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Anti-Video Game Factions Release Scapegoat 4
By crooky | November 7, 2008
This might seem like a minor issue but today, Vancouver and Toronoto Future Shop stores are cancelling their Gears of War 2 launch festivities. Why? Because some kid in Ontario had a fight with his parents about a video game (Call of Duty 4) last month, the kid ran away from home and was recently found dead in the woods. [READ] While I am shocked by the fact that big, bad Future Shop (subsidiary of Best Buy) would care enough to delay marketing activities on a game that will sell millions of copies - I am left wondering what the connection is between video games and the death of Brandon Crisp. In my opinion, there’s no connection - just another excuse for the media to use the video game industry as a whipping boy when some teenager does something really stupid.
Jack Thompson, former Floria Attorney (recently disbarred for his antics), made a career of trying to bring class-action lawsuits against video game publishers for creating what he called “murder simulators”. [READ] The first of these lawsuits tried to link a 1997 high school shooting in Kentucky to the fact that the psychotic teenaged killer played a lot of first person shooter video games (like Doom, Quake and Redneck Rampage). This suit was tossed out in 2001 but was the first in a long line of lawsuits with lawyers trying to pin all the crazy shit that teenagers do on video games.
I feel really terrible for the Crisp family but who’s to blame when a teenager runs away from home and winds up dead? The video game company that made the game they were fighting about? What if they had been fighting about what time the kid needed to go to bed? Would all mattress and bedding stores stop selling their wares for the next week out of respect for the family?
I also heard on the radio this morning that police are complaining that technology is making their jobs harder. For example, they were complaining that juvenile suspects in a recent assault case were text messaging each other while in police custody to corraborate their stories before being interrogated. The police put the blame on technology. I put the blame on police for not confiscating their fucking cell phones when they were taken into custody. They further complained that a recent murder case had become complicated when friends of a murdered teenager had been speculating about who the killer was on the deceased’s Facebook page.
All of these incidents lead me to the conclusion that it is much easier to put the blame for society’s ills on technology and video games than it is to be a responsible parent that keeps guns out of your kids’ hands or keeps them from running off into the woods. It’s easier to blame telecommunications technology when your officers are too stupid to confiscate a communications device from a suspect.
Topics: Technology |
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November 7th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
I never filed a single class action lawsuit. Never. You have no idea what you are talking about. You gamers simply read some nonsense on the Internet and regurgitate as if it were Gospel. Any of you gamers ever fact check ANYTHING? Jack Thompson
November 7th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Hi Jack,
I’m not a big fan of yours but I’m willing to engage in civil dialogue with you on this. Did you not file a lawsuit on behalf of the parents of three children killed in the Heath High School shooting in 1997? Is that not classified as a class action lawsuit?
I hope you’re enjoying your time off and that you’ll rethink some of your stances on video games. Your passion and zeal could be better utilized helping parents raise their kids right.
November 7th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
Once and Future Attorney, you smell like a troll, and write like a troll. Next time avoid the uppercase — it helps with the smell /sarcasm