Russian Media Link Moscow Bombing With Modern Warfare 2 Scene

An anonymous reader tips news that following the airport bombing in Moscow earlier this week, the Russia media is linking the attack to a scene from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 in which a number of civilians were gunned down inside an airport. "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has become a shocking reality ... with so many people seemingly downloading, playing or watching this game, you have to consider whether or not anybody actually thought this game could so closely resemble reality,' said a Russia Today news presenter in the report. It also included comments from US terrorism expert Walid Phares, who said it was possible that computer games might influence the strategies employed by terrorists. Phares, who is director of Future Terrorism Project at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said: 'The issue is we need to know if terrorists or extremists are using these videos or DVDs or games to basically apply the model.' 'I think those who have been radicalized already – that is supposed in this case jihadists, Al-Qaeda or other kind – they look at the games and say these games will serve them to train.'" As we discussed when the game came out, Activision edited out the controversial scene from the Russian version. Violent video games have been taking a similar beating in the US after the shooting in Arizona earlier this month.

Re:Must surely be correct

[noidentity]

Games might affect the exact target of these extremists, but they are not the cause of their extremism. It's their extremism that is leads them to kill innocent people. I can't help but think of water precipitating in the atmosphere. "It's that grain of dust that caused that drop to precipitate! If it hadn't been for that grain of dust, this drop wouldn't have precipitated somewhere else."

Seems like their blame on games is like when there's a bully that nobody wants to deal with, so their anger towards him is directed at other things. Like if the bully threatens to beat someone up if anyone goes near the soda machines, you blame the kid who went near the soda machines for causing someone to get beat up, because you're too cowardly to confront the bully.