I'm sure Jack Thompson is gloating right now. The Virginia Tech killer apparently played Counter-Strike for a spell. Of course, the fact that it's a team-based game that encourages cooperation and might have actually coaxed the lone gunman out of his anti-social shell won't make headlines. The game includes guns, so it must be a training tool for serial killers. End of story. What's interesting is how two different talk show hosts are approaching the subject: Dr. Phil and Rush Limbaugh. You'd assume Rush would be calling out the attack dogs, but no - he actually dismissed early speculation that games were to blame:
"Not every video gamer goes out and murders 33 people on the college campus though. There's more to this than that. We can find all kinds of societal problems and ills, but the fact of the matter is that whatever you would look at as a bad influence -- video games as you mentioned -- it may desensitize people, but it doesn't turn everybody into mass murderers."Of course, Rush also sees videogame bans as a slippery slope toward gun control - so adjust your enthusiasm according to your world view on this. (My $0.02: You can't physically murder someone with a game disc, well, short of breaking it into an ineffective shiv. And the same could be said for DVDs and CDs since they're the same media.)
Dr. Phil, on the other hand, thinks our kids are being programmed into murder-bots:
"[C]ommon sense tells you that if these kids are playing video games, where they’re on a mass killing spree in a video game, it’s glamorized on the big screen, it’s become part of the fiber of our society. You take that and mix it with a psychopath, a sociopath or someone suffering from mental illness and add in a dose of rage, the suggestibility is too high."Forget the fact that this guy had been reported for stalking people and sharing stories about crazed murders and sexual abuse in English class. No, the fact that he once played Counter-Strike should have tipped us off.
On the flipside of this horrendous event, gamers are gathering in Second Life to memorialize the dead and share their grief. Help show what gamers are really like: Sign the guestbook.
-=Gamewatcher
Comments (2)
Violent video games are just a sympton of the American culture of violence, not a cause. It's hard to argue that they don't glorify violence and expose a younger audience, but then again so does just about every form of entertainment in the past century. Americans love violent stories, TV shows, movies, etc. etc. Unfortunately not a good environment for a crazed South Korean to inhabit, or any maniac with a blurred sense of reality. Anybody with a clue about right and wrong deplores violence when it happens in reality, regardless of the forms of entertainment that they enjoy.
Posted by Rob D. | April 19, 2007 6:47 AM
Posted on April 19, 2007 06:47
Now there's been a suggestion that the killer imitated a character from the violent Korean action flick Oldboy.
Of course, not everyone who saw that movie is a serial killer. Seems to me that Quentin Tarantino was a fan (I think he helped get it a U.S. release), but he channeled his enthusiasm into Grindhouse, his own creative work.
We also know the killer listened to Collective Soul's Shine incessantly, but I doubt the words "Oh, heaven let your light shine down" would suggest "murder as many people around you as you can before taking your own life" to virtually anyone else in the world.
Personally, I think the environment was a factor. I spent four long years in Blacksburg and, while I value my education and my experiences there, I also felt cut off and intensely lonely.
At the end of it, I remember sitting on a hill in the middle of campus and reflecting on what a long journey it had been, how hard it was to cope with the isolation and how glad I was to be moving on with my life. A weaker person might have snapped under similar pressures.
-=Gamewatcher
Posted by Gamewatcher
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April 19, 2007 11:23 AM
Posted on April 19, 2007 11:23