Games Had Nothing To Do With V. Tech Shooting

GamesIndustry.biz is reporting that an inquiry into the Virginia Tech shooting in April of this year has revealed no connection whatsoever to videogames. The shooter's lack of interest in violent gaming was widely reported among game news sites at that time in the year, despite the exploration of the idea on cable television news. The official report, filed with the governor of the state, lays that 'motive' to rest. From the article: "The report, which includes a mental health history of the shooter, Seung Hui Cho, notes that during his childhood he had 'played videogames like Sonic the Hedgehog,' yet 'none of the videogames were war games or had violent themes.' This flies in the face of statements made on Fox TV news by Jack Thompson in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, which laid the blame for the incident firmly at the door of videogames."

*surprise*

[Itchyeyes (908311)]

File this one under 'no shit'. Is anyone even remotely surprised by this?

Re:*surprise*

[MoonFog (586818)]

Problem is, off course, that this wont be reported in media. Blaming video games is a much more "sexy" headline than "video games NOT to blame". Its a sad state of affairs..

Re:*surprise*

[Ozwald (83516)]

I remember one of the roommates being interviewed the next day:

"Did he ever play any games?"
"No"
"Did he ever play any violent games?"
"Um, no"
"Are you sure?"
"Um, pretty sure. He mostly surfed the web"
"So, no games?"

Then they interviewed another and asked the same questions. Sorry, media, you'll have to stick with the real news.

Oz

Can we afford such blindness?!?

[SatanicPuppy (611928)]

"(he) played videogames (yet) none of the videogames were war games or had violent themes..."

Jesus, he was abnormal. Why didn't anyone notice this obvious deviation from normality in time to stop his brutal rampage?

Seriously. I play violent games so I don't kill people. As games have gotten more violent, violent crime has gone down in the big gamer demographics...Correlation may not equal causation, but it is nicely suggestive.

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[morari (1080535)]

Because it isn't politically correct to "notice" abnormalities, let alone point them out or properly treat them.

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[MeanderingMind (884641)]

Yes, some of us prefer knives, tweezers, blueberry pies, and pictures of Oprah Windfrey.

the same is true for porn.

[oliverthered (187439)]

Introduce porn,
Watch sex abuse statistics go down.

Perverts are too busy having a wank to actually go out and assault someone.

just as with games, violent people are too busy venting their frustration in the virtual world to take it out on the rest of us.

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[MyLongNickName (822545)]

Care to cite a source on that? Every statistic I have seen shows a zero correlation, not a correlation in either direction.

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[MyLongNickName (822545)]

From the same study: "Among those European/Scandinavian societies investigated for any relation between the availability of pornography and rape or sexual assault, again no such correlation could be demonstrated (Kutchinsky, 1985a, 1991). For the countries of Denmark, West Germany and Sweden, the three nations for which ample data were available at the time, Kutchinsky showed that as the amount of pornography increasingly became available, the rate of rapes in these countries either decreased or remained re

Re:

[nomadic (141991)]

Jesus, he was abnormal. Why didn't anyone notice this obvious deviation from normality in time to stop his brutal rampage?

Multiple people noticed. They intervened, he was investigated by the police and committed for mental examination. The people at his school, faculty, staff, and students, knew he was likely to do something violent. They took every legal step they could.

I know it terrifies people, but in the end there weren't any reasonable steps left to stop this guy. This kind of thing has happ

Video games DID cause a senseless shooting...

[SimHacker (180785)]

Video games WERE responsible for Jack Thompson senselessly shooting his mouth off.

-Don

Re:Video games DID cause a senseless shooting...

[Opportunist (166417)]

He did? For real? Or just ... oh.

C'mon, do you have to get our hopes up?

Oh, THAT V. Tech

[AKAImBatman (238306)]

Here I was wondering how video games could not be involved at a shooting at vTech [vtechkids.com]. It's amazing the lengths of madness Dora the Explorer can send people to. *tsk* *tsk*

Pity he didn't

[dazedNconfuzed (154242)]

Maybe if he had played such games, he would have gotten it out of his system in a virtual world instead of the real one. Rumor has it some studies find comparable criminal violence has decreased precisely because games provide a safety valve, relieving such psychological pressures.

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[EmperorKagato (689705)]

Do you know where I can find this study?

Re:

[grassy_knoll (412409)]

Exactly!

From tfa:

The report, which includes a mental health history of the shooter, Seung Hui Cho, notes that during his childhood he had "played videogames like Sonic the Hedgehog," yet "none of the videogames were war games or had violent themes."

Obviously, to prevent further school violence we must encourage the youth of today to play violent games, not repeditive puzzle games with bad disco music.

I suggest we start a fund to provide low-cost or free copies of Manhunt to inner city youth. Think of the c

Even worse!!

[MooseMuffin (799896)]

Jack Thompson now has all the proof he needs to show that non violent video games are just as dangerous as violent ones!

wtf people.

[Pojut (1027544)]

There was one thing and one thing only that caused this horrible event to occur...Cho was a crazy fuck. There is no reason to dip into his past, no need to point the finger at anyone...it was no one's fault. The ONLY thing that could have been done to prevent this is if he were under lock and key in an institution. Short of that, this was going to happen. Why? Because he was a crazy fuck. In the words of Chris Rock, "Whatever happend to crazy? What, people can't just be crazy no more?"

Look. This is past. Cho is dead, the unfortunate people who were in the right place at the wrong time are dead, let their families and friends mourn in peace.

Re:wtf people.

[spyrochaete (707033)]

Don't oversimplify by calling him a crazy fuck. Read some of the materials linked in the description. Having read them myself I really pity Cho. He was socially awkward, moved to America from his native Korea, had no friends, and was devastated when his novel was rejected for publication. He voluntarily participated in psychological examinations and various modes of therapy many times. He lost his only confidant when his older sister left for university. He longed to be normal but spent so much time alone that he didn't have the benefit of society correcting his little inappropriate expressions.

I'm not justifying what he did, and of course I empathize much more with the victims and their families, but Cho's story is sad, not infuriating. No human being is "just" anything. If everyone shared that willful ignorance mankind would have no will to learn about its own nature.

If they spent this long investigating the link

[joeflies (529536)]

then it sounds like they drew their own conclusions on the root cause without ever having any evidence that they should have been investigating video game links in the first place. Looks like the investigators were already trying to implicate videogames instead of using the available evidence to draw a conclusion.

Fox News B.S.

[ExE122 (954104)]

Maybe if he had played violent videogames, maybe he wouldn't have shot students. Perhaps he would've rather gone after terrorists [bettybowers.com], demons [youtube.com], or evil mind-controlling aliens [scientology.org].

Jack Thompson is just another idiot on Murdock's payroll who talks out of the part of his body that most people poop from. If he wants to start blaming video games, then he needs to be blaming the media (i.e. himself) as well.

While I do think that violent games desensitize us to some extent, I don't think they are at all the cause of the problem. Seung Hui Cho was just another angry kid, as were Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. They felt cast aside, rejected, and victimized because they didn't fit in with their peers. So took their anger out on the world around them...

Honestly, I'd think being involved in an online gaming community, no matter how violent the game, would've probably helped. Many people (likely the Jim Thompson type) percieve those addicted online games as being anti-social. Yet from what I've seen, most gamers seem have an elaborate network of online friends. This could've given Cho, Harris, and others a sense of community and a place to "fit in" or at the very least, escape from the world around them.

What I do think is a very real and disturbing issue is that they decided to carry out their anger with automatic weapons and how easily they could obtain them. The reasons behind this have very little to do with video games...

I blame selective journalism

[Opportunist (166417)]

Will we now hear the big "no connection to games" story on faux news? Certainly not. We won't hear a thing now. Until the next shooting where someone happens to have some game that's considered violent or at the very least somehow controversal, and bang, we'll be bombarded with "games are bad" pseudoinformation for weeks.

What does the average audience get? That every time there is a report about shootings, games are involved. And the immediate connection is that whenever there's a shooting, games are involved (because you only hear of those where some kind of connection can be made). Result? Consult your imagination.

It's not that the news lie to us. Well, not always. But they do something that's about as bad, they select and skew stories. Everything that fits their agenda gets reported. Everything that goes against it is squelched. And of course, if you only hear that A is bad or B is good, you start to believe that this isn't a selected few cases, but that it's the way it is.

Be careful when you hear a few stories about something. It could be that you get to hear the occasional stray exceptions instead of the rule, because that's what furthers someone's agenda.

And yes, that should be common sense, and probably is on this board. But where else if not in a thread like this would a "no shit, Sherlock" information fit in?

Re:

[Trepalium (109107)]

Be careful when you hear a few stories about something. It could be that you get to hear the occasional stray exceptions instead of the rule, because that's what furthers someone's agenda.

It has nothing to do with agendas. The exception is news, the rule is not ("man bites dog is news, dog bites man isn't"). No, what you should be suspect of is self-appointed experts like our friend Jack Thompson here, who use speculation as if it were well established fact in order to further their own personal crusad

Perhaps he played too few games

[spyrochaete (707033)]

I read many of the documents on the Cho repository last night so I can't recall which had this quote, but one of his former roommates said that it was conspicuous that Cho played no video games at all whereas most university students did. This proves nothing but is a possible argument in favour of video games as a way to relieve stress. Of course, Cho had a very abnormal personality so he's hardly a baseline upon which to formulate opinions of average people.

Aside, these documents are a fascinating read. If you're interested in psychology, security, forensics, or criminology you will find much interesting material here.

pointing the finger in the wrong direction

[Loosifur (954968)]

The bottom line is that people go on shooting sprees because they're batshit. But if you want to make a desensitization argument, I'd look at the news, frankly. Look at an hour of CNN or any other cable news outlet. You'll see much more in the way of realistic depictions of violence than from an hour of Battlefield 2, or what have you. Having grown up watching horror movies and playing Mortal Kombat I can tell you that neither of these things prepared me for seeing an actual dead body in real life, and I can safely say that I would have to be off my rocker to look forward to killing someone.