Halo 3 Criticized In Murder Conviction

oldwindways writes "An Ohio teen was found guilty of murdering his mother and shooting his father in the head after they took away his copy of Halo 3. One has to wonder if this is going to have any effect on the games industry. Clearly, the AP thought they could stir up something controversial by asking the IP owner for a statement: 'Microsoft, which owns the intellectual property for the game, declined to comment beyond a statement saying: "We are aware of the situation and it is a tragic case."' I suppose the good news is they did not accept his insanity plea, so no one can claim that Halo 3 drove him insane. Even so, I don't think anything good can come out of this for gamers." Unfortunately, it seems somebody can claim that the game was a contributing factor; the judge who presided over this case said he believes that the 17-year-old defendant "had no idea at the time he hatched this plot that if he killed his parents, they would be dead forever." GamePolitics has further details from the judge's statement. It doesn't help that the boy's lawyers used video game addiction as a defense.

Comments

Re:guns

[Yvanhoe]

Well, it is harder to kill someone with a fork than with a gun.
It is still possible but it requires no hesitation, no emotion, and a minimal physical strength.
In case one of these criterion is missing, a gun can help. With a gun you can kill someone out of anger, while filled of contradictory emotions, while crying and without really wanting it. That is how must murders are made. As you pointed out, when carefully planned, a murder do not require a gun. Guns are too noisy and too easy to track down.

Re:Sure, 17 year-olds believe this because of a ga

[Anonymusing]

Notably, the boy's father is a minister. The church has not updated the web site, obviously.

Re:Sure, 17 year-olds believe this because of a ga

[Ihmhi]

True, but that would be a fun sort of game. Imagine you can have multiple characters - say, a hundred - and this is your own personal "team". Each one on the team has their own individual skills - some randomly given out at spawning, and some trained. Keep the "max skill" cap low and not all that difficult to obtain.

It could be an FPS played just like a sports sim. Some of your team could be on the injured list (things like missing limbs could be explained away by a futuristic setting), and some might outright die and enter "the graveyard", where they are immortalized with their scores, skills, appearance, etc.

This would make a game where Medics are useful - you don't want to lose that guy you spent 2 hours maxing out his skills (ideally, I think that's as long as it should take, tops). You'd sure as hell appreciate the doc when you get revived on the field instead of dying of heart failure. People would actually use COVER and tactics to protect their investments of time.

Lastly, think of the achievments - longest survivor, etc. I think something like this could be fun if it were designed properly.

Inverted logic ?

[Zoxed]

So yet me see:
- teenager plays Halo 3 for weeks/months/years: does not kill anyone.
- same teenager *stops* playing said game for 1 day: shoots both parents.

So does that mean that playing the game *stopped* him killing real people ?

Re:Sure, 17 year-olds believe this because of a ga

[BitZtream]

No, they're called retarded. There isn't a religon that I'm aware of that doesn't ackowledge that you cease to be a human upon death, and all of them believe its likely to be a one way trip. Some believe in an afterlife, some beleive we go back into a pool of life force, some believe in reincarnation. All of them believe your human life is over.