"Gaming Community" Connected to Pipe Bomb Attack
- Thread starter Andy Chalk
- Start date
Hmmm, well I think people are being too reactionary without enough information. People don't generally place blame like this after an attack like this one, without reason.
People decrying the blame being placed on video games aren't putting much effort into thinking about how a gaming community could be involved in this, which is pretty easy to see.
To be honest at times like this people tend to forget that there is a lot of real money involved in games right now, virtual items with real cash values are being bought and traded, and people have ebayed things for games like "Diablo" for huge piles of money. Then there are EVE Plex stockpiles, Second Life property developments, and other things. Not to mention the big business of selling game currency for real money. Organized crime, including syndicates on an international level, have gotten involved in things like gold farming, and using video game currencies and exchanges to pass real money around.
There have been plenty of incidents of real violence over video games through the years, with people attacking each other at cons, people hunting each other down over scams, and other assorted things. You hear about them once in a while, but it's generally not a big deal, and nothing close to being on this level. That said, gaming has been becoming bigger, and it's a matter of time.
People will perform drive bys, bombings like this, etc... in the ghetto over a few hundred dollars, turf concerns, or even just selling drugs on the wrong street corner.
I could see a number of situations where some kid could be playing a game where making real money gets involved, and he costs someone a lot of dough, or scams the wrong people, and has to deal with retaliation. Like it or not when you set out to make an example, you generally don't just go after the person involved, attacking the family/loved ones is done because it makes other people seeing it afraid of what could happen to them. People tend to be a lot braver with themselves, than their families. Threatening to kill some guy might not be as persuasive as say threatening to kill his kids, rape his daughter, or whatever. I could see enough people being aware of a situation like this where lobbing pipe bombs into a family home would be a powerful message, especially if the people doing the lobbing aren't the ones who are going to be calling the shots (so catching them doesn't matter, the guy giving the orders has made the point he can just have someone else do the same thing to those who cross him).
If this kid was involved in a domestic gold farming operation and skimmed and/or did personal sales on the side, stole a bunch of Plexs (for sale or otherwise), scammed someone out of property for real money, or even just cost someone an account for one of the bigger Korean games with thousands of dollars invested in it, I could see this happening. People have killed for less.
I'll also say that I expect things to get far, far, worse than this. Believe it or not I saw this kind of thing developing years ago when we started to see all of these microtransactions and FTP games, and the development of a class of people who were making real money off of these games (other than tournament prizes). Once that happened it became a business, and one outside of the general channels of regulation.
Honestly, I think it will only be a matter of time before we start seeing murders over this kind of thing becoming increasingly common (with increasing amounts of money involved), various guilds and online syndicates becoming the equivilent of street gangs, especially multi-game player associations with a leadership interested in the financial aspects (since you already see people setting up what amount to pyramid schemes that amounts to a lot of virtual property... and sales, going to higher up in guilds. With people doing this accross a number of games... it can really add up). I also feel it's inevitable we're going to see a high end game manager or two killed within a couple of years. At some point the guys running these things are going to ban the wrong person. The guys running the financial schemes in these games tend not to be the nicest guys in the world, and are in many cases violating game policy or cheating in one way or another. At some point a guy making thousands and thousands of dollars is going to be banned, lose his money and a revenue stream from one game, while having others bring it in and decide to make an example out of the mod/manager/company that did it. It sounds insane now, but give it time, when real money gets involved, and games become a tool for making money, they cease to really be games anymore.
Maybe I'm wrong and the victims here are off kilter, but I almost guarantee if we hear more about this, the guy and his family were probably targeted due to the kid having cost the wrong people money in some kind of online gaming business.
I'll also say this might have been a warning, as dramatic as it is. Pipe Bombs aren't the best weapon for what's being done here. Anyone who could have made the pipe bombs probably could have made firebombs (your basic molotov, or more advanced) and burned the house down
on them while they were asleep. That means this is probably intimidation (which goes along with my theory) and an effort to probably get money back. Anyone who got that far probably could have killed everyone in the house if that was their actual intention. Me, I would have sealed the front and back door at night, in the dark (a few ways to do it quietly) and then lit the place on fire, if I was so inclined, which I'm not (obviously). Looking at the possibilities and what could have happened.... it probably wasn't an attempted murder.
People decrying the blame being placed on video games aren't putting much effort into thinking about how a gaming community could be involved in this, which is pretty easy to see.
To be honest at times like this people tend to forget that there is a lot of real money involved in games right now, virtual items with real cash values are being bought and traded, and people have ebayed things for games like "Diablo" for huge piles of money. Then there are EVE Plex stockpiles, Second Life property developments, and other things. Not to mention the big business of selling game currency for real money. Organized crime, including syndicates on an international level, have gotten involved in things like gold farming, and using video game currencies and exchanges to pass real money around.
There have been plenty of incidents of real violence over video games through the years, with people attacking each other at cons, people hunting each other down over scams, and other assorted things. You hear about them once in a while, but it's generally not a big deal, and nothing close to being on this level. That said, gaming has been becoming bigger, and it's a matter of time.
People will perform drive bys, bombings like this, etc... in the ghetto over a few hundred dollars, turf concerns, or even just selling drugs on the wrong street corner.
I could see a number of situations where some kid could be playing a game where making real money gets involved, and he costs someone a lot of dough, or scams the wrong people, and has to deal with retaliation. Like it or not when you set out to make an example, you generally don't just go after the person involved, attacking the family/loved ones is done because it makes other people seeing it afraid of what could happen to them. People tend to be a lot braver with themselves, than their families. Threatening to kill some guy might not be as persuasive as say threatening to kill his kids, rape his daughter, or whatever. I could see enough people being aware of a situation like this where lobbing pipe bombs into a family home would be a powerful message, especially if the people doing the lobbing aren't the ones who are going to be calling the shots (so catching them doesn't matter, the guy giving the orders has made the point he can just have someone else do the same thing to those who cross him).
If this kid was involved in a domestic gold farming operation and skimmed and/or did personal sales on the side, stole a bunch of Plexs (for sale or otherwise), scammed someone out of property for real money, or even just cost someone an account for one of the bigger Korean games with thousands of dollars invested in it, I could see this happening. People have killed for less.
I'll also say that I expect things to get far, far, worse than this. Believe it or not I saw this kind of thing developing years ago when we started to see all of these microtransactions and FTP games, and the development of a class of people who were making real money off of these games (other than tournament prizes). Once that happened it became a business, and one outside of the general channels of regulation.
Honestly, I think it will only be a matter of time before we start seeing murders over this kind of thing becoming increasingly common (with increasing amounts of money involved), various guilds and online syndicates becoming the equivilent of street gangs, especially multi-game player associations with a leadership interested in the financial aspects (since you already see people setting up what amount to pyramid schemes that amounts to a lot of virtual property... and sales, going to higher up in guilds. With people doing this accross a number of games... it can really add up). I also feel it's inevitable we're going to see a high end game manager or two killed within a couple of years. At some point the guys running these things are going to ban the wrong person. The guys running the financial schemes in these games tend not to be the nicest guys in the world, and are in many cases violating game policy or cheating in one way or another. At some point a guy making thousands and thousands of dollars is going to be banned, lose his money and a revenue stream from one game, while having others bring it in and decide to make an example out of the mod/manager/company that did it. It sounds insane now, but give it time, when real money gets involved, and games become a tool for making money, they cease to really be games anymore.
Maybe I'm wrong and the victims here are off kilter, but I almost guarantee if we hear more about this, the guy and his family were probably targeted due to the kid having cost the wrong people money in some kind of online gaming business.
I'll also say this might have been a warning, as dramatic as it is. Pipe Bombs aren't the best weapon for what's being done here. Anyone who could have made the pipe bombs probably could have made firebombs (your basic molotov, or more advanced) and burned the house down
on them while they were asleep. That means this is probably intimidation (which goes along with my theory) and an effort to probably get money back. Anyone who got that far probably could have killed everyone in the house if that was their actual intention. Me, I would have sealed the front and back door at night, in the dark (a few ways to do it quietly) and then lit the place on fire, if I was so inclined, which I'm not (obviously). Looking at the possibilities and what could have happened.... it probably wasn't an attempted murder.
I feel we are missing major info on this one.
If this is all the info and there is no logical reason for logic it is just sad that we are this lacking for scapegoats. I mean we have drugs people we can blame those.
If this is all the info and there is no logical reason for logic it is just sad that we are this lacking for scapegoats. I mean we have drugs people we can blame those.
We would blame the Irish? So maybe the US would then fight the IRA? At least we would have a new bad guy for the FPS games?Nasrin said:
Looks like another one of the ever-despised Xbox Live meta-cunts set off someone who took it too far if you ask me.
Being America it would probably impact the local sales of mashed potatoes for a year or so. And lead to a lynching of those who still bought mashed potatoes.Nasrin said:
I didn't say that. I just think you have to be a special kind of cruel to want to hurt and kill children.TheKasp said:
There are some other reports out there that seem to indicate that the Son of the victim was a bit of a neighborhood problem, and tended to run with entirely the wrong crowd. I'm guessing this is not a World of Warcraft guild. More likely it is a crew of Meth dealers that had a falling out.
Clearly it was the Mashed Potatoes that made you this way, we must ban them all to prevent their influence from spreading. The fact they are delicious isn't worth the risk of having our youth corrupted into becoming arsonists.Nasrin said:
OT: So yeah, a horrible act of violence. Terrible yes but the fault of video games? No.
It's always like that, since the fucking dawn of time: some psychopath\idiot\horrible horrible person does something awful - and the media automataclly link it to the latest scapegoat to freak out the paranoid moms: Nowdays it's video games and social networks, before that it was the internet itself, or D&D, or rock music, or TV, or comics ,or moving pictures, or cave paintings.
I wish that one day all those idiots will look back on this history of scapegoats and realised that a game, or a genre of music, or Socrates didn't cause little Timmy to shoot down 12 kids - Little Timmy did, or his "friends", or bad education or his actual fucking life.
Using those kinds of horrible things to justify your own Techophobia is one of the most cynical, disrespectful things you can do.
I wish that one day all those idiots will look back on this history of scapegoats and realised that a game, or a genre of music, or Socrates didn't cause little Timmy to shoot down 12 kids - Little Timmy did, or his "friends", or bad education or his actual fucking life.
Using those kinds of horrible things to justify your own Techophobia is one of the most cynical, disrespectful things you can do.
Er... I think you're all this reading wrong.
What I think they're saying is the attack was caused because an argument or SOMETHING happened in a gaming community. The oldest son did SOMETHING to piss them off enough to attack his family. That's how I'm reading it, I don't see ANYWHERE on there how they're directly blaming video games for the attack, rather an involvement in a certain community.
What I think they're saying is the attack was caused because an argument or SOMETHING happened in a gaming community. The oldest son did SOMETHING to piss them off enough to attack his family. That's how I'm reading it, I don't see ANYWHERE on there how they're directly blaming video games for the attack, rather an involvement in a certain community.
The only thing that would make any sense to me would be if the guy pissed someone off in something like EVE online, maybe cheating someone out of cash-monies.
Seriously, this is just baseless faux scapegoating. Nobody else is giving this a flying fuck, and I am certainly not going to either
Seriously, this is just baseless faux scapegoating. Nobody else is giving this a flying fuck, and I am certainly not going to either
Guys, just look at that police photo from the scene of the attack, that is clearly Tavish Degroot, better known as the 'demoman' from team fortress 2. CLEARLY videogames are to blame and you're fools for denying that Mr Degroot's involvement in the videogame industry is unrelated to this unsolicited attack.
He's a known drunk, and is constantly called upon for ochestrating such attacks in his role as demoman for team fortress 2. My guess was that their house might have been painted blue so he mistook it for the enemy base. Spies don't help either since you can never tell till after you attack them. All in all, this crime would have been entirely avoided if it weren't for videogames, and in particular team fortress 2.
((I am glad however that the people are ok))
He's a known drunk, and is constantly called upon for ochestrating such attacks in his role as demoman for team fortress 2. My guess was that their house might have been painted blue so he mistook it for the enemy base. Spies don't help either since you can never tell till after you attack them. All in all, this crime would have been entirely avoided if it weren't for videogames, and in particular team fortress 2.
((I am glad however that the people are ok))
Vagueness. Vagueness everywhere.
It doesn't really look like they're blaming videogames, which is good, but god damn they could be just a little bit less fucking obscure. They didn't say "video games led to bombing attack," but because they just vagued vagueness all over the vaguetude, that's what it's going to read as.
"FOR LORD GABEN, AND THE VALVENITES!"
*Throws a molotov*
It doesn't really look like they're blaming videogames, which is good, but god damn they could be just a little bit less fucking obscure. They didn't say "video games led to bombing attack," but because they just vagued vagueness all over the vaguetude, that's what it's going to read as.
We should split up by fandom.Gabanuka said:
"FOR LORD GABEN, AND THE VALVENITES!"
*Throws a molotov*