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News Media Links Shooting To Games 116

Posted by Zonk from the because-rational-thought-is-too-hard dept.
Via Kotaku, an MSNBC report entitled School shooter followed video game-like 'script'. If you're going to scapegoat in the wake of a tragedy, who better than the entertainment industry? From the article: "What I mean by 'a script' is that when you look at popular culture, movies, video games, you will see this kind of "shoot 'em" pathway running through many of them. It's not an original idea of his; it's something that kids are exposed to by the millions." Given that another story on the MSNBC site states that the suspect talked about shooting people before the incident, it seems like there is more than enough finger pointing to go around.
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News Media Links Shooting To Games More

News Media Links Shooting To Games

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  • Damn the White man (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Mr.Dippy ( 613292 )
    From what I gather from this washington post article [washingtonpost.com] it was the white man who stole all the Indian land and forced the native americans to live shitty lives on reservations that cause the school shooting. If I lived the life that was describe in this article I might have done the same. And I'm white!
    • Now I know why Columbine happened.

      • Re:Thanks! (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Mr.Dippy ( 613292 )
        Columbine was the same theme as this just different circumstances. The kids in both these events felt isolated from "Society". Compounded with emotional disorders and surronding themeselves with violent games, nazi books, and malcontent jerks on the Internet was recipe for disaster. But, at the core of it all was a bunch of kids who couldn't think out side the box of their current prediciments. Yes the Indian Reservation sucks. Yes, Columbine was full of phoney jocks with a school/community structure tha

        • Re:Thanks! (Score:1, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward
          But, once your 18 you can fly the coupe and try to make a life for yourself somewhere else. These kids couldn't think that far.

          I am so sick and tired of hearing this. The school environment overloads some kids, to them it is like slow torture. The fact that it is going to end doesn't make up for the fact that these kids are expected to not only live through it, but study and get good grades at the same time. School isn't for everybody, and it is about time we admitted that.

          It might sound like I am saying e

    • That's funny... according to that article it looks like the last thing he did before going nuts was watch the Columbine shooting. Gee, I wonder where he got the idea?

  • Blame Canada (Score:5, Insightful)

    by briancnorton ( 586947 ) on Friday March 25, 2005 @09:42AM (#12045267) Homepage
    "We must protest and make a fuss before somebody thinks of blaming us"

    It never ceases to amaze me how reactionary people are to things like this. All the stakeholders get into their little defensive postures ready to strike down the pointing fingers from those that want to look proactive, and nothing ever happens.

    • I think we can pretty much all agree that video games don't make people go nuts and start fragging other people. The capacity and execution of that kind of violence is born in a disturbed mind, not a microprocessor.

      However, I do believe that the games might give such disturbed minds new ideas (and even training) on how to make their big day more exciting for them and/or more efficient.

      I must assume that teenagers that lived in pre-gunpowder times would also have gone on psychotic rampages from time-t
      • ...how in the hell did this get modded insightful? Books were very, very rare until Gutenberg came along, and that was well after gunpowder was running strong killing people and making pretty colors in the sky. Besides, not like executions and other violence was public back then. It was an event to go watch someone get their head chopped off. Not to mention that most people knew what slaughtering an animal was like. They knew what happened, they had other outlets for their violence. What we have is a re
      • I must assume that teenagers that lived in pre-gunpowder times would also have gone on psychotic rampages from time-to-time.

        I'm not sure that's a good assumption. While psychotic behavior is far from a recent phenomenon, and 24-hour news means that we actually hear about these things, "teenagers" have in the past been treated with the respect and responsibilities afforded to adults. This is perhaps part of the equation that we need to examine more closely. Teenagers fill the role that society makes for

    • "We must protest and make a fuss before somebody thinks of blaming us"

      You have no idea how right you really are.

      MSNBC have to point the finger at someone. Otherwise people might look closer to home. Like MSN.

      The kid had a profile on MSN as Solitude [thesmokinggun.com] where he listed:

      Interest categories:
      Military, High Schools, Death & Dying

      Picture:
      From the Gus Van Sant movie about a highschool shooting.

      Favorite Things:
      moments where control becomes completely unattainable...

      times when maddened psycho paths

  • An original idea (Score:5, Funny)

    by StocDred ( 691816 ) on Friday March 25, 2005 @09:46AM (#12045295) Homepage Journal
    It's not an original idea of his; it's something that kids are exposed to by the millions.

    Or, maybe, if you intend to go somewhere and kill people, walking and shooting are pretty much your only options?

    I always thought video games got the idea to walk and shoot from real life. Now I know better! Thanks, MSNBC!

    • Re:An original idea (Score:5, Interesting)

      by MrHanky ( 141717 ) on Friday March 25, 2005 @10:27AM (#12045613) Homepage Journal
      Of course it's not the only option. Poisoning the water supply could be far more effective, and probably easier to get away with. It doesn't make a great game plot, though. And it's hard work (you need lots of poison). Or, for the less ambitious, a well placed bomb could just do the trick.

      So maybe it's a good thing that games take the most spectacular but least effective route for killing people. If the kid actually gave some thought to his murders instead of just going on a FPS rampage, he could've had more success. So computer games may once again have saved thousands of lives.

      But then again, he might have just chosen his strategy from the available weapons and transportation vehicles. As they say: If all you've got are your legs and some guns (and a chainsaw!), all problems look like Doom.
      • Of course it's not the only option. Poisoning the water supply could be far more effective, and probably easier to get away with. It doesn't make a great game plot, though. And it's hard work (you need lots of poison).


        Shhhhh!

        They'll ban Final Fantasy [halo43.com], next!

      • Re:An original idea (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Ayaress ( 662020 ) on Friday March 25, 2005 @12:50PM (#12046940) Journal
        Actually, poisoning a watersupply is not more effective in this case...

        Remember, the point of a rampage is not just to kill people, it's to make a big scene and get your name on TV whilst doing so. If the point were just to kill people, then this guy had easy access to the means and cause of doing so much more effectively.

        Poison will kill people, but not make a scene. It may even be a while before anybody realizes it was intentional and not just Dow Chemical dumping dioxins in the water supply again.

        A bomb will kill people and make a scene, but it won't be immediately connected to you, and in the end you'll just be called a terrorist of some sort. People will ask what could have been done, but in the end, it'll be a relatively limited scene.

        A shooting rampage will accomplish all three goals. You'll be on TV, lots of people will point fingers all over the place, there'll be a very big scene. The whole effect will be much more gruesome, there will be wounded survivors who will also get on TV and talk about you. And inevitably, when the finger pointing starts, a lot of people will get dragged into the scene who had nothing to do with it in the first place.

        Game connection or not, this shooting was clearly the work of a deranged mind. The Smoking Gun covered how he frequented Neo-Nazi websites where he frequently inquired as to how he could best make a big scene killing people. He made a series of flash animations showing him killing stick men and then committing suicide. He drew pictures of guns in his school books.

        This entire article ignores one, very key question: Did the shooter even OWN any of these games?
      • I always thought it would have been fantastic to spike the cafeteria food with a powerful laxative and watch the poop-o-rama begin during 6th period.

        It would be more satisfying to have 800 people spend the rest of their lives with the knowledge that I forced them to shit their brains out one day.

        LK

  • Let us not forget. . . (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Bastian ( 66383 ) on Friday March 25, 2005 @09:47AM (#12045299)
    Let us not forget a couple of decades ago, when the news media were throwing a shitfit because Dungeons and Dragons was causing children to commit suicide.

    Let us also not forget that when somebody finally conducted a study to figure out if there is a connection, it showed that kids who play Dungeons and Dragons are less likely to commit suicide.
    • Let us not forget a couple of decades ago, when the news media were throwing a shitfit because Dungeons and Dragons was causing children to commit suicide.

      I heard that they even sometimes cause people to go crazy [imdb.com].
    • ...and it's no longer fashionable to blame Judas Priest or Ozzy Osbourne. I guess thier are deeper pockets to go after now.

      • Re:Let us not forget. . . (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Bastian ( 66383 ) on Friday March 25, 2005 @12:52PM (#12046951)
        I don't think the news media is going after deeper pockets. If they were, they would be trying to make money through litigation rather than viewership.

        What it comes down to is that the news attracts viewers (and money) by appealing two two things: people's prurient interests, and people's egos.

        Blaming the problems of America on some group is an excellent fall back that mixes both of these - you get some mind-porn in the form of talking about children killing each other or whatever, and you get to make people feel better about themselves by scapegoating it off onto some easy target that kids happen to like, thus helping people to avoid any serious introspection into why bad stuff happens and what they can do to fix it.
    • Let us also not forget that when somebody finally conducted a study to figure out if there is a connection, it showed that kids who play Dungeons and Dragons are less likely to commit suicide.

      I'm suprised anyone needs a study to show that. D&D is an escape from real life, which cna help make it more tolerable. I used both D&D and video games as escapes in school.
    • I played D&D for years and I don't remember anyone commiting suicide. I do remember one night we used the Player's Handbook to summon a Succubus, and because we knew her name and had a Spiritwrack spell ready she had to do everything we asked. And I mean EVERYTHING.

  • I love how every time there's a school shooting the figures of authority rush to blame Marilyn Manson, Grand Theft Auto or rap music. Does nobody in power realise that there is a problem that kids of 16 or even less can walk into stores and buy guns? Games don't kill people, bullets do.
    • The only problem is that kids under 16 can't buy guns. Other than that, you're dead on!
    • You have to be 21 (in most/all states) to buy a hand gun.
    • How about "Games don't kill people, people kill people?" A bullet is a tool. Tools don't do anything.
    • Uh, you do know where he got the gun in this case, right? Aparantly not. The kid used his grandpas police issue sidearm! His guardian was a cop. So any gun control points in this case are moot.

  • Quote is about an animation! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ender_Stonebender ( 60900 ) on Friday March 25, 2005 @10:01AM (#12045393) Homepage Journal
    Considering that the quote in the summary was actually about an animation that the shooter posted, not about how he actually went about shooting people... ...c'mon, guys. I mean, what the fuck? Really, take the time to read the whole article before misrepresenting it on Slashdot. In the end, it isn't entertainment media that's blamed, but the isolation of the small towns.

    --Ender
    • Yeah, I'm going to have to agree. The article is pretty even handed towards games, and the end of the article just notes some of the similarities between all the school shootings, maining focusing on the isolated communities as being a large cause.

  • Gangsta rap? (Score:3)

    by DamienMcKenna ( 181101 ) <{moc.annek-cm} {ta} {neimad}> on Friday March 25, 2005 @10:06AM (#12045420)
    Why don't they also blame gangsta rap? There's as much talk of guns in much of it.

    Damien
    • They do blame gangsta rap, but that's old news. The only news you see today is intended to examine bigger issues. Like the Schaivo case, where we see who has rights over your life when you are incapacitated. It's not the woman they care about (if they care at all) it's the underlying issue. Gangsta rap has been done on the media, so it's no longer 'news'. No one has been able to pin anything on video games conclusively (or remotely even) yet, so that's still a hot topic.

      The bottom line is that I've ne
      • It's not the woman they care about (if they care at all)

        I'd argue that its the parents and our idiot President and Congress and polititions of FL that don't care about the woman.

        Somehow I doubt to think of themselves in her position...would they want to continue like that? Hell, she's not even aware of her own existance anymore.
        • Her awareness is debatable. The parents say she can follow a light with her eyes (sometimes) and say that's proof she is aware. Her husband says the evidence is sketchy this means anything. As always, experts can be found that vehemently say either opinion.

          Don't really see what the president has to do with this. Politicians? Yeah. They've got lots of blame. But you can just put it on the pile.
          • Aemeba can follow light too, that doesn't mean they are aware of their existance. Funny how only the parents and the quack doctor they found seem to think she is. The vast number of doctors agree, she's gone.

            The President signed a bill that should have never even been crafted to begin with.
        • Exactly! She told numerous people repeatedly that she would never want to live like that. Neither my wife or myself have living wills, but all of our family members know we wouldn't want to live like that. Let some politician try to tell me I can't fullfil her wishes! Her family and the politicians only care about what is best for themeselves.
          • If you truely have the right to life and to do what you want with your life, that must also include the right to decide when you don't want to live anymore.

  • Losers R 1337 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DingerX ( 847589 ) on Friday March 25, 2005 @10:07AM (#12045425) Journal
    Interesting how the "authority" in the article repeated over and over that the kids who do these things do them to overcome being branded as "losers".
    He does have a few buried points about the nasty effects of conformism and homogeneity on adolescents: let's face it, if you set up and enforce a single system of human worth in a society, the community will seem very "safe", but there are gonna be as many "losers" as "winners". And "big losers" aren't going to have an easy time of finding an alternative value system that empowers them. Video games may provide the script, but then again so did John Ford.
    Homogenous communities are dangerous for just that reason: there's no social control at all on good old-fashioned deviants.

    Anyone have the link to the animation they're talking about (I don't wanna install IE/SW7)

  • It's not just shooting (Score:5, Funny)

    by Winckle ( 870180 ) <`ku.oc.elkcniw' `ta' `kram'> on Friday March 25, 2005 @10:11AM (#12045464) Homepage
    It's kinda hard for me to talk about this, but back when Mario bro's first came out, I couldn't stop playing it, but then I took it too far. I decided to see what Mario's magic mushrooms were really like, and from then on it was a downward spiral of jumping on turtles and falttening brown mushrooms, I've been clean for a few years now, and I hope that kids jsut don't get influenced in the same way I was.
  • What a total load of *explitive deleted*
    First up it does not matter one bit if the shooter immitated a game , if it had not of been a game it would of beena TV show , a relative , a historic event.
    These people obviously sufferd from some serious problems , and if i were to take a few hours to research i could site many many cases of imitation of historical masacres , or copycat killers etc.
    People will find someone to hold on to and they will use that .
    All this Doctorb(The b is for bar-stard)is doing is ri
    • Um, the article doesn't seem to say *anything* about imitating a game.

      It DOES compare what you see in games to his animation, as well as his chosen "pathway" through life. He idolized violent antiheros. He saw that course of action as the way to "prove" himself. He was a deeply disturbed kid, and the doctor is basically saying someone should have noticed.

      He was living a predictable pattern (like a "script") that finally culminated in killing other kids.

      I don't see any suggestion of cause and effect re
      • After rereading it perhaps you are right ,i was perhaps reading too much into it , though the suggestion of "Like a game" got me on edge.
        I think im just in a rather bad mood today so i apoligise if i am jumping down this doctors throat without cause

  • Sure it's the games (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Mycroft_514 ( 701676 ) on Friday March 25, 2005 @10:22AM (#12045546) Journal
    That's why my mother-in-law saw a shooting in school as a little girl - in the 1920's. Has to be the video games that caused it.

    • Re:Sure it's the games (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Ayaress ( 662020 ) on Friday March 25, 2005 @01:10PM (#12047097) Journal
      Something I'd pointed out before when a case like this came up: In my state, there was a school shooting in 1980 or 81. It made Columbine look like Sesame Street On Ice. Something like 90 people were hospitalized, and it came down to a gunfight with the police. The shooters (there were six of them, all social outcasts as if I had to point that out) were more organized than any of the ones on the news here. They positioned themselves so that there was no line-of-sight from outside to them, and blockaded themselves into a hallway.

      All the crimes that get blamed on video games have one thing in common: They have no special identifying characteristics. Had those six gunmen in 1980 been dressed in red and yelled, "Death to the Amerikanski!" they would have been called Communists and Russia would have been blamed. As it happened, they had long hair and thusly drugs were blamed.

      This guy was sick, in more ways than one. Look at his MSN [thesmokinggun.com] profile. That's not the result of somebody playing too many video games, it's a product of a very deeply disturbed mind.
      • Something I'd pointed out before when a case like this came up: In my state, there was a school shooting in 1980 or 81. It made Columbine look like Sesame Street On Ice. Something like 90 people were hospitalized, and it came down to a gunfight with the police. The shooters (there were six of them, all social outcasts as if I had to point that out) were more organized than any of the ones on the news here. They positioned themselves so that there was no line-of-sight from outside to them, and blockaded the
      • Interesting, can you provide a link to more information?
  • And you call this news? Wake me up when games are not held responsible for these kind of incidents, that would be news.

  • Bah! (Score:5, Funny)

    by marcus ( 1916 ) on Friday March 25, 2005 @11:00AM (#12045894) Journal
    Kids go to school by the millions.

    Perhaps schools are the reason(hint)?

    Every kid that has done this, has had parents.

    Hmm, parents are the problem(hint)?

    Millions of kids drink water evey day.

    Wait, every criminal ever coinvicted has been exposed to drinking water. That's it! NO More Water! NO More Crime!

    • Re:Bah! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by walt-sjc ( 145127 ) on Friday March 25, 2005 @12:13PM (#12046565)
      Hmm, parents are the problem(hint)?

      While you were modded funny, this is the REAL problem. Parents are disconnected with their kids. Too many kids grow up with both parents working full time (or only have one parent since our society seems to promote that situation today) and end up being raised by daycare / teachers / the street. Parents don't want to hear bad things about their kids. Parents don't discipline their kids. Parents let their kids do whatever they want.

      We also have tied the hands of public education - we can't discipline problem kids in any way. Bullying, taunting, etc. goes on everywhere and frequently gets out of control. Nothing ever happens until someone gets seriously injured or killed.
      • Parents don't want to hear bad things about their kids.

        I'd say this is the single biggest problem. Parents want to believe their child is special, in way that goes beyond "Hey, it's my kid." And instead of listening to objective data like poor grades and trying to figure out the root cause, they complain about the teachers. Or the material. Sure, some kids get poor grades because they're bored and they stop working. Some get 'em because they have issues (medical or otherwise) that need to be address
      • My secondary school used to have this problem. The teachers would tell-off certain children and then their parents would come to the school and shout at the teacher while their child watches on. In some cases, it nearly led to violence.

        There were a few children there who really got away with just about anything because the teachers seemed scared of their families. Two brothers in particular were amusing. One attached a brick to a piece of rope and walked around the school swinging it at people. Short suspe
  • If you read the article, it actually dosn't blame video games for the shooting. Furthermore, video games aren't even singled out as a bad influence; violent video games are lumped together with violent movies. In the discussions of violent video games influencing violent behaviour, people often say such things as "violent movies have been around for x years, why don't they cause people to go on rampages, Mr. Smarty Pants?" Well, it looks like someone out the agrees with them. It's violent culture that's bla

    • Re:RTFA, Not The Fucking Headline (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Sure because everyone scanning the site will do just that and not leave with that headline burned in their head. Thats what headlines are...sensationalistic taglines that are shaped to current trends. So for the 90% of people who dont read or skim thae article it still says games did it.

  • Enough already (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Damn this is a tired maneuver. Let's look at the situation and see what could have had the most impact:

    * He is part of the smallest and most disadvantaged minority.
    * He lives in poverty.
    * Statistically he has a high chance of a future of alcoholism.
    * His father killed himself.
    * His mother is in a coma in a nursing home.
    * He voluntarily was going to a psychiatrist.
    * Everyone commented that he was a loner, seemed troubled and in need of friends or help but never thought it would go this far (and never did mu

    • "He voluntarily was going to a psychiatrist."

      I fail to see how that would have any impact on his likelihood to run amok - outside of, possibly, a negative impact (i.e., making it LESS likely to happen).

  • He followed a movie-like script too!

    Also a book-like script!

    Clearly we should ban them all (sarcasm). Despite the fact that the article mentions movies, they clearly blame video games more. I just am at a loss to understand this.

    • Re:Absolute Garbage (Score:3, Interesting)

      by slavemowgli ( 585321 ) *
      I read an insightful comment regarding this on Slashdot after the Columbine incident. According to that comment, the reason (or one of the reasons) is simply that it's a case of competition:

      1. News stories are made/broadcast by the massmedia corporations.
      2. Massmedia corporations (usually) don't just broadcast news, but also lots of other shows.
      3. Those corporations rely on advertising for their revenue, so they have an interest in getting as many people as possible to watch their shows.
      4. Video games are
    • And a play-like script...going out and killing a bunch of people and then offing yourself sounds more like Shakespeare than any video game I've played. I can't think of any game that will let me turn a non-explosive weapon on myself. All the video-game avatars I've played are more in the realm of "shoot the enemy, but try to stay alive".
  • People hate to think that other people, especially kids, are capable of evil like this. They will always look for the cause and try to find something to blame. Video games have been blamed for a long time as they are an easy target. In order to succeed one must commit violent acts with weapons. Plain and simple.

    What these experts don't ever mention is the endless hours spent playing "Cowboys and Indians" by generations past. Playing "War" isn't new, it's just that there is new technology to play war with

  • Shameful. (Score:2, Funny)

    by Jakeypants ( 860350 )
    I'm more concerned about the games that let you defecate on people.
  • "If you're going to scapegoat in the wake of a tragedy, who better than the entertainment industry?"

    Because thinking is too hard.

    We treat our student bodies like prison populations. Should be we be all that surprised when they start to act like it? If "Hell is other people," what does that say about legally mandating student attendance ("or else")?

    However, public schooling is a more popular daycare/warehousing solution than television and/or video games, so it won't do to question it.

  • In a sense he's right (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Geoffreyerffoeg ( 729040 ) on Friday March 25, 2005 @12:26PM (#12046697)
    He's right, but he has his logic kinda backwards. If (hypothetically) I were to go on a school shooting, I'd follow what I know from FPSes. But does that mean that because I know how FPSes want you to shoot stuff, that I'd do so in real life? No.

    Or how about this: suppose a bioweapons researcher went rampant and decided to kill a few people. I'd bet that he'd use some bacterial agent instead of using a gun (it's hard to get a significant number of kills with a gun in real life). But does that mean that these researchers are likely to poison people? No.

    It doesn't even say anything about whether researchers or gamers are more likely to kill people. It just says how they would once they've decided to kill people in the first place. And that's the problem we should be worrying about.
    • And you can get the same kind of wild human, instinctual training automatically. Exchange guns with a bow and arrows and chances are you wouldn't stand out in the open if you were trying to kill something that could fight back alone. If you think that FPS games really 'teach' people even a sliver of information on how to go into combat, you obviously don't get into many fist fights in the real world.

      Think of it this way. If you had to mow a square shaped lawn with the shortest distance walked and with the s

  • Weise's LiveJournal and Flash Animation (Score:3, Informative)

    by Caseyscrib ( 728790 ) on Friday March 25, 2005 @01:43PM (#12047375)
    His LiveJournal can be found here, [livejournal.com] and his user info with a list of friends is here [livejournal.com].

    The article on thesmokinggun.com that MSNBC mentions is here, [thesmokinggun.com] which includes an archived link to the flash clip Weise made about shooting people. Also, his band's message board was located at http://6sik6.proboards25.com/, but it has since been taken down. No Google Cache of it either.

    Kind of scary stuff... for the most part he seemed like a fairly normal kid.

  • This is another example of some meathead in the press "reporting" his ideas, even if he has to ask preloaded questions to get his (or her) idea across in the story.

    Dr. Newman has written a book "Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings" which points out one of the principle facts in this case: advance warning signs get ignored.

    She doesn't seem to blame games, but the "reportor" sure seems bent on linking blame to games.

    It is the ignoring of the warnings that leads to the violence. Well that
  • He made a flash animation too. Clearly, Flash is the problem!

    Now I'm worried, since I spend 4 out of 8 hours a day in Flash. Thank god photoshop and BBEdit, where I spend the rest of my day, haven't yet been conclusively linked to violence.

    Won't somebody please think of the web developers?
  • While I agree with most of the crowd here that it wasn't the games that made him do it, I'm wondering what people think about the tactics employed in the games.

    I mean, sure there's obvious dumb ones that would never work in real life (rocket jumping, bunny hopping, etc), but the more realistic these games get, the more realistic the tactics get. Why else would the army use them as part of their squad training?

    I mean, you learn some important things, such as Line of Sight, how to sneak up on people, how to

  • ...where the object is to die at the end.

    So where did he learn suicide?

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