This could become a high profile trial

February 24th, 2013 at 10:00 am by David Farrar

Rob Kidd at Stuff reports:

An online gamer is accused of killing his cyber-rival after losing a fantasy game where they were pitted against each other in battle.

The violent blurring of the virtual and real worlds came after the pair had spent several hours playing an online game, each in his own house kilometres apart.

The Sunday Star-Times cannot reveal the names of the accused killer nor his victim, where the homicide took place or when, because the details may prejudice an eventual trial.

However, police have confirmed they believe the most likely motive for the attack was the game which the pair played in the hours immediately before the attack.

There may be a guilty plea of course, but if it goes to trial I think there will be international attention on it. Very sad for the families concerned.

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6 Responses to “This could become a high profile trial”

backster (1,777) Says:
February 24th, 2013 at 10:16 am
Somewhat different to the Open Justice system operating in South Africa.
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iMP (1,307) Says:
February 24th, 2013 at 10:50 am
I don’t agree. It gives journos a fresh angle to explore for a week, but after that, be just another murder.

http://conzervative.wordpress.com/2013/02/24/cyber-death-the-computer-dunnit/
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Silly Will Bunions (137) Says:
February 24th, 2013 at 12:06 pm
Let’s be at least specific enough to mention that it is actually New Zealand, not somewhere overseas.
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Fletch (4,303) Says:
February 24th, 2013 at 12:47 pm
But, that’s not possible!
Every liberal knows that video games don’t cause violence.

Or maybe they do have to take some share of the blame…

The Hartford Courant reported on Sunday that during a search of Newtown grade-school killer Adam Lanza’s home after the shootings, “police found thousands of dollars worth of graphically violent video games.” Detectives are exploring whether Adam Lanza might have been emulating the shooting range or a video-game scenario as he moved from room to room at Sandy Hook Elementary.

In California, 20-year-old Ali Syed went on a carjacking and shooting rampage, killing three before turning the gun on himself. Syed was a loner and a “gamer” who spent hours holed up in his room, Orange County authorities said. “He took one class at college and he did not work, so that gives him most of the day and evening and most of the time in his free time he was playing video games,” reported county sheriff’s spokesman Jim Amormino.
After Newtown, President Obama and other officials insisted the country needed a “dialogue” about “gun violence,” but there’s been remarkably little exploration of the role of video games and even less of movie and TV violence.

Rep. Frank Wolf of Virginia requested a study from the National Science Foundation, and was disappointed that Obama’s State of the Union only focused on gun control. “While I recognize the potential constitutional issues involved in tackling media violence, mental health parity and gun control, I am disappointed that mental health issues and media violence were left out of the president’s address,” Wolf said.

The NSF report acknowledged that a link between violent media and real-world violence can be contentious, but explained “Anders Breivik, who murdered 69 youth in Norway, claims he used the video game ‘Modern Warfare 2’ as a military simulator to help him practice shooting people. Similarly, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who murdered 13 fellow students in Colorado, claimed they used the violent video game ‘Doom’ to practice their shooting rampage.”

No, Virginia, not everyone who’s ever played a violent video game is an assassin in training. “However, a comprehensive review of more than 381 effects from studies involving more than 130,000 participants around the world shows that violent video games increases aggressive thoughts, angry feelings, physiological arousal (e.g., heart rate, blood pressure), and aggressive behavior.”

As researcher Brad Bushman of Ohio State University stated in a “PBS NewsHour” story on violent video games, “correlation doesn’t imply causation,” but the correlation is disturbing enough. Does it make sense for policy makers to go around suggesting that gun makers be held liable for school shootings, but fail to suggest the same for say, Microsoft Game Studios, which makes “Gears of War” series, spotlighted by PBS as especially bloody?

Neither gun makers or video-game makers intend their products for mass shootings, but politicians like Obama have singled out the gun makers and gone soft on their entertainment-industry campaign donors. Somehow, Democrats isolate the inherent evil of a gun almost as if it’s self-shooting, while denying our violent media has any influence on these under-21 shooters.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-bozell/2013/02/23/bozell-column-dialogue-required-violent-video-games
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tristanb (1,114) Says:
February 24th, 2013 at 2:15 pm
@Fletch
The only person responsible is the guy who did the killing. I hate when “liberals” like you set out to shift blame to something else.
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EverlastingFire (288) Says:
February 24th, 2013 at 2:36 pm
Video games don’t “cause violence”, people that carry out violent acts do. If this story gets any more attention than it has, it will be purely for political gain.
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