What a bunch of idiots the lot of them!

I wonder what video games the Gangster bootleggers in the prohibition era were playing...

Ok, they figured it out. Before GTA, we never saw high speed car chases anywhere with guns firing. I can't think of any movie that had that before GTA. I mean, The Terminator (1984) would be pissed to find out that GTA (1997) beat them in the whole car chase and guns thing. Same with Goldeneye (1995), The Godfather (1972) to Godfather part 3 (1990). Of course the only thing that could influence this type of action was GTA.

Everyday is the same old thing. Why can't these people cherish their lives instead of wasting them by unnecessary accusations?

I believe all bad lawyers are the result of lawyer wannabes copycatting John Bruce Thompson.

I believe all bad journalism is the result of writer wannabes copycatting Dennis McCauley.

we need to start doing shit against these people that make these allogations (sorry for the misspelling). Boycott their country, hate email, something. I am tired of seeing these people make stupid remarks.

I'm talking to Satin tonight to plan something.

@GamerDad:

Reporters ask leading questions all the time, if you fall for it, that's your bad. Personally, I have no problem with him drawing a similarity to the incident and games, but to outright claim that games were a direct impetus with no other information on the teens is unprofessional and irresponsible at best.

Frankly, for that reason, I think most of the posters here are not being reactionary at all, and I'm surprised you're defending this guy.

Bonnie & Clyde were avid GTA players before they snapped.

They also tried calling him Mr. Hanley.

Nightwng2000
NW2K Software

But in this situation its but moments after the fact. And as far as we know the cops have not even been to the kids houses yet. Going on the information we have presented, which is just the bare bones of what happened saying what is the cause one way our another is using poor judgment. This is no different then when the LaRouches tried to staple games onto the massacre to further their political campaign. Until more evidence shows up that these kids even played games this is little more than hearsay, and barely worth even noting on a Game Politics centered board.

My stance on this situation is to take the evidence, none, at face value. It was a high speed chase involving the discharge of guns. I'm not going to grasp at straws like a certain cop. For all we know these kids were influenced by Starsky and Hutch, but that as well would be hearsay.

All I'm saying is don't make games a part of this until more evidence comes to light.

I disagree Erik, because I find this cop's comments innocuous enough and I think it hurts gaming when gamers knee-jerk to a knee-jerk in much the same way it's non-productive when the NRA immediately washes it's hands and sends out the PR team whenever someone uses a gun to massacre people. Rather than condemning someone blaming games, I think it's better to point out that all kinds of things can inspire a disturbed mind. This includes games, it includes gun culture. But then I've never approached this work I do as GamerDad from an "absolutist" perspective and I don't agree with the idea that we must fight reactionary ideas with equally reactionary ideas. We can admit that GTA lets you do roughly 80% of what these kids do (so do plenty of movies and such) and that it might have played a part - without condemning Rockstar.

Part of the reason I have this stance is because the people I usually talk to are real parents. People who don't play games, yet don't necessarily blame games. Gamers lose them when we pretend our hobby is clean and harmless in much the same way as anti-gamers lose them when they blame all societies ills on gaming. These are smarter and more reasonable people than the ESRB and ECA, or Jack Thompson and LaRouche realize and they're getting tired of spin in either direction.

But we're on the same side in the end, GTA didn't cause this, so no worries.

The problem is, these things are usually used more a 'justification' than 'inspiration'. Manson merely wanted an excuse to do what he did, and the Beatles provided him, in his own mind, with a justification for it, but he would have found that justification anywhere eventually, he badly wanted to find it.

Hinkley above.
Not Hunkley. Hunkley is a male model, I think.

make an example of these guys! i know that seeing the harsh end of the law is a far better influance on behavior than any video game ive ever played. lock em up for 20 years (14 year max for shooting at the cops 4 for the car and 2 for resisting arrest) and put em up on billboards showing how jacked up they are. if video games are influancing your kids step it up a notch and influance them as well. games arent supposed to influance kids, laws parents and schools are.

I am waiting for the day to come when politicians and parents join together once and for all in demanding a ban of politicians or in the very least an end to "shady politics" that influences the children to take advantage of interns, cheat on their taxes, take excessive "campaign contributions" for later political favors, run national morale into the ground as each additional body returns from overseas, and so forth. Little Johnnie didn't mean to do it but he saw it live on Fox News, CNN, CSPAN, and prerecorded on The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and Youtube.

I remember giving my brother traffic tickets and pulling him over for speeding when we made our own series of streets in the dirt. I also vaguely remember playing doctor with a friend's sister. I can only imagine what kind of trouble playing "politician" could involve. I remember turning the ignition on my father's truck on once and rolling down a hill into some woods. Where I got that idea I couldn't tell you? Maybe watching him do it for days on end. Maybe being curious about what driving would be like.

There is no mention about the home life in the article. There is only mention that there were some stolen guns, a stolen car (that happened to be fast), two 14 year olds and an officer's opinion. There is no mention about prior juvenile crimes, records of school violence, or anything even remotely resembling an action news story. It does nothing more than sensationalize the antics of two very stupid young people with some obviously troubled lives. I wonder if it will turn out that the officer who made the comment actually plays videogames and the kids weren't allowed to by their mum. That was how the Manhunt case of the murdered child in the U.K. turned out, a big fat egg on their faces after reporting false facts to further a story.

@Gamerdad

If you notice the officer went on further to mention that they would be unable to come up with something like this themselves, which is the clincher right there. So with nothing more than it being similar to GTA he is saying that it not being connected to GTA is an impossibility as no one could think of stealing a car on their own. Without that sentence then yeah, it is alot like "one of those games".

These kids are stupid enough to draw inspiration from a video game, yet smart enough to drive a car and fire a gun? Also the fact that millions of their fellow gamers don't copy GTA bears no significance? Blaming games is stupid, let's take an example, in MIB, they said denis rodman was an alien, now if some nutjob believes them and kills dennis rodman, who do we blame, MIB or the nutjob who killed rodman? I think the answer is obvious. Also the guy who shot lennon (clearly insane), said he couldn't understand lennon's lyrics, did you see a public outcry blaming lennon for his death? Of course not.

Murder and theft have been around for a long time, I mean really their both mentioned on the 10 commandments, which (according to the bible) were written sometime in the Bcs, if you don't believe the bible I have other examples, like Ceaser. Now where could these guys have possibly gotten the inspiration for these heinous crimes? Possibly from nature where killing other animals is necessary to survive. So should we start an all out attack on nature then? No i don't think so.

Oh yes of course whenever someone steals a car or goes on a shooting spree, it MUST be the games' fault. Of course poverty, substance abuse, broken homes, abusive relatives/peers, lack of parental involvement, mental illness, and bad childhoods don't have anything to do with it.

So they can ban Video Games and Disband the Police form simultaneously? After all, there obviously wasn't any crime till the were video games to give people 'ideas'.

So.... neither the officer nor the political cartoonist have any information more than the officer's hunch. Yeah, thats some fine work there police cheif Wiggum.

@Nightwing

haha you and me both

Hmmm....
Playing video games makes you do those things in real life?

I need to play Playboy Mansion more.

:)

Nightwng2000
NW2K software

I think we've all been dancing around the REAL issue. It's not video games or any other kind of media that causes violence. It's YOUTH!

It's all these young people running around stealing cars, killing people, etc. Any responsible adult wouldn't do those things!

Simple solution BAN ALL PEOPLE UNDER 30!

“Well, they don’t come up with these things by themselves.”

Head, meet desk.

So let me get this straight, people can only learn how to do stuff through media? Strange, that would mean that the first person to steal a car had to have trained on GTA about a century before it was made. Meanwhile, the likes of John Dillenger, Al Capone, and Machine Gun Kelly had to have learned how to commit crimes and shoot at cops from the gangster flicks that were inspired by their exploits.

Therefore, we can conclude that all of these people had time travel which they used to train for their actions on the entertainment which drew inspiration from them, thus creating a chicken-egg time paradox.

OR...

We can just accept that Inspector St. Clair is an idiot who has no business being a police officer at all.

Much as I like the prospect of Capone being a time-traveler, I believe the second possibility is more likely.

The key missing ingredient from all these accusations is "should the criminals be dealt a lesser penalty because they got the idea from a video game?" In brief, "no." I don't really care where they learned it, from Miami Vice, CSI (where I've seen this exact scene), or GTA. It was still a crime and should be treated as such.

Mom said it best when she said "if all of your friends jumped off a bridge, would you?" The lesson there is that it is the choices you have control over.

“Well, they don’t come up with these things by themselves.”

Apparently children don't grow brains until 18... why the hell did I waste all that time in school?

I hate stupid people, and even though the two 14 year olds sure were acting stupid, it is the people that feel the only possible reason for their actions is because of video games. It really is just an easy way out that stupid people use to try and make a point. We’ve all seen it way to many times. The nest thing that will happen is the kids will be talked into going to court and blaming it on GTA. Well we all know how that ends up…thank god for the first amendment…at least here in the U.S.

"Well, they don’t come up with these things by themselves."

I can't help but actually laugh at the ignorance in this statement. Absolutely unbelievable!

In new zealand, the crime rate for any given month is inversely proportional to the number of video games banned in that samemonth.

Strange but true.

.... so...games taught them to shoot their own car? Oh and fire 2 shots total? They are searching for the the other round that was fired.

Wait a minute...does this mean that Bonnie & Clyde had video games too? Wow...I didn't even know they had that technology back then!!!

“Well, they don’t come up with these things by themselves.”

right. they are too stupid to.

Because we all know car chases and gun crime never existed before video-games *rolls eyes*

@ZeRu

Of course, if viewed in satire, the comic makes for a vivid picture of what people think in NZ. At least as far as how the populace that belives in this scapegoat is concirned.

The fact is, these kids were in government care, so the chances of these kids playing GTA or any video games for that matter are rediculous. It is illegal to allow an under 18 to play any of teh GTAs in NZ, so if they had, it should be pinned on their caregivers for blantantly breaking the law, not the game developers, who made a game aimed at mature, sensible adults who can descern reality from a video game.

Video game related violence has only ever been linked to a very few mentally unstable people, and in all cases their intrest in violence led to play the games, not the games creating their intrest in violence, and that is the key point.

I work in a video game store, and I have seen parents buy their 14 year olds games like GTA, hell, i've had a 6 year old come in to get his copy of San Andreas resurfaced. I believe that parents who allow their children to play these games should be punished to the full extent of the law, not the game developers. I've seen 6 year olds come in and get theri parents to buy GTA for them. If this is just being blind to the facts or if they are balntanly breaking the law, i'm not sure, but the fact is a child has a right to be a child, so I support regularing who can buy and play games with mature content 100%, but banning a game because of bad parents? That's just stupid.

“It was like one of those video games the kids play where they steal a car and shoot at police,”

Or one of those movies where they steal a car and shoot at police.

Or one of those TV shows where they steal a car and shoot at police.

Or one of those Songs where they steal a car and shoot at police.

Lets blame the kids, not the media. Don't punish the masses becuase the few can't handle themselves.

I couldn't understand some parts of this article Games Blamed in New Zealand Crime Spree, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.