May 3, 2007
Yesterday's big story concerned a Texas senior who created a Counter-strike level based on his high school.Today's poll asks you to vote on how the incident should have been handled.
-Should Paul Hwang have been arrested?
-Should he have been disciplined by school authorities?
-Or was he simply exercising his right to be creative using the tools provided by the game?
The poll is located in the upper right sidebar of GP's main page, so be sure to cast your vote.
Joystiq by the way, has obtained screen shots (left) of Hwang's maps.
Comments
Continuing from the last comment:
Every one who play counter strike should make more real places and show off their good map making skills. No mater who you are, where ever you are, make map of real places and use it as a message to the paranoid. People in the same community, make multiple maps of the same location individually to show supports of free speech.
To any one from the school that kid is from:
Stand up for one of your own. You are all peer and should stand up for your human rights. Show some action to bring that poor boy back to your school. Petition, boycott, or any non-violence way to stand up to the oppressor in your education system.
he started making this map 4 years b4 the shooting...released it 2 months before the shooting...arrested for it 1 day after the shooting
It's easier when you're first learning to mod and use the tools to make something you already know first hand IRL. Later on when you master the tools you can create something you've visualized in your head.
If there aren't any other warning signs for the kid (and there aren't, in this case), then there shouldn't be any problem. It's much ado about nothing.
Nothing like inciting fear, hey?!
If there is no difference, then they are simply clamping down on students. If it was not an issue, then they are simply doing favouritism (e.g. A la mode enforcement.) If they would simply nbe easier on the stiudent, I wouldn't be sure what that would mean, but I would consider this unlikely.
Since there is no government regulation this kind of action will start happening more and more as people look for ways to curb the potential damage games can cause.
Without the federal government taking action this kind of paranoid self protection is what will remain.
I wanted to make maps of school and my workplace at the time when I was playing CS way back. Not because I want to kill but because it was locations I was familiar with and had great layouts.
I think that if you had searched our rooms, you probably would have found something like a hammer or a collection of swords, or in my case a knife collection (my grandfather's, which meant a great deal to me...you would probably call them 'boxcutters' today).
But I wasn't caught and punished for this transgression, and somehow, nearly thirty years later, I wouldn't appear to have harmed a single living soul.
There's no reason to hold our children's creations hostage to the politics of today. Kids throughout the ages have played 'cops and robbers.' So the modern counterstrike version of that is 'SWAT vs Terrorists'...and when I was a kid we played US vs Russia war games. Wow. Kids combat in fantasy the social enemy of the day. Is that some new knowledge we should be proud of having realized? Not really. This is how people deal with the fears and dangers of their lives.
Someone always has to play the robbers. I don't know why parents look at these games, and see - not their kids...no - other people's children playing "the bad guy", and see the worst in them for it.
I think (like in every generation) that the parents and goverment think that whatever the kids do is wrong or some how evil. Like in the 1950's parents hated rock and roll and though of it as "Devil's Music". And today they hate rap. But now its geitng into viedogames. And as a few do somthing wrong, the rest are punished. The blame is on the only thing, parents and goverment think, makes sense, Viedogames. Even though in reality it was probaly parenting or other influences that you can make contact with, not some map making of real life places or shooting fictionaly people.
No. He did not commit a crime.
-Should he have been disciplined by school authorities?
No. What he spends his free time on is of no importance to the school. That it happened to be creating a map similar to a RL location he know is irrelevant.
-Or was he simply exercising his right to be creative using the tools provided by the game?
Yes.
I don't think anyone thought he was going to go shoot up the office or anything, it was just for fun... to be able to have a shoot-em-up in the game in territory you were familiar with in real life.
Sad how times have changed...
All of this is due to an inacurate discription of the game. A certain somebody (We'll say a Jack T...no, that's too obvious. We'll just say J. Thompson) portrayed it as a game of random violence, rather than a team based game (Terroists vs. Counter-Terrorists, enough said). Let's not forget that some of the missions require hostage rescue and bomb diffusion.
You know what would be good for our children? Banning stupid people. But these stupid people hide behind their whole "freedom of speech" BS (yes, that's sarcasm. Let it sink in).
That would've avoided the whole storm going on now....
The fact that he made the maps public for his fellow students suggests this was harmless fun. Besides, as many others have pointed out, who DIDN'T make a map of their school when level editors became popular?
In my opinion, the school was clearly in the wrong, and I feel that they violated his rights (I know his parents gave permission, but still ... there is a fine fine line there...). Ultimately, what happened was this kid made a map, gave no indications of violence, mentioned it to the wrong person, who then went to the authorities, who over-reacted over something that was never meant to be anything than a game.
This has Jack Thompson's stink all over it. This, I feel, was nothing more than a calculated move designed to position games in the realm where big-government can take over the industry and stifle one of the few voices that it doesn't have a hold over. (Sounds a little conspiracy theory-ish, I know ... but it stands to reason ...i.e. Patriot Act)
I have sometimes thought about creating maps for UT based off different buildings on my university campus. (the building I have most my lectures in would be good...(it is square with 3 sets of stair cases...and not all the rooms link together.
Discipline? Again - on what charge?
More importantly - what message are they (school board and police) sending out to youth?
You see - its very easy to pick on those who can't vote. If I were still in highschool and this happened to a student, I would have organized a protest. But people (not just kids) are not into the 'all-for-one' thing anymore....
Not because I want to shoot up my family or anything...
I just thought it would make a great little deathmatch level.
BTW, what is happening to this guy right now? Is he still in the "special school"? Will he be allowed to graduate? What about his college plans? Hell, his entire career for his life will be affected by this arrest.
Precrime sure is fun, huh?
The kid did nothing wrong. Investigate, sure, but do so sensitively, without assuming from the get-go that you're dealing with a psychopath in order to avoid humiliating the poor guy, and certainly don't discipline him when you find NOTHING.
Complete overreaction. The very most that should have happened was the map files being erased/put out of use if they felt it was a threat.
...
Except there is no scientific evidence that videogames themselves or the playing of them can potentially 'cause damage' and restrictive legislation done for the good of the general population ought to be done only with the full backing of good science, not fear mongering, and a thorough examination of peer-reviewed studies on the subject will show that any law would be unjustifiable.
And how exactly would video-game regulations have prevented the school from over-reacting and doing what it did? By stopping from Hwang, who continued to be a successful and popular student years after creating the mod, from enjoying the game in the first place? If anything, we need some federal law protecting students from this crap. The same thing happened in schools across America after Columbine, in case anyone's memory is hazy, and kids wearing the shirts of their favorite bands or black raincoats to school... even in the rain... were habitually harassed, suspended, or expelled. The only victim in this is Hwang and, potentially, his family.
Also, Lucy Liu should be arrested because in Kill Bill, she play-acts violence. She could potentially be a terrorist threat. Quentin Tarentino was just trying to make a homely movie but Lucy Liu does some disturbing play-acting. Her role specifically is very violent.