Too much of an obession with video games

[Hobie-wan]

I imagine all of the people who committed all of those crimes would've probably still committed them over something equally stupid had video games not existed.

Indeed 30 years ago someone might have blamed the TV as distracting them from watching their child. 60 years ago they might blame a cigarette break, if they had even bothered to leave the room the child was in.

[o.pwuaioc]

One by one:

United States:In February 2002, a Louisiana woman sued Nintendo because her son died after suffering seizures caused by playing Nintendo 64 for eight hours a day, six days a week. Nintendo denied any responsibility.

Where's the science?

In August 2004, Troy Victorino and three accomplices entered a home on Telford Lane in Deltona, FL and tortured and murdered Erin Belanger and 5 other people who were in the home at the time of the attack. Victorino's motive for the attack was to retrieve his Xbox, which Belanger had failed to return after evicting Victorino from the home prior to the attack.

People do this all the time. If not an XBOX (an expensive item even in 2004), then jewelry, TVs, drugs, computers...basically anything expensive and useful.

Press reports in November 2005 state that Gregg J. Kleinmark, 24, plead "guilty to two counts of involuntary manslaughter". He "left fraternal twins Drew and Bryn Kleinmark unattended in a bathtub for 30 minutes, in order to go three rooms away and play on his Game Boy Advance" while "in the mean time, the two ten-months old kids drowned".

Facebook has also been blamed for this, and Hobie just listed two other examples. Bad parents will always be bad parents regardless of whether video games are involved. Proof: he could have taken the GBA into the bathroom.

New Mexico woman Rebecca Colleen Christie was convicted of second degree murder and child abandonment, and sentenced to 25 years in prison, for allowing her 3 and a half-year-old daughter to die of malnutrition and dehydration while occupied with chatting and playing World of Warcraft online.

See above.

Tyrone Spellman, 27, of Philadelphia, was convicted of third-degree murder for killing his 17-month old daughter in a rage over a broken Xbox.

Once again, it's the expense. If not an XBOX, perhaps a laptop, TV, or DVD player?

Ohio teen Daniel Petric shot his parents, killing his mother, after they took away his copy of Halo 3 in October 2007. In a sentencing hearing after the teen was found guilty of aggravated murder, the judge said, "I firmly believe that Daniel Petric had no idea at the time he hatched this plot that if he killed his parents they would be dead forever."[84][85] On 16 June 2009, Petric was sentenced to 23 years to life in prison.[86][87]

Kid needs a reality check - but if he were in ancient Greece, would the Greek myths have given him the same delusion? Or what about the preachers preaching Jesus' miracles of raising people from the dead?

Honestly, I think the judge is delusional about the kid's thoughts. I played games - even violent ones - and I never thought that dead people would just automatically come back to life.

In Jacksonville, Florida, Alexandra Tobias pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for shaking her baby to death. She told investigators that the baby boy's crying had interrupted her while she was playing a Facebook game called FarmVille. She was sentenced in December 2010.[88]

If not Farmville, then TV show, movie, nap time, whatever.

In November 2010 in South Philadelphia, Kendall Anderson, 16, killed his mother for taking away his PlayStation by hitting her 20 times with a claw hammer while she slept.[89]

Kids, albeit rarely, kill their parents, and this has been going on before the advent of video games, and very rarely they're not related to games at all. Cf. the recent story of the kid who killed his parents and then had a party.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/hammer-teen-to ... d=14118698

Are parties now bad? The kid has serious problems. So too does Kendall Anderson. Games can be substituted for anything.

[MrPopo]

Ohio teen Daniel Petric shot his parents, killing his mother, after they took away his copy of Halo 3 in October 2007. In a sentencing hearing after the teen was found guilty of aggravated murder, the judge said, "I firmly believe that Daniel Petric had no idea at the time he hatched this plot that if he killed his parents they would be dead forever."[84][85] On 16 June 2009, Petric was sentenced to 23 years to life in prison.[86][87]

Kid needs a reality check - but if he were in ancient Greece, would the Greek myths have given him the same delusion? Or what about the preachers preaching Jesus' miracles of raising people from the dead?

Honestly, I think the judge is delusional about the kid's thoughts. I played games - even violent ones - and I never thought that dead people would just automatically come back to life.

That judge's quote needs more context. Is he saying that the kid didn't understand consequences because he's a kid, or is he saying that the kid didn't understand consequences because of Halo?

[o.pwuaioc]

Ohio teen Daniel Petric shot his parents, killing his mother, after they took away his copy of Halo 3 in October 2007. In a sentencing hearing after the teen was found guilty of aggravated murder, the judge said, "I firmly believe that Daniel Petric had no idea at the time he hatched this plot that if he killed his parents they would be dead forever."[84][85] On 16 June 2009, Petric was sentenced to 23 years to life in prison.[86][87]

Kid needs a reality check - but if he were in ancient Greece, would the Greek myths have given him the same delusion? Or what about the preachers preaching Jesus' miracles of raising people from the dead?

Honestly, I think the judge is delusional about the kid's thoughts. I played games - even violent ones - and I never thought that dead people would just automatically come back to life.

That judge's quote needs more context. Is he saying that the kid didn't understand consequences because he's a kid, or is he saying that the kid didn't understand consequences because of Halo?

That's true, too. But even then, as a teenager, I never once thought that someone would just come back to life. If the kid actually thought that, he has some serious problems. It's not like he was too young to conceive of such things - teenagers aren't that undeveloped mentally.

[MrPopo]

That's true, too. But even then, as a teenager, I never once thought that someone would just come back to life. If the kid actually thought that, he has some serious problems. It's not like he was too young to conceive of such things - teenagers aren't that undeveloped mentally.

If you think shooting your parents is acceptable then you ARE that underdeveloped, mentally.

[Erik_Twice]

It's a bunch of bullshit. Nothing new here.

Now, books? Those are the real evil if you ask me =p


The only thing I'm worried is about Skinner boxes. And not because people fail into them, but because it makes for shitty games. .

[vlame]

She needs to lay off the Wikipedia.

[Zing]

All those examples simply show that there are some really stupid people out there. No, not just stupid. Retarded and/or psychotic. And neither are related to video games or any other hobby.

There simply must be more to these stories. The 10 month olds drowning in a tub because the father was playing GBA? I have a daughter (now almost 6) and it is extremely unlikely she could have drowned in a bathtub when she was 10 months old. Children that age are preparing to walk.

I also cannot fathom how anyone could reach teenage years and not understand that shooting someone would kill them.

Any story related to shaking or hitting a baby, I can see happening.

[Hobie-wan]

There simply must be more to these stories. The 10 month olds drowning in a tub because the father was playing GBA? I have a daughter (now almost 6) and it is extremely unlikely she could have drowned in a bathtub when she was 10 months old. Children that age are preparing to walk.

It is possible to drown in as little as an inch of water if you're knocked out lying face down in it. Maybe the kids hadn't been allowed to crawl around much and build up their muscles yet. Maybe they slipped and hit their head. Maybe genius started running the water and walked out of the bathroom so it kept filling up and they were face down and couldn't flip over as the water got over a foot deep.

[Zing]

My point is that these "reports" are like a game of telephone spread out over several years. You have the initial reports which are sensationalized. You have the victims and/or defendants covering their ass, exaggerating, or leaving out important details. Then you have people entering the details into wikipedia after gleaning them from media that thrive off of drama.