories that have been reported in the news and not a single time has the report been accurate. The job of a journalist is to get paid for telling stories. The less imaginative ones borrow some of the story elements from real world events. Don't they teach people how to read the media?
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
For years, people have been braying about the effects that continually playing violent videogames has on children. How repeated exposure to fictional violence in videogames desensitizes children. An effect which makes real world violence more tolerable and less revolting, in effect training our children to be killers ready to kill for any reason at a moment's notice. Some might argue that that's the very point of these so called "murder simulators".
But did any one think for second what the effect of continually treating children like criminals is? How repeated persecution for fictional crimes desensitizes children. An effect which makes real world incarceration more tolerable and less revolting, in effect training our children to be inmates ready to submit to authority for any reason at a moment's notice. Some might argue that that's the very point of these so called "nanny states".
Perhaps it was given a lot thought, indeed.
Dear America,
Stop sucking.
Your pals,
Voters
+0 Meh
During the early 90ies, I went to the principle and requested blue prints of my high school so I could make a Doom map. I asked teachers to pose so I could take pictures of them and turned them into sprites and used their voices. One teacher pushed a desk into a misbehaving student so he replaced the Cyberdemon and instead of shooting rockets, he shot desks at you.
No one cared. Most thought it was an interesting idea and one teacher had fun shooting himself.
All this on top of the fact that I was a violent kid in high school, constantly got into trouble, and was essentially a troublemaker.
The last place I worked at, I turned my office and surrounding areas into a counter strike source map with the help of another employee. We mapped out the surrounding area which included a police station. The police were suspicious at first, but after explaining where we worked and what the project was, they wanted to play the map. This was only three years ago.
These days North America seems to have descended back into a Salem witch hunt. The slightest notion that you might be a teeny tiny bit off center and suddenly you're arrested, subjected to psychological tests, put on medication by court orders, and for what? To keep the population safe? I certainly didn't kill anyone, in real life, and I certainly don't plan to. Instead, I'll take out my frustration on ragdoll NPCs and/or get laid. Either one works pretty well at preventing me from murder.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
What kind of morons do we have running this mad house?
Neither in Columbine or Virginia Tech did the perp(s) practice on a video game, nor in any other such attack that I'm aware of. The authorities are stupid to even contemplate this situation. If the kid is actually up to no good these actions won't stop him anyway. Real terrorists wouldn't make their maps known for fear of actions like this.
Also, I haven't seen mentioned here yet, but it's LEGAL to own a hammer, or a gun for that matter. Posession of a weapon is not probable cause of intent to commit a crime.
I'm of half a mind to make maps of my local schools and put them on the net myself now.
We MUST do something about this sort of abuse. It takes our resources off the real threats and wastes them on a wild goose chase. The authorities are becoming the threat, and fast. When someone can do a perfectly legal activity and still have the wrath of the state come down on them, then the system has gone haywire. They better wise up and fast because this sort of behavior on the part of the state WILL produce the next crop of Timothy McVeigh's.
http://www.freecitizen.com/
I'm right there with you. My friends and I built a map of our high school in Doom. We even put deamon spawn points in some of the classrooms where teachers we didn't like worked. All of the students involved have gone on to grow into productive contributing members of society with out killing a single person.
In addition to working on doom and quake levels based on real world locations, I also grew up around guns (with a very healthy respect for them), listened to heavy metal, and was probably considered a non-conformist to most (ie: trench coat and combat boot wearing, angst ridden, KMFDM listening, rivet head-teenager).
Had I gone to school after Columbine or VA Tech, I would have likely been arrested and secured for the safety of society, instead of going on to serve honorably in the US Marine Corps, working in medical research, and raising a family. The real shame here is how this kid's life will forever be changed because of overzealous scaremongers trying to make examples of anyone who doesn't fit in their homogenized view of society.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I live in Hawai`i and I just bought Test Drive: Unlimited so I could drive around on streets I know. Maybe they'll arrest me because I might go 160 in my Viper.
Actually, I don't have a hammer. But, if I had a hammer, I'd hammer in the morning, I'd hammer in the evening, I'd hammer out a warning of danger to freedom and justice.
Pretty much all of the shooters in recent history were known to be mentally unbalanced prior to the shootings. An evaluation of the individual's mental state and school records would clarify if he was a threat or not.
The only effective predictor of future violent behavior is past violent behavior. (And by "violent behavior" I mean real, criminal, violence and credible threats of violence against others - not playing video games, laser tag, or football.) Mass murderers don't "just snap". They build up to wholesale violence in a growing series of acts of retail violence and to large law-breaking in a growing series of smaller law-breakings.
Those shooters had all committed MULTIPLE FELONIES and had no serious consequences. If the law had actually been ENFORCED against them they would not have been in a position to go on their final rampages (assuming they didn't straighten out their act the first time they found that breaking the law had consequences).
There's no need to look for "signs" and omens when some kid worries you. Just look for a pattern of CRIMES. If it's there, bust his butt for what he's actually done.
If not (which it doesn't sound like in this case), you ask them to discontinue the behavior, delete the maps, and go about school as usual. But instead, we give these kids a real reason to hate the faculty. Way to go guys.
If not, just leave him the heck alone. He invested a lot of his time building that game level. It's HIS PROPERTY. Force him to delete the maps and you've stolen something from him that cost him months of his life to create - for no purpose than to ease your mind. That, too, will give him a reason to actually, and validly, hate the school authorities.
If you believe you must take his work and destroy it "for a public purpose" (such as calming the hysterics on the school board) the "takings" clause of the Fifth Amendment says you must PAY him for it. What's a fair price? What could such a video game or plug-in bring on the national market?
Meanwhile, there's a very important point to keep in mind: It is NORMAL for people (especially adolescent boys) to fantasize about subjects that include violence, revenge, and war. It's part of deciding how to behave, of surviving threats, and of understanding the world, society, and his place in them. What is NOT normal is to ACT OUT these fantasies outside of the social and legal boundaries. THAT is the distinction between a criminal (including the criminally insane) and normal, law-abiding, upstanding citizens.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
sig? Oh, that sig...
Collector's Edition
Seriously, I wonder how many of the local Police are familiar with the layout of this local High School? They should ask the kid for a copy of the game and put all their force through intensive training utilizing it. This would best prepare the Police if any incident ever happened in the school. Better still the kid should spend time at the Police office helping to train the members. This would allow interaction between the police and the kid and probably generate a better understanding of each other. Now it's likely the kid is developing a dislike for the Schools management and considers the police people to be avoided and NOT trusted. Makes me wonder why educators can't grasp such a situation and make something really positive come out of it.
http://contest.sketchup.com/entry.php?rules=1
Pretty soon we will see hundreds of campuses mapped in 3D and available everywhere on google maps. How hard would it be to convert the Google 3D data to a CS or Quake map? Not hard at all. I guess Google is supporting the next generation of school shooters eh?
"how can they call it a MINE if everything here is THEIRS?!?!" -Straight Jacket
Your link is journalistic and is not scientific, I am sorry. There are no correct sources, no references, no nothing. No scientist would dare cite that article in their paper.
o ric.pdf p df p df 0 1.pdf 0 2.pdf 0 3.pdf
The articles are complete with statistics. Here are links to some of the scientific articles I have read and/or cited.
https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/dcwill/www/CMWilliamsSk
http://www.lionlamb.org/research_articles/study5.
http://www.lionlamb.org/research_articles/study4.
http://www.lionlamb.org/research_articles/study%2
http://www.lionlamb.org/research_articles/study%2
http://www.lionlamb.org/research_articles/study%2
Like I said, other researchers and myself do not firmly believe that video games are not the primary cause for aggressive outbreaks.
If you can find some evidence of other problems this guy had in school then I'll take that into consideration. Right now, you have nothing to back up the claim that: "Almost certainly this guy had a history and the video game aspect has been brought to the foreground by journalists for some other reason." Yeah, it's possible....maybe even probable.....but nobody has any info on that so I think it's premature to state that nobody should take this article seriously.
Tolerance does not tolerate intolerance, or hypocrisy.
How did this tripe full of tropes so old and tired they've had 3 cancers, a heart attack and a stroke actually qualify to receive moderation as "+3, Informative".
Those sites are conspiracy-monger sites, and this man cannot even write using proper English.
Mods, do your jobs and moderate!
Apart from that, i do think that the restrictions put on pot are pretty stupid - putting a pot smoker into ALC would be just as stupid as putting the guy the story is about in ALC. Thats doesnt make smoking pot "ok", but that does make overzealous punishment "idiotic".
Besides, ANY mind altering act (be it sex, drugs, alchohol, anything) done to get away from emotional pain will always get worse. Doing it for fun or socially is fine - just like drinking alchohol, its ok in moderation.
Speaking of moderation, maybe you outta give it a try. Lay off the speed.
-Red
Guns don't kill people, "with glowing hearts" kills people.
People who become accustomed to the unchallenged power that comes with being a school administrator must be reminded frequently and forcibly that there is a world outside those walls, and they are being watched.
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
Thank god there are ways to let go of our frustrations and hatreds. The ways we do it have changed. We live in the computer era.