Vietnamese kid kills a girl due to video games.....

[BoredDragon]

I've said this before, you can't compare video games to drugs. Drugs create a chemical need in your brain while video games don't. Video games are a choice of medium that people choose to entertain themselves with just as someone watches a lot of TV or goes to the movies a lot.

It could be possible that a violent video game might stimulate a pre-existing violent condition. However, blaming video games for the sole cause of a violent action reminds of the bit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where the mob claims that they have found a witch and they do all they can to try and make her out to be one so that they get to burn her despite all evidence against it.

I am also talking about that lady who started that Online Gamers Anonymous group. How does she know that her son killed himself over online gaming? However, even if it is true, I would think that there would be more things wrong with him if he is going that extreme over a materialistic good. I believe that she is using video games as a scapegoat because she doesn't want to admit that she didn't see the warning signs of her son in time, but that's just my interpretation.

 

[Yopaz]

Not trying to troll here, but video game addiction did kill that girl. He was addicted, needed his fix, he was willing to kill to get his fix. His addiction was the reason he killed a girl. His video game addiction killed a girl.
They do paint it more black than they have to, but this isn't like Fox News and their "BulletStorm will make you a rapist!!!!" stuff. If this had been a case about a heroine addict killing the girl to get money to buy heroine you wouldn't have protested that heroine addiction sometimes leads to murder.
And don't get me wrong here. I am one of those who wont believe gaming makes us more violent. I have always been calmed down by playing violent video games, not getting the urge to go out and do it myself whenever the power runs out, but this isn't a discussion about violent video games.

The difference is that beer, and heroin CLEARLY IN NONGOVERNMENT FUNDED TRIALS RAN BY UNBIASED PSYCHOLOGISTS shown impaired judgement and reaction, along with addictive traits. GAMES HAVE NOT. I'm not gonna kill someone over Bejeweled or Halo, or insert game here, cause I'm a well balanced human being with respect for life, despite the fact that all my games are old as hell (I still play PS2) I've beaten them all to death, and my day is 80% video games. Most times it's just crazy people had a bad habit and did something crazy, so they go "oh, it was the bad habit". Hopefully someone will do something crazy and have a crazy addiction, like eating toenails so we can freak out about out toes, cause honestly, they're about as dangerous as playing games too much, too often.

Yes, you are a well balanced person, you are not an addict. I am sure you are a great guy with a great life (or maybe not, if that is the case I apologize for assuming so) gaming is probably a part of your life that grants you many precious moments. If that is online or offline, every second I spend with a good game and some friends is an enjoyment. I am also not an addict. Neither of us will kill anyone to get money for games. A cocaine addict might kill someone to get cocaine. Cocaine addiction doesn't mean you have to kill someone however. There are plenty of successful drug users in the world. Some of them have even reached so far because they use drugs. I never blamed gaming. I blamed addiction, and I don't believe you disagree when you think it through. Addiction was the reason. The fact that he was addicted to gaming doesn't change the fact that he was an addict. As you said yourself, no well balanced person would do this. Clearly he was not. Is gaming to blame? No, not at all. He probably had an addictive personality, if it wasn't gaming it would probably be something else. You left out the part of my original post where I said that I don't like that they use things like this to slander gaming.
Being an addict means that you have created a (mostly, heroine is an exception) psychological need for the thing you are addicted to. I really do agree with you. Gaming wont make you violent. Having a crappy life, some minor mental issues that haven't been noticed or treated, little money and a wish to play a game to take your mind off things can lead to theft in a few cases, not many, but a few. Is gaming to blame? No. Will gaming be blamed? Hell yeah.
Still, no matter how I look at it, his addiction was the reason he went as far as he did. We can probably make a whole book of factors to this, but the final factor was addiction.

 

[TheEndlessSleep]

The news media need to learn the meaning of the phrase;

'ISOLATED INCIDENT'

 

[DanDeFool]

Now that I think about it, it would be absolutely perfect if we could demonstrably prove that gaming caused people's violent psychoses to manifest.

That way, as we've seen here, any young child that is subject to some type of psychotic mental disorder will reveal it the minute they are exposed to electronic games, and if their parents are paying any fucking attention at all they will observe these behaviors and commit their deranged offspring to the loony bin before someone gets hurt.

Seriously, tell me that wouldn't be awesome, if we could weed out all the nutjobs as kids just by watching how they respond to violent video games.

 

[Amondren]

This would be horrible even if video games weren't involved. My prayers go out to the family of the girl and to the man who killed her so that he may eventually quit this insane addiction.

 

[tahrey]

And Marilyn Manson's music caused Columbine... 9_9

 

[Angerwing]

The kid is willing to kill a small girl over petty cash. It's irrelevant whether that's to pay for gaming, food, drugs, sex, whatever. If he's willing to kill a girl to pay for a gaming 'addiction', he's willing to kill a girl to pay for something else.

The problem lies with the boy, not with the game.

 

[Thyunda]

Um. Where does it say he killed her to sell the earrings in order for money to play his game? It said that he told them HOW he did it, but not actually WHY. It just also seems like he mentioned that he played the game at an Internet café...

This is the part of the article that speaks to that:

"He said he killed Anh Nhu because he did not have money to play online games at an internet cafe near his home in Yen Hoa, it is claimed."

Yeah, I saw that. It was the last three words that threw me off.

 

[Jakub324]

That girl's death is tragic, but, inevitably, some killjoy will try to use it to say we're all killers waiting to happen, and for what? So he can go to sleep every night knowing he's hated the world over. Seriously, what is wrong with that murdering fuckskull?

 

[fates_puppet13]

it is a load of shit
laziness via scapegoating

games are escapism, entatainment and frequently display works of art
imagen it was films or books
people would think its bloody stupid to assume that

 

[Artina89]

This is a tragedy, but this has very little to do with videogames. I am a firm believer that the kid was disturbed regardless of the nature of his "addiction". I mean, I don't believe that anyone in their right mind would automatically resort to brutally murdering someone to get money. A lot would resort to selling their stuff or stealing. I am not saying he should have gone out and stolen something or anything like that, I am just saying that the kid was disturbed and would have probably would have killed anyway, but of course this is pure speculation. At the end of the day, two parents have to bury their daughter, and two others have to see their son sent to jail.

 

[Zac Smith]

This will be another excuse for people in government to blame video games for any kind of violence they like. It's like they are just given ammunition to throw back at people. I'm sure more harm is caused by alcohol and yet "video games cause violent behaviour" There are probably people in 3rd world countries that would have to fight for a loaf of bread, doesn't mean that bread makes people violent does it. Some people are just unstable when it comes to addictions to things.

 

[razer17]

So says Sky News.

I wonder who they're owned by.

It couldn't be *Dramatic pause* Rupert Murdoch, he of Fox News fame, could it!?
(Though, that being said, I think Sky news is much better than Fox is, they don't really display a bias from what I can see.

In seriousness, I think this kid is just blaming video games as an excuse. And if he did do it just to play more video games, the games themselves didn't make him do it, he was clearly a very disturbed individual with psychological problems other than a gaming addiction.

 

[Assonabum]

the kid who did this deserves to die.

 

[Cheesus333]

*facedesk*

*facedesk*

*facedesk*

What an utterly disgusting little shit. I don't blame games, I blame his catastrophically fucked-up mental state. God, this makes me angry.