Halo 3 Criticized In Murder Conviction
oldwindways writes "An Ohio teen was found guilty of murdering his mother and shooting his father in the head after they took away his copy of Halo 3. One has to wonder if this is going to have any effect on the games industry. Clearly, the AP thought they could stir up something controversial by asking the IP owner for a statement: 'Microsoft, which owns the intellectual property for the game, declined to comment beyond a statement saying: "We are aware of the situation and it is a tragic case."' I suppose the good news is they did not accept his insanity plea, so no one can claim that Halo 3 drove him insane. Even so, I don't think anything good can come out of this for gamers." Unfortunately, it seems somebody can claim that the game was a contributing factor; the judge who presided over this case said he believes that the 17-year-old defendant "had no idea at the time he hatched this plot that if he killed his parents, they would be dead forever." GamePolitics has further details from the judge's statement. It doesn't help that the boy's lawyers used video game addiction as a defense.
Hence he flipped when they took away what he was obsessing over, and as far as I'm aware, it's quite a common occurance with obsessive people to lash out once their focus has been removed and there's also a large number of scientific documents written up about it.
Bollocks to him not knowing "that they'd be dead forever", he will have played the single player and would know enemies don't respawn.
The gun was his fathers as well, but he got hold of the key to the lockbox it was stored in, not to mention his promise of a suprise is pretty fucking grim as well, he knew exactly what he was doing.
This shit's only going to stop once the generation who is sat on the bench, is writing the newspapers, and is making the laws, have grown up with games and understand them. Currently the majority of people in positions like this judge have never played a game and have absolutely no understanding of how people interact with and are influenced by them
Sounds like the defense lawyer using the judge/jury's lack of knowledge about games to try and get his client off. Tried 'the game made him insane' and when they weren't stupid enough to fall for that tried the equally ridiculous 'people don't die for real in the game'.
Even when the current generation grow up though, there are still going to be a lot of people who never play games, plus more who think it's all Wii Sports and Brain Training and that people who play shooting games are violent people. If you showed neophytes some scenes from games, they'd probably find it quite shocking compared to regular television.
To some, it seems an entirely logical progression that acting out violent fantasies in a game is a precursor to acting them out in real life, and when asked if a game would make them do stuff like that argue that they wouldn't want to play a game like that in the first place.
Pisses me off that judges/magistrates etc are called upon to make decisions that effect peoples lives, victims and perpetrators and their families, and they know so little about so much of the world around them.
Pisses me off even more that the lawyer tried such bollocks to get his client off. I couldn't be a criminal defence lawyer. The money is great, but my conscience, for all it's twisted and a bit threadbare state, wouldn't allow me to stand up and tell lies on behalf of someone I knew or even thought was guilty.
Halo 3 Criticized In Murder Conviction
