GTA mimicked by 'bored' teenagers

[CrimsonGhost]

Two kids in the states, ages 14 and 16, took at .22 calibre rifle and took shots at cars on a freeway.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/32765.html

Lemming

And the register makes a fantastic point ...

where the family of the deceased are looking to sue the games industry and have the game removed from shop shelves, they seem to have overlooked some fundamental questions

Of course, in the rush to blame GTA for the killing and sue a cash-rich media company, certain aspects of this case seem to have been forgotten. For a start, Grand Theft Auto games are rated M (similar to our 18 rating here) in the United States, and while the country has no legislation to prevent M-rated games from being sold to children (in fact, legislation attempting to do just this was recently overturned in Washington state), the assumption is that parents will control access to content unsuitable for their children.

In this case, this clearly not did not happen. Perhaps even more worryingly, the parents of these teenagers not only failed to control their children's access to violent, adult media, they also failed to control their access to firearms - enabling them to take a fully loaded rifle on the night of June 25, and end an innocent man's life for no other reason than that they were "bored". Naturally, though, nobody seems prepared to question the access to a rifle in this case - this being something of a touchy subject in American politics - but instead the blame is being laid at the door of the games industry.

po0k

Fucked up country.

The sooner The Revolution comes, the better.

Retr0gamer

this kind of thing really annoys me. The parents are the ones who should be punished. If you kill someone because your bored there is something fundamentally wrong with you. It's not because you were playing a game. The video game developers and publishers shouldn't be held responsible for peoples own ignorance.

Shinji

And the register makes a fantastic point ...

Sheesh. I know it's just my ego weeping gently in a corner here, but I so need to get the guys at El Reg to put my name on the stuff I write!

Yes, this is a screwed up case. You should have seen the coverage of it on places like Good Morning America - absolutely unbelievable stuff, complete whitewashing of the involvement of guns and parenting in favour of blaming the evil videogames. Apparently one of the killers' parents was interviewed on a TV station in the USA boo-hooing about how this evil game had taken her sons away from her and how she's thinking of suing Take Two as well... Madness, absolute madness.

The one heartening thing to come out of this is the number of Americans who emailed me yesterday after that article went live basically saying "yes, we feel exactly the same way" - at least there is still sanity over there, even if it seems to be fighting a losing battle against the nutters.

Praetorian

I thought Bowling for Columbine was a great film. I think Michael Moore has the answer; it’s the combination of the availability of weapons and the fear that the press and media has invoked into American society.

Blaming games and heavy metal musicians like Marilyn Manson is just ridiculous. We have violent games here and we can listen to heavy metal, however there is very little chance that an incident like this would happen in Europe.

colinsky

millions of people buy a game. one of those people goes off on a shooting ramapage.

based upon thhat data, odds are rather high that the problem is with that specific person, not with the game itself.

[CrimsonGhost]

Prea: Moore is a muppet who thrives on lambasting the country he loves so much simply because it makes him so rich. He leave out many of the facts, and makes up others.

If you wish to discuss this further start a seperate thread on moore and I'll happily continue it there.

Praetorian

His evidence certainly seems logical and believable. I saw no indication of fabrication either.

I don’t really have the time to start a heated debate regarding this subject, feel free to do so yourself.

_CreeD_

"Or perhaps the answer to the perennial problem of delinquent teenagers dropping bricks from motorway and railway bridges is to sue the creators of Tetris. "

Excellently put Mr. Shinji.

I live in the states at the moment and yup the media is as fk'ed up as Bowling makes it out to be. I avoid the news here now as it's all sensationalism with little content, each station trying to outdo the others with flashy graphics/icons/fear-factors, and it's all controlled by big business anyway who in turn love Bush so the chances of seeing anything remotely unbiased is nada. There are some islands of sanity but it is indeed one very fk'ed up country.

Retr0gamer

If really cared about some one who died I wouldn't dihonour them by immediately going money grabbing with a lawsuit. The game didn't kill your man. The kids did.

Kold

If i shot someone, i'd probably tell them its all my years of playing counterstrike, therefore turning me from 'Kold (heh) blooded murderer' to 'confused impressionable victim who clearly just needs attention'.

Bowling was a fantastic movie and i think it should be shown in schools.

Nintendo - creators of such blood filled orgies of violence as Mario and Pokemon

Touché

Deadwing

Last night i ran around dublin picking up 100 small packages scattered around the city, hidden in little alleyways and on top of buildings. OH MY GOD GTA HAS WARPED MY MIND!!!!!!! Lawyerrrr!!!!!! Rockstar has a lawsuit on their hands now, by gum!!
Im also going to sue nintendo for influencing me to grow this ridiculous moustache.

weemcd

americans are very quick to pass on blame. the parents are at fault becuse they let the kids have a access to a gun. and i play vice city, and i havnt (at the time of writing) left the house with my pa's gun and shot someone. theese peole obviously dont know the line between reality and video games and shouldnt be allowed to have a ps2 never mind access to a gun.

Syth

Most of the people who lambast computer gams for turning their kids violent, cite studies that show that kis who play voilent computer games are more likely to commit violent acts, but just because A and B go together doesn't mean that A caused B. I reckon that naturally violent kids or kids with strong violent tendencies go for the games. The games aren't the cause, they're ane effect. The problem is everyone's looking for a simple black-and-white answer that'll cure everything. Life just isn't that simple...

Tusky

sigh , Bloody Americans! Next they will be blaming sex before marriage on porno

bizmark

For the love of god..........

Its not the game makers fault that some dumb ass american with a iq lower than the average hamster and access to weapion's that would make saddam cream himself Goes shoot some people ......

Bah before long they will blame Civ games and Command and conquer for all the wars in the last 10 years :rolleyes: ..........who knows i maybe the next world warlord

Nintendo - creators of such blood filled orgies of violence as Mario and Pokemon

Aye that mario guy is the true anti-crist

orangerooster

Now lets not be to harsh I mean these are smart responsible adults who know whats good for us immature monsters.Such great ideas as keeping high powered rifles in their house in reach of children,and the ultimatley brilliant master stroke of making those fantastic gun laws so your five year old need never fear being mugged again!So clearly it falls to a game that these poor poor victims of crazy and cruel games companies went and shot up the place not their parents or their twisted countrys laws.It just makes me angry it reallly truly does.What bloodsuckers.America will see the death of this industry if its the last thing it does.

Spacedog

It's a little known fact that Osama Bin Laiden played Microsoft flight simulator, frustrated by the fact that he couldn't stay in the air longer than 10 minutes after taking off from JFK, he took out his anger by playing it for real!

George Bush Jr. on the other hand's been playing delta force on easy and finished it in his first go! realising that it would be so easy to single handidly invade a whole country, it's only logical to conclude that the greatest army in the world stroll trhough Iraq willy nilly! after all a single soldier can withstand 3 RPG hits before becomming incapacitated and it's a commonly known fact that all muslims suffer from an afliction of the index finger that causes them to misfire ak47 rifles atleast 4 times before they even have a chance of hitting a troop.

Pugsley

In America they should take off all warning signs from everything, and see how many of them die due to simple/stupid mistakes with no warning................ Theyll gain nothing but the rest of the world will gain alot.... The joys of Natural Selection *hugs Charles Darwin*

Retr0gamer

Newsflash:

An Ohio kid blames taking of magic mushrooms from playing too much mario.

sod

phew, when i saw the thread topic i thought this was going to be about a couple of genius kids who programmed a GTA clone, which would have made me feel like an insignificant pleb.


god bless those little paper flag waving idiots.

Töpher

un****ingbelievable!

in america everyone sues everyone, its their way of life, it all turns back to the case with mcdonalds and the hot coffee! anyone else remember it? some woman sued them cuz the coffee was too hot, so now they gotta put "caution: contents may be hot" on all their little styrofome cups, as far as i'm concered they can all go burn in hell! anyone that supports bush deserves to die!

just my opinion.

suppafly

This is really messed up and the worrying thing is that its getting more and more often. And as much cliched as it sounds, this kind of ****e really seemed to be confined to america. i mean how f**** up is that place like?? U don't hear of this s***e happening anywhere else. They don't even want to address the real issue as 'The Register' pointed out, so it purely is just about those people etting money and using this as an excuse. Jesus America is one messed up place!!

po0k

/me puts on some Bill Hicks....

Zaphod B

Amen. Maybe most of the world needs a Messiah, but America needs a second coming of Bill Hicks. Because ffs someone needs to give some of them a good hard smack with a solid lump of Common Sense. And individual responsibility. And independent thought. And humanism...

Will rant about my own country another time. Have too much righteous indignation for now though.

Originally posted by SyxPak
Fucked up country.

The sooner The Revolution comes, the better.

A revolution? Would that be a popular revolution against an oppressive regime, or would it be a sequel to the first one, ie orchestrated by the rich in order to make themselves richer (with no intention of implementing true democracy) and fought by poor bastards press-ganged into service and those merely desperate for the money? Either way, the former would be the story told for the next 300 or so years... :rolleyes:

ixoy

Didn't the parents of the Columbine high school children take out a lawsuit against iD for similiar reasons? Blaming the game for causing the violence (because it certainly wasn't your fcuked up crappy parenting!)? And didn't the judge go tell them where to shove their idiotic lawsuit? AFAIK he basically iterated the point that the game WAS violent but that it was clearly labelled as such and thus they had done what they could.

So hopefully nothing will happen here and the furore (which we've all seen before) will die then when the would-be-proclamaints miniscule attention span diverts to something else (ohh look! A pretty war against those nasty Iraqis! Those Iraqis flew planes into the WTC! I remember it clearly [which is what many DO believe]).

After all the only way I could see Rockstar Games being in any way responsible is if the kids took to hurling boxes of the games at passing motorists...

Q_Ball

Originally posted by ixoy
After all the only way I could see Rockstar Games being in any way responsible is if the kids took to hurling boxes of the games at passing motorists...

Not even! The only way Rockstar Games and Take Two could be responsible is if they physically manifested themselves and forced the kids to throw boxes at passer-by's

colinsky

Originally posted by Zaphod B
Amen. Maybe most of the world needs a Messiah, but America needs a second coming of Bill Hicks. Because ffs someone needs to give some of them a good hard smack with a solid lump of Common Sense. And individual responsibility. And independent thought. And humanism...

me thinks you're generalizing quite a bit too much based on one person (well, two) and one lawsuit.

weemcd

police purchesed gta to investigate the washington sniper.