TK = TeacherKiller

[EUR KickAsses]

Hey folks!

I have the desire to inform you about what happened in Erfurt, Germany on Friday, 26.04.2002, if you don?t already know.
A 19 year old schoolboy killed 2 schoolmates, 14 teachers and a policeman with a handgun at his former school. He finally killed himself.
This is a tragedy. The boy had major problems - and no help.
Personally I never had the feeling that such a person might be out there in the gamers community I played with. Maybe I?m wrong.
I?m a gamer like most of you, maybe a bit older than the rest. If someone of you in this community needs somebody to talk to - I will listen.
I?m sure this is something most of you will do as well.
I just felt the urgent need to put this into words.

See You

P.S. Thank you Grifter!

[Grifter]

Anytime Kick's.

Guys, this is a serious subject, so if you have something real to say about it, please go ahead... but if you mock on it, I'll clean them up... I know this doesn't apply to 95% of you.  But I just wanted it to be known ahead of time.

Kick is trying to broach a serious subject in a very not so serious place.  That takes guts.

[Bondo]

I think it is the fiery tempered type that we need to worry about most, the ones who seem to have so many troubles that they lose the game aspect of it. ?The problem is with these overly emotional people when they mix with an adrenaline boosting activity such as violent FPSs.

[:V:*Beast]

EUR-clan has some more info on that subject
http://www.EUR-clan.com

[Brain]

i believe that ?in order to play games like this, you need to have a grip on reality. if you think that r6 and rs are any indication of how to act, then you have problems

there is no doubt that if this happened in the US there would be so called "experts" comming out of the woodwork in order to condem first preson shooters as the tools of the devil and show the shooting as proof of how these games should be regulated or banned

in any case this shooting does not boed well for our community
i feel both sickened and saddened by this insident

[Bondo]

there is no doubt that if this happened in the US there would be so called "experts" comming out of the woodwork in order to condem first preson shooters as the tools of the devil and show the shooting as proof of how these games should be regulated or banned

Again?

Anyway, I read a book by this army guy titled "Stop teaching our kids to kill" or something like that. ?Anyway, I've never seen weaker arguing from a so called professional in my life. ?The book was pure bullshit, kind of like someone saying the Xbox is better than the Gamecube. ?But I digress. ?One odd thing is he was talking about kids torturing animals, since when has that been something that happens. ?Sure, I may kill a moth fairly brutally but I don't think that it has become "cool" to take real animals (pests don't count as animals) and do sick things to them. ?Anyway, my solution to stop these school shootings is to legalize suicide and encourage it when someone plans on killing someone else.  I'm talking over the counter cyanide tablets.

[theN00b]

This is horrible. I know I am replying kinda late, but it is still horrible. These incidents make me sick beyond beleif! I hope nothing like this happens again. But what I am also wondering, is where they got the guns? I mean Germany has pretty tough gun control laws, and these guns were not your typical hunting rifle.
Weren't they automatics? I don't know I have been paying more attention to Chechnya and Palestine. But this is still horrible. I never imagined something like this happenening in Germany of all places. This act makes my stomach turn. I am utterly utterly disgusted!

[BTs_Mysterio]

I personally don't think someone who is a maniac ploting a killing spree is among us, but we really dont know. It's sort of scary to think, maybe one of your friends on ?GR could be. I hope no such person is among our gaming community on GR.

I saw the news reports on the shooting and its a terrible tragity each time these type of things happen.

[Klatu]

I don't play this game but my son does. I'm close to 50 years old and the reason I'm posting is mainly because i don't want to fall into a knee jerk reaction about the last shooting in Germay. I keep hearing persistant things and convincing reports about First person Shooters and I was considering jerking my sons game off the computer. No i don't think he will run out a blow somones head off i'm more concerned about what i heard a military psychologist decsribe about these games being the equivalent of training, training to kill. He used this analogy " if I had a game which simulated rape would you let your kids play that?" So the issue for me is do these games simulate reality and become so engrossing that it is no longer a "game" in the classic sense, like say chess but really  more like simulation training and the result is desensitzing the psyche making for someone whose natural human empathy is damaged hence making it easy to kill without remorse. Comments? Why should I not purge the game?

[Ace]

Klatu, I think it comes down to if you have faith in the fact that your son has been raised well with good morals and values. If your son is a well set individual, he will realize that it is just a game. A large majority of the computer games today involve violence of some sort or another. I know I have played many of these games. But because of the way I was raised, I realize this is a wrong way to act in real life.

To play the devil's advocate, if you would purge those games, would you not let your son play a game like Risk which is generally assumed to be a good, normal boardgame. Along the same lines, you could argue that Risk teaches him to try and take over the world. I realize this sounds ridiculous, but doesn't it sound a little absurd to think that your son would go kill someone because he does it in a video game?

[Klatu]

Ace, My kid IS a nut, but so am I, and i think your point is well taken. I'm not really concerned about simple play acting of what you see in a game. i think strategy is damn good learnin' and i notice that if i refresh myself in chess for a few days i begin to approach lifes problems in the same way that i would approach a problem in Chess; plan strike and couterstrike, try to see consequences and paths of retreat etc, all valuable things in encountering all kinds of problems. so to reiterate, i don't fear a simple mimicking of the game but i fear the possible desensitizing and loss of empathy and maybe too an uncreative and destructive way to encounter problems. Thanks for your response and i do think you hit a salient point, If i attempt to do my fatherly duty it can only go so far anyway and in the final analysis it is as you say, the way you were brought up. Still i got some questions, like those above.

[Bondo]

Klatu, I think the military psychologist you are talking about is none other than the Col. Grossman who wrote the book I was deriding in my earlier post.  The quote sounded familiar.  Having read his book, his argument really isn't that strong.  I don't think we need to censor our games, we need to make psychological treatment easier to get and less of a taboo.  If you go to see a psychiatrist or whatever, you are looked at as a crazy or wierd person.  That is not going to convince people to get help.

[Grifter]

Ace,
You make a good point about where to draw the line, but I think the issue is more about desensativing (is that a word?) the violence.

Klatu,
As a soon to be father, I think you are asking the exact correct question.  And I have to agree with Ace completely when he talks about how your son is raised and what kind of person he is.  At the risk of sounding insensative (because it kinda is), I'd say you'd have to consider your son's state of mind.  Objectivly.  If your son displays anti-social or sociopathic traits, then yes, anything that promotes violence would probably not be good for him.  But if your son is a normally adjusted kid whom you've talked to about right and wrong and really knows the difference.... then games like Rogue Spear (arguably one of the most realistic first person shooters out) are probably less of an impact then cartoons or TV.  Remember all the times we watched good old Tom get blown up with roman candles or shot when we were kids?  Are video games really any different?  

Sociopaths have always been with us, and always will be.  Attributing their actions to violent video games today is as reckless as attributing it to the Three Stooges or Tom and Jerry or Bug's Bunny for earlier generations.  I think it's just another symptom of people alyways trying to make sense out of what doesn't make sense (or just find something to blame).  You and I grew up knowing that those were just cartoons and play acting.  Kids today know the same thing about video games (talking to them to confirm this is always a good idea, but you being here tells me that you would've already done that).

To be quite blunt and crass about it.... if little Johnny is going to go blow somebody's head off, he's going to do it sooner or later... if he decides on a theme or scene from a video game, it's no different then if he got it from TV, a book, a comic, a cartoon... ect et al..... he's still going to do it because something's messed up in his wiring and nobody caught on in time.

Also, congrats on coming here and looking over the world your son inhabits in his wanderings (I'm assuming you didn't wind up here by chance, but that your son is a member of this community).  

Hope this helped.

[Bondo]

Also, congrats on coming here and looking over the world your son inhabits in his wanderings (I'm assuming you didn't wind up here by chance, but that your son is a member of this community). ?

Hope this helped.

I can imagine it now..."DAD (whiny son voice), why did you have to go and post in my gaming forums, I'll be the laughing stock of the place now."  Ok, maybe not.

[Klatu]

Damn you guys are good. Bondo, Grifter. Is this teamwork something you learned with this game. Ok I'm already looking for a back door but I sitll have to ask do these games desensitize you? (I think I spelled it right that time ) In the same or similar way that Chess encourages me to tackle problems in a practiced, trained way? i've got no problem with strategy games, it's the creepy mindless blowing away of enemies that looks bad for a dad. I can't say, I have not played the game, so i'm asking, not telling.

[Bondo]

Well, I still practically piss my pants playing a game like Resident Evil and I also strugle to play games like Duke Nukem or Doom where you have the monster noices around the corner.  So that may be a sign that I haven't been desensitized.  That or I'm just a pansy.  I guess I don't really think about the fact that when I hit someone with a panzer in Return to Castle Wolfenstein that they are turned into goo rather I just move on, but that is because I have a solid grasp on the fact that it is a game.  I still prefer Nintendo games to any others where the worst thing you do is hop on another guy's head or such nonsense.  I think to some degree it is those who only play violent games and nothing else that could be slightly more questionable (when added to details Grift talked about.

[Ace]

Klatu, these types of games desensitize me no more than TV or even sports like hockey or football for that matter. Yeah, I'll laugh at some guy getting 18 bullets pumped into him in RS, but I am still as taken back as you are by unfortunate real life incidents. I can't even compare the two in my mind.

As for calling it the mindless blowing away of enemies, yes there is some aspect of that but it also takes a fair amount of skill and strategy. Newbies will usually run right into a trap that a veteran player has set through smart positioning and thinking. I don't think it teaches you any profound life skills, but it's not mindless.

[Grifter]

My honest opinion.... nope.  Doesn't have anywhere near the effects on me as TV or movies.  People here (in the game) talk more about out smarting each other and (not in even close to these words) coming up with great strategies.  I can't ever remembering anyone talking about the blood or the killing so much... it's just the goal of the game.

I think rugby was much more desenitizing then these games, and we wont even talk about football.  No, I think a normal, well adjusted kid will see them for exactly what they are... a game.  To be won or lost, but played well.

What I wont say is that playing RS has any of the benefits of promoting logical thought patterns in young kids...  There is some thinking involved in playing these games.. but reflex matters, and it's not nearly the thinking that goes into chess (if you want to win).

[Klatu]

Well it's been a while since I've pissed my pants, maybe too long. So you just blow and go and it doesn't effect your outlook when some button pusher gets under your skin, you don't visualize taking him out in a trained, reflexive, routine way? I know that question sounds naive and patently silly, but like I said earlier, I'm asking.
Re the military psychologist, I don't know who it was, a weird looking American or maybe English guy who popped up on Deutche Welle program.

[Klatu]

OK i relent. I'm glad I came I've done my fatherly duty, somewhat anyway. If my kid is playing with the rational types you all seem to be than I'm  OK with it.  So he can play, I hope my kid splatters you all over those grungy walls, picks up the pieces and barbeques em over a smoldering spit, takes your remaining intestines and fashions them into a hoola hoop. Just kidding. Peace