Mother Claims Videogames Made Her Son Kill

[PurpleRain]

...after a particular long session of playing gta3 i had to walk to the store to buy some stuff. on the way there, i eyed up some cars that i could " jack" , as it would be quicker than walking. then i relaised i wasnt playing the game any more...

After a particular long session of playing Assassins Creed I had to walk to the store to buy some stuff. On the way there, I eyed up a wall I could run up to get ontop of the buildings, as it would be quicker than walking and dodgeing the guards. Then I relaised I wasn't playing the game any more.

Seriously, if you did walk over to the car to 'Jack' what were you going to do? Your normal brain would come back and call you a retard. Same with murdering or any other game element. "Ohh, I'll stab that guy for extra points."

 

[woodchunkz]

"Stuart was 11 or 12 when I bought him the PlayStation. For a long time I didn't even realize games had age limits on them. We'd just buy him the game that all the other kids had."

"Stuart was 11 or 12 when I bought him the PlayStation. For a long time I didn't even realize games had age limits on them."

"Stuart was 11 or 12 when I bought him the PlayStation."

I didn't even need to type anything to make a point.

 

[TheCrimsonPunisher]

"just like he'd PRACTICED on the PlayStation in his bedroom."

He practiced stabing his playstation?! Well I don't blame him.

What a fanboyish comment. Hm...he probably played mindless button mashers thats all stab stab stabstabstabstabstabstabstab. Also my viewpoint on this it's always either the gamer or the parent how can you blame the video game? It's not Mortal Kombats fault little Johnny is touched in the head cause his daddy fornicated him and his mommy don't give a crap therefore he went to school and went Kano on somebody's ass.

 

[richasr]

I dont know if it's already been said but I heard somewhere recently the government, or maybe the opposition, were going to be taking action against video games.

I just hope stories like this don't act as evidence to support such a wild claim. It's obvious they would but I mean I hope the urge to 'ban' isn't helped by these daft stories.

Also, anyone that goes out killing because they enjoyed doing it on ANY computer game they played 30 minutes prior, is a nutcase plain and simple, not every citizen is like that, I know i'm not, I don't ever feel like highjacking a vehicle and taking the occupants on a wild ride around Manchester...

 

[TenchyMuyo2]

Ugh, this stupid argument will never end. Parents, if your kid goes nuts and commits a crime, its not because a game, movie or any other form of media "taught" him to do so. Everyone is responsible for their own destiny. And parents - no matter how hard nasty media makes it for you, its your job to teach the little brat right from wrong and consequences for actions. Stop being their friend and start being their parent.

Now, as to the action of practicing on a console...hmm. How about Grand Theft Auto for the Nintendo Wii. You can use the controller as the multitude of weapons in the game, but my favorite would be the bat. Could you imagine walking around the corner to the kid's bedroom? You see him playing GTA and swinging an invisible bat over and over again to a victim on the ground while the blood pool grows on the screen. OK, there I think you could garner some Senatorial interdiction...but that's an extreme case.

 

[NexusBlade]

I've reevaluated my opinion. THe games don't CAUSE the killings, the person uses them to see how. The kid can't just go kill because he played a game and decided to go kill. He needs a reason to go do it. The games he just used to assist him, as in hw used it to help him get the best results.

 

[bloodc]

I think you guys may be missing something. You can blame games. You can blame parrenting, but you havn't touched the subject that he is responsible. The man obviously had an intent on killing the nurse. Therefore, HE is the one to thought of how, when, and where to kill the woman. He is the one who needs to take responsibility over the matter not videogames or the parrents. Even if the murder occurred when he was a child, he still needs to take responsibility because he wanted to do it, and he did do it. It just seams that both parrents and videogamers are just blaming eachother.

 

[NexusBlade]

I think you guys may be missing something. You can blame games. You can blame parrenting, but you havn't touched the subject that he is responsible. The man obviously had an intent on killing the nurse. Therefore, HE is the one to thought of how, when, and where to kill the woman. He is the one who needs to take responsibility over the matter not videogames or the parrents. Even if the murder occurred when he was a child, he still needs to take responsibility because he wanted to do it, and he did do it. It just seams that both parrents and videogamers are just blaming eachother.

That's pretty much what I just said. It's the guys fault, not the game, not the parents. No doubt they both had something to do with it, but ultimately it's his fault.

 

[ghost568]

there is only one thing clear when you read this, it's not the boy's fault or the game's but the parents for not raising their son properly. The media will always be blamed for things people are to frightened to live up to, it's just the way things are.

 

[bloodc]

But children have minds of thier own. They aren't some mindless pile of mush.

 

[ofuenf]

normaly i am only lurking in this forum and on the escapists, but this topic is very interesting for me so i decided to suscribe just to share my thoughts...

i don't want to comment on this particular case of "blaming media", just a generalization of it:

regarding influences of media:
yes i believe that media is influencing everyone. not only computergames, but every media...
and not every influence is bad/good
like in those old movies were the smoking cowboys were the coolest thing you could imagine
this is some sort of influence.. but it didn't make me start smoking (i am and have ever been a non smoker)
so it comes down to how a person reacts to an influence... and this can be very hard to explain.. or is impossible for me

the topic of violence in games is something which is very odd in my opinion ( i am discussing this topic nearly weekly with my friends):
i am looking films like gladiator, james bond, die hard, bad boys (whioh are FULL of violence) and other action movies on tv in primetime : means 20:15 in my country...(sometimes they are cut.. but they general approach of killing is seen)
and uncut and more brutal movies at 22:00...
20:15 isnt very late.. and i think its common for most teenagers, young adults to watch these movies, but movies are a media we are used to have today.. so we arent blaming anything on those movies.. or bad news on tv (murder shot, car chase, blabla)

BUT another thing that always crosses my mind is:
most of these films show the consequences, even if they are stretched out and sometimes a bit unrealistic: if you shoot a guy (if it isnt the hero) he mostly dies, or is fatally wounded, or is crippled in some way, so they show that this action is going to hurt another person... which is mostly true for games (except that most use a awkard hitpoint system , but this is for an easier gameplay)
AND now the twist: you may all know the A-Team:
this series is aired most of the time during 15:00 - 17:00 on most tv stations i can watch, and in my opinion is one of the most "dangerous" series ever aired: guys are shooting with ak's, throwing grenades at cars, using bombs and many other killing techniques but nobody dies...
if you let a children only watch this.. it would never know that guns or grenades are made for killing... for gods sake i cant imagine a kid firing an ak at a person, because the child doesn't know the consequences

i aprove that violence in media should be age restricted, because some things aren't just good for young people, but i think it is better to show something realistic for the first time, than a "easymode" actionshooter, so they can really see what shooting and war means

if they then understand it, and know what happens, let them have fun with more unrealistic things (die hard) which are just fun to watch, but my childs should always have in the back of their heads what really would happen

when i think my own children are old enough to understand and realize violence, i would let them see (if they want) at first "saving private ryan", "schindlers liste" or similar movies (which are very realistic in my opinion, and all have a message in them) so the aren't illusionated by war or violence (they always do harm)

i am a little bit drifting away i think, but i hope you understand my arguments.

another thing is: can a game really show you how to kill?
i think they abstraction point in games is far enough away from reality (at the moment at least) for such things.
i am taking now cod4 (a favourite game of mine) as a reference:

reloading: well you can see the mechanic of how reloading works pretty well... but you just have to press "R", whereas real reloading is quite simple, but there are several things more to it then just click 1! single button (everyone who has learned how to use a assault rifle should agree), not only because the mechanics, but of the weight.
the weapon i have been trained on weigths 3,6kg (and it was on of the lightest rifle i have been told), a full magazin (30 bullets) comes for a 0,5kg and repeating was harder than i could have thought to that time. and then were the various security checks, so i could unload safely, and then load safely (which can surely be skipped for the "i want to die soon" guy)

aiming+distance+shooting:
its damn near impossible to hit something from the hip. near impossible? i think impossible, if they guy isnt carrying your barrel in his a**h*le (sorry inadequate swearing)

shooting while running? yes
hitting something while running? can be done.. but you really have to be trained to it.. most people would run around with blue eyes because the scope would constantly pound on their eye (i would like to see something, now that i am thinking of it )

recoil:
even with the lightest fully automatic rifle you rarely shoot longer than a burst of 2-3 bullets, single fire or double tap (hope these are the correct english vocabularies) are the most accurat way to fire
non mounted mg's even do small bursts rather than shooting nonstop

barrelheat:
blablabla.. to long non stop firing will destroy the barrel no matter what( i am specificaly looking at the mounted mg's in cod4, which can e fired for ages without any negative consequences on the weapon)

shooting range:
max range i could pinpoint with my weapon? 300metres
max range i have seen so far in games? not even 50, and then they are already using sniper rifles

those are just the first couple of things that come to my head as a problem for someone who has only played shooters on pc and takes a weapon in his hands for the first time

so to conclude this part of my arguement:
i dont think that games are realistic enough (as i said: at the moment) to really train someone to kill
i mean yeah they could now some tactics (how to be stealthy and silent) and know how it looks like to reload a gun, but it is really harder to do in reality (especially the moving silent part .. i have tried several times to sneak out into my favourite pub.. and always were heared )

and at least you know from this games: if you shoot and hit, you kill (most of the time)

wow, longer post than i have thought, sorry for this.. there are several other things floating in my head, but maybe later in the discussion there is a place for them...

for now i leave it as it is and apologize for any typos or other grammaticaly mistakes, i am trying my best to write an understandable english

(p.s.:my experience with guns and weapons came from the service in the austrian army and might differ from other countries armies)

edit: i want to see the next zero punctuation!!!(offtopic)

 

[Traiden]

The thing that kept being missed by most of the people posting here was the simple fact the a man STABED a woman 72 TIMES. Looking at that fact alone would lead me and others to believe this was a crime where both participants knew each other. Why would anyone stay in one place and stab someone 72 times, you realize the first few stabs would result in at te least a little noise that would make someone question the source.

Then you have to account for the mess it would make, the weapon, and the body... All video games I have played have 'taught' me it is best to deal with your target quickly and leave little trace of you have ever been there. Even on GTA you still had to deal with cops if you stood still stabing, blugening, or else filling a body full of lead.

There are many unknowns in this report to the public, that would lead others not to take the testamony of the mother as seriously. All things need to be taken into accound before blam for actions can be distributed correctly.

 

[FreelancerADP]

I would just like to point out that, legally speaking, it is not against the law for Wal-Mart to sell Halo 3, Mass Effect or whatever to a 4 year old in the US. It is against their store policy however. Strictly speaking, only content that is pornographic has legal (as in enforced by the police) restrictions in commercial sales.

The ESRB ratings are voluntary and all actions taken against game makers relating to "enforcement" of the ratings stem from contract law. Stores have done a great job of making people feel like the industry is following some sort of law, but much like the MPAA (movies), it's voluntary and self regulating.

 

[Knight Templar]

lets say this is true.(year right!) anyway if it is true then eather: the kid was practising what he was going to do anyway, if not video games then he would use leggo to plan the attack. or he thought he was in the game (in one way or another) in which case the game was just there and we should be thankful for it. because if not a game he acted out then it might have been hanable rising. much worse. but what game was it? it would be odd it it was something like viva pinyata.

 

[Knight Templar]

also to anybody who belevs its the game not the kid the short answer is- no . long answer no you ignorant prick

 

[Zeddicus Zhul Zorander]

Something you have to look at about this is infact, the mother, not her claim, but that fact that she is a mother.
If you were a parent, and your child was hanging out with Goth kids and killed a nurse, would you blame you're son? NO! No way in hell would you say, "Oh, my son stabbed a nurse, he must have been messed up or something, for shame, moving on."
What some of your are msising, is maybe it's not so much of her joining in with the like sof Jack Thompson, but that she's simply a mother. Freaud and Mudvayne said it best, " A little boy's best friend, will always be his mother.".
She's obviously traumatized by the way the boy has been acting, and needs an answer she's not getting. Look at it from her point of view:
A creature, HER SON, something she has poured her heart and soul into for more than a decade, something she would die without, has just practically gone insane. He was a 'good boy", (trust me, no mother says than when she KNOWS her son is messing up in life), and suddenly he's become a psycho murderer.. What would you point the finger at? Your parenting, TV, social relations, or the one thing your child did the most, practically devoted his life to?
I'm not saying the video game did it, in order to even SPECULATE properly you'd have to have known the child from conception. Anything else, is complete drek.
But think about it, people ARE impressionable, it could be true.

Look at your posts, I'm sure ALL OF YOU play video games ALOT!!! And you've never murdered or fealt the need to simply from a video game. But you're not EVERYONE! Get that through your skulls! Just because you won't doesn't mean others won't.
What I'm seeing here is that you are all so close minded to the idea that media puts impressions on our children that you blame the parent. Seriously. If a child does nothing but play video games, and kills a guy, I'd seriosuly think he saw it in a game. HELL I used to skateboard because some of the non-cheat stuff in THPS was freaking cool looking.
CHILDREN ARE IMPRESSIONABLE! Some of you forget that to such an extent that you blame the parent. Children emulate, act out, pretend, get angry, resort to base instincts.
A child watches Solid Snake kill for half of his deveoping life, and he gets angry, he's GOING to resort to violence if he never learned how to properly contain his anger. IT CAN HAPPEN PEOPLE! Quit acting like just because you didn't, others won't either.
If you aren't parents, have never had to care for something, have never bonded on a completely different level with another human being, you have no right at all to say anything here. I am not a parent, but I have been taking care of my sister since she was 5 due to my parents work hours. I am VERY strict as to what she plays, hears, sees on TV. If she did anything crazy like this, you can BET I'm going to be looking at where she leaned it. Get off of the mother's back, she his MOTHER!
Video games may not promote violence, BUT THEY SURE AS HELL GLORIFY IT!

EDITED NOTE: Keep in mind, the game's titles don't usually scream 'Violent'
Clive Barker's Jericho (most mothers have never even heard of hell Raiser or Leprechaun), Grand Theft Auto (hints at car stelaing, not murder rape and drugs), Halo Combat Evolved (My dad's in the navy and had no clue what the hell that was supposed to mean), none of those sound disturbingly violent to me.

Okay, so children are impressionable. I was one of those once. Technically, since I'm seventeen, I still am. I remember playing video games, in fact, I still do. I would consider myself very dangerous when angry. In fact, if someone were to threaten the lives of my family I would hunt them down and slowly kill them. Working up from the toes. Now, did I learn that from video games? HELL NO!!! I didn't learn it from anyone but ME!!! I don't walk around looking at people saying, "Ooo, there goes another person I could kill violently, just let me go get my Kabar and I can stab them 72 times just like Mario did." Oh wait, that's right, Mario never stabbed anyone, he just jumped on their heads like all Italians do when killing people. Did you know that the main murder weapons in Italy are big boots that serial killers use to jump on people, turtle shells from senseless violence to turtles, and getting eaten by dinosaurs that are cruelly enslaved and ridden to exhaustion? Idiotic right? OF COURSE IT IS!!! Now, obviously few games these days are made with Mario-like innocence, but the blame doesn't rest with the video game. The blame rests with the kid. He's the one who went off the deep end and decided to go stabby on a nurse. And I know what you are thinking. You're thinking that since he was an impressionable little lad and he was playing violent video games, the video games MUST have shown him that violence was all that and a bag of chips. However, it doesn't matter that he was playing those video games, it matters that IF they did influence him, he allowed himself to be influenced. I personally believe that it was because he was researching and speaking with nutcases who do things like stab someone 72 times. Even if that wasn't it, you can still blame this on bad parenting. Why? Because it is the parent's responsibility to raise up a child in the way he should go. If the parent never taught little Billy to THINK for himself, then of course he is going to allow himself to be influenced. Parents today are allowing their children to use movie stars and pop icons to do their thinking for them. Name one child who can think for himself, and I can show you hundreds who allow others to do their thinking for them. I can show you hundreds who define themselves through other people. Hell, YOU might even be one of them. Until children and parents are made to answer and take responsibility for their actions and what they did or did not do, then incidences like these will just multiply. It's time to put more stock into what we think and less into what others think. It's time to destroy the mob mentality. It's time to rise up and live.

 

[intplee]

Who's to say that it isn't possible that the video games contributed to his "disposition" if you will.

I doubt that anyone would claim that it is not possible, but this is not a question of possibility, but of actuality. Is it true (not "possible") that violent videogames caused, or at least contributed, to the vicious murder of this nurse? In regard to this question, to answer in the affirmative would imply a proposition which stands up poorly to critical scrutiny, not least by the content of the Mother's own words i.e. "We'd just buy him the game that all the other kids had". (Take note. This is a transparent attempt to deflect responsibility onto the wider community, and to preempt those who might criticise her by implying that, as parents, they are no better. Unfortunately, this also betrays the Mother's true feelings, by implicitly acknowledging her own responsibility and error).

This, however, is only half of the issue. There is also the question of what should be done, even if we suppose that violent videogames did cause or contribute to this terrible crime. It is easy to make a plausable case that videogames were instrumental, but much the same could be said of almost anything else. For all we know, his diet was the causal factor with the most influence. But whatever the truth, people cannot be absolved of criminal responsibility because something caused them to act in a particular way, because to do so would render nobody responsible for anything (there is always some prior cause to human action). The relevent fact, rather, is whether they are physically capable of adapting and learning to do otherwise in the future. If not, then they are better locked up for the safety of everyone else.

 

[mrjunk]

Games such as grand theft auto would of had a strong influence especially on a 11-12yr old boy who's right and wrong judgment hasn't been fully matured, putting things in their face such as getting money for killing, etc.. it really does screw with their head, it's sort of like virtual peer pressure, it makes them see killing other people as something not as poor as we perceive it since we are much older and didn't have that level of violence when we were young... doom vs GTA, big difference but the violence exists, just with more detail/graphics and realism. Since today's games are very realistic kids taking alcohol or drugs probably won't notice the difference!

Sorry... but this is not right. I've played the GTA games since their first conception, and manhunt, and treasure island dizzy, etc etc etc.

You really under estimate 11-12yr olds grip on reality here, maybe you are a journo for the NOTW ?

If this was really the case then we would have teenage serial killers on every street. Interestingly we do have a problem with teen violence in the UK at the moment, but it's the ones who are NOT playing video games that are causing the problems.

 

[sk247]

Firstly I haven't read every single post because frankly most are getting to the point of being huge essays. So this may have already been said...

Morals - Good & Bad - Right & Wrong!

I first would like to say that of course our environment influences us! However that does not mean we have to act on these compulsions or urges.

I have been subjected to many types of positive & negative media whether that be TV, movies, videogames etc since a young age. However I believe that I know the differences between right & wrong and have a good moral compass. I guessing that even though i was aloud to view/play these inherently violent media types my parents instilled me with good values.

I believe this is a issue these days not that all parents are crap but they just need to start early with kids showing them the examples of right & wrong. So if they ever come to a crossroad in life they know to choose the right path.

Ok I'm now sounding a little preachy so I'm going to stop. But everything is a choice, we have freewill the videogame didn't make him kill the nurse he chose to kill her.