I
think that our last two “heated” class discussions are very closely linked in
many cases, though we have yet to really touch on it. Many games where players
customize their own avatar and play with them as though they are actually in
the game are centered on violence. Some examples of this are Call of Duty,
Grand Theft Auto or Gears of War. These games allow the player to essentially
travel into a new body and become a killer, and in the case of GTA, a car
thief. These games certainly offer a catharsis for the player, and are a very
useful tool for certain people to vent anger and frustration in a manner that
causes no real destruction. What concerns me is when this game stops becoming a
game. When do you play so much Call of Duty that you actually begin to lose
sight of reality?
These articles
talk about a boy of 18 who purchased and played versions of Grand Theft Auto all
day every day for around four months. He played so much that he actually
believed he was in the game. He shot “two police officers and a dispatcher to
death in 2003, mirroring violent acts depicted in the popular game.” That’s
right. He actually killed three people because he believed his life was Grand
Theft Auto. “After his capture, Moore is reported to have told police,
"Life is like a video game. Everybody's got to die sometime."
There
really is no way to address this. A huge lawsuit was filed and a lot of money
changed hands, but that does not even come close to handling the issue. Three
people died because someone played an overly violent game to a point where his
version of reality was completely blurred. The kid had no criminal record at
all, and was so good that he killed two police officers and a dispatcher and
stole a police cruiser in under a minute. We can’t take away games, we can’t
censor them or how much people play them. I really cannot even come close to a
solution. I just know that this makes almost no sense to me, is a problem, and
was worth bringing forward.
Agreed that taking video games involving violence to an extreme is bad, and I don't believe that there can be any real solution to this problem without some sort of intervention, but differing from the class discussion, I firmly believe it should be the parents responsibility to monitor their child. I think there had to be some sort of problem and or situation in which the kid was 18 years old yet doing nothing beneficial such as going to school or finding work for 4 months. There can be no real explanation, but I would be interested to see his family situation. Just a thought.
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