While we recognise that it’s ultimately up to each individual or their parent or guardian to determine playing habits, we feel that moderation is clearly important, and that a person’s day-to-day life should take precedence over any form of entertainment.
—Statement from Blizzard, maker of the online computer game Diablo III, after an eighteen-year-old died in a Taiwan internet café after playing the game for forty hours straight1
You’ve heard about the shocking statistics, the research, and the biological and psychological processes that all link violent crime to violent video games. Have you seen any of these games yourself?
I’ve found that many parents are unaware of the story lines in these games. Here, we’ll describe some of the popular ones for you—along with a handful of the real-life gruesome crimes that are eerily similar.
Consider this story line from Grand Theft Auto V, part 38: You pull your black SUV over on the side of the road to pick up a prostitute. “Take me somewhere private,” she says, so you speed off through winding streets, narrowly avoiding other cars. You take the vehicle off-roading, driving up a steep hill to a secluded spot overlooking the city. You pay $100 and she climbs on top of you to have sex with you while you sit in the passenger seat. You pay another $120 over the course of the next few minutes for various other sex acts, which are acted out on screen—complete with sound effects.
She takes her money and steps out of the car, but that won’t do. You chase after her and slap her to the ground. You beat her senseless, even after the screen shows that you’ve reclaimed your money—a reward for murdering her. You continue to kick and beat her as she rolls down the hill. “We can’t have any evidence,” you say to yourself, so you throw a grenade at her lifeless body.
“This chick is on FIRE!” you say. Then you take out your sniper rifle and use the scope to target her blue underwear. You fire, but at the sound of sirens you have to run back to your car. You set up your sniper rifle and, from your position at the top of the hill, pick off cops as they try to climb up after you.
You get in the SUV and speed off. Your car goes careening down the hillside, slamming into a police car. “Well, this turned into a fun little date,” you say. You continue your rampage through the streets, smashing into vehicles and running over pedestrians as you go.
You need a new car, so you crash your SUV and take after another vehicle on foot. Unfortunately, the cops shoot you before you can complete your mission. “Wasted!” appears on screen in red letters as the rest of the screen turns black.2
Now let’s turn to real life. On February 20, 2013, a part-time college student fatally shot and killed a twenty-year-old female stripper he had hired to visit him at his parents’ home in Ladera Ranch, California.
Armed with at least one shotgun, the man then stole his family’s black GMC Yukon, smashing the vehicle as he sped away from the scene. He drove to a nearby suburb and found a man sitting alone in a Denny’s parking lot in an older-model blue Cadillac, waiting for his son to carpool to work.
The killer pointed his weapon at the man and ordered him out of the car, but the driver sped away. The killer opened fire on the Cadillac, shattering the window and striking the driver in the head.
The killer continued on to a Mobil gas station, where he stole a stranger’s Dodge pickup truck. “I just killed someone,” he said to the truck’s owner. “Give me your keys. This is my last day.”
He merged the truck onto State Route 55, then pulled over and opened fire on passing motorists, hitting at least three cars. He returned to the pickup, exited the freeway, and crashed into another vehicle before slamming into a divider and abandoning the truck.
Next, the killer drew his gun and approached a nearby BMW. The driver of the car, a sixty-nine-year-old grandfather and former U.S. Army veteran on his way to work, complied with the killer’s orders and exited the car. He was fatally shot execution-style three times in spite of his cooperation. The killer took off in his BMW.
He arrived at a nearby construction site, randomly selected a twenty-six-year-old construction worker who had just arrived for work, and chased his victim through the parking lot before shooting and killing him. He also wounded a supervisor who came to the dead man’s aid.
The killer then stole one of the construction crew’s trucks, which he drove a short distance before being spotted by California Highway Patrol. With the officers in pursuit, the murderer pulled over, raised his shotgun to his head, and killed himself.
He had no criminal record, but he was identified in the press as a loner and violent video game fanatic. Prior to his rampage, he had written a suicide note on his computer, indicating that his actions were premeditated and planned.3
Recently, the cops I work with on a daily basis have reported more and more stories like this—crimes that are so inhuman, so diabolical, that they seem like works of fiction. Look in the paper, on your favorite news website, or on your local television station, and you are sure to see examples of heinous crimes like this Ladera Ranch rampage. You may even see it broadcast on social media. In 2015, a man in Virginia shot and killed two former colleagues during a live television broadcast and then posted videos of the murder from his own perspective on social media. He had essentially created his own real-life first-person shooter game and broadcast it on the internet. All you have to do is search online for video clips of gamers playing games like Grand Theft Auto V to see where some of these ideas may have come from.
Not only does reality seem to mirror the fictional worlds marketed to our children by video game producers, but the trend works in reverse as well. After school shootings and other nightmares played out on the nightly news, people actually turned them into games. Violent video games are inspiring growing numbers of mass murders in our society, and our increasingly violent culture is inspiring more and more violent video games in turn. As you’ll see, when the lines between fantasy and reality blur in the realm of violent video games, we all lose.
In 2003, Rockstar Games (which gave us the Grand Theft Auto series and the video game Bully) released Manhunt. I described it in chapter 4 as the equivalent of Wii Murder for the way it leverages the handheld Wii technology to teach you how to strangle, stab, and otherwise maim your victims as you kill them in vivid, computer-generated detail. Levi Buchanan in the Chicago Tribune described it as the most violent video game ever made. In order to execute someone, you must approach your victim from behind. You receive points based in part on the brutality of your kill, moving through three levels of play that increase in viciousness and gore. The game’s sequel, Manhunt 2, was released in 2007 and follows the same basic structure, with three increasing levels of violence.
A review of Manhunt 2 by Gamespot gives the following description of a level-three execution:
But in this game, you want to kill with style, and a level-three execution is literally a bloody mess. The execution you perform depends on the weapon you have equipped, and whether there are any interesting environmental features nearby. You might stab the hunter in the back, kick him in the crotch, then slam a manhole cover on his head. Or perhaps evisceration with a crowbar is more your thing. Pyromaniacs may prefer to douse him in gasoline and set him on fire.
Unsurprisingly, both Manhunt and Manhunt 2 were banned in a number of countries. Moreover, these games weren’t even universally accepted at their birthplace—Rockstar Games. Williams wrote on his blog that a mutiny had nearly erupted at the company over the game. Rockstar North, a subsidiary based in Edinburgh, Scotland, took the lead on the project, and many Rockstar Games employees elsewhere wanted nothing to do with it. The company was familiar with controversy, since some of its earlier games had come under attack, but it was unusual that employees voiced their reservations. While the developers of Grand Theft Auto III, for example, could argue that the game was a parody and that players never had to hurt anybody who wasn’t a “bad guy,” the same argument could not be made for this new game.
Manhunt, though, just made us all feel icky. It was all about the violence, and it was realistic violence. We all knew there was no way we could explain away that game. There was no way to rationalize it. We were crossing a line.4
As of this writing, Rockstar Games has sold 1.7 million copies of Manhunt. At an average wholesale price of $10, that means the company has yielded gross revenue in excess of $10 million for this murder simulator that repulsed at least one member of its own staff.
The real-life imitations of Manhunt are not as clearly drawn, because nearly every murder mirrors the ones you can play during the game. Strangling, stabbing, beating to death… all of these types of homicide qualify. Recently, there’s been an increasing number of a specific kind of video game–linked murder that is frankly beyond the understanding of even the most seasoned police officers in my training sessions.
In Florida, for instance, a twenty-four-year-old man was playing a video game when his sixteen-month-old son began to cry. The man placed his hand over the boy’s mouth and nose for three or four minutes—the length of time it takes to suffocate a human being, as you would know had you played Manhunt—and then put him in his crib, covered him completely with bedding, and went back to playing video games. When the man checked on the boy five hours later, the baby was blue and not breathing.5
Another man had been playing video games for five hours when his three-week-old baby began to cry. He shook his son and yelled at him to go to sleep. The baby died that day and the father was arrested for murder.6
A young father in Chicago beat his four-month-old son and then returned to playing a video game. The boy’s mother found the baby in his crib and quickly took him to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.7
Are these stories just isolated cases? Is this a new wave of violence? The most horrific crime is when parents kill their own children. Every parent can remember being frustrated by being awakened in the middle of the night by a crying baby. What do those parents do when they are also violent video game fanatics?
Studies have shown that players of violent video games exhibit aggression immediately after they play. A team of scientists from the United States, France, and Germany discovered that the aggression continues to be displayed over a three-day period. One study noted “that people who played a violent video game for three consecutive days showed increases in aggressive behavior and hostile expectations each day they played.”8 In other words, the more you play, the more aggressive you become—even if your victim is your own helpless infant.
As we’ve noted repeatedly, the majority of people who play violent video games will not commit violent acts, but a small percentage will, and our children and grandchildren may be the victims of this aggression. In 2014, the journal Pediatrics published a study estimating that one in eight children in the United States will be maltreated—in the form of physical, sexual, or emotional abuse or neglect—by age eighteen.9 A Yale University Medical School study reported that over a twelve-year span the hospitalization of children for serious abuse-related injuries rose by about 5 percent. According to the researchers, children were increasingly likely to die from these injuries.10 And in 2016, the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare published a report stating that “severe and fatal maltreatment represents the tip of the maltreatment iceberg; many more children and youth suffer from less-severe abuse and neglect that is still consequential.” The authors of the report concluded with the same disturbing questions we’ve been asking throughout this book: “Why are so many children being abused or killed and why is that number increasing?”
The police officers in my classes are seeing this kind of parental abuse on the front lines—one officer reported that she personally handled three such incidents in the Chicago area in one year alone. In her estimation, parents who grew up playing violent video games are more likely than others to react with uncontrolled anger.
Did Manhunt and games like it contribute to any of the murders committed by fathers who played violent video games? Given the overwhelming research on violent video games and aggression, I think it’s worth asking the question. And if Rockstar Games’ employees thought that Manhunt “crossed a line” and was so violent it made them all feel “icky,” what would they say about these cold-blooded murders of infants, committed while their parents played video games like the ones they produced?
Another murder spree, committed by a video game–addicted college student in the small town of Isla Vista, California, shocked the entire nation. In the manifesto the killer wrote before his rampage, he echoed with eerie mimicry the characters and attitudes used in video games. To provide context for his misogynistic ramblings, let’s start with the sexual fantasies and revenge scripted for a Grand Theft Auto V strip club, and then see how they were manifested in real life.
Walking into a strip club, you see several girls in G-strings sliding down poles through the dimly lit atmosphere. “Frankly, I’m sick of these chicks turning me down. I want to go ahead and smack one of these hoes,” you say. “I’m trying to get all of you bitches.”
You have a private dance with a stripper, who offers to go with you to a different location. You drive your car around the back of the building to pick her up, but instead you pull out a weapon and try to shoot her.
The game won’t let you shoot her, so you run over the stripper instead. You repeat the action four times, splattering her blood across the ground. You park the car on top of her body, stepping out of the driver’s side with your rifle in hand. You look through the scope to shoot her once in the stomach, once in the vagina, and once in the mouth before driving away.
You drive a short distance, running over several pedestrians and even knocking a man off a bridge with your car as you go. You didn’t quite achieve your goal of murdering all of the women in the strip club, but at least you had some fun. On to your next adventure.11
On May 23, 2014, the young man in Isla Vista, California, near the University of California–Santa Barbara, brutally stabbed his 3 roommates multiple times while they slept, then drove to a sorority house with the intent to kill everyone inside. When he was not allowed to enter, he shot 4 people outside the sorority, killing 2. He then drove away and shot and killed a young man in a deli. He shot a few bystanders and, finally, used his car as a weapon, plowing it into a crowd of pedestrians. In the end, he had killed 6 people and wounded 13 more. The manifesto he wrote prior to the massacre relates his hatred, his jealousy, and his plan for “the Day of Retribution.” His expression of “unfulfilled desires” is disturbingly similar to the violent retribution carried out in the abuse, murder, and humiliation of the stripper and prostitutes in Grand Theft Auto V. More important, it shows how he could have arrived at such an inhuman way of thinking.
The Isla Vista killer wrote, “Humanity is a cruel and brutal species, and the only thing I could do to even the score was to return that cruelty one-thousand fold. Women’s rejection of me is a declaration of war, and if it’s war they want, then war they shall have.” His deeply disturbing document is full of his desire to punish women in general for rejecting him sexually. “It was time to plot exactly what I will do on the Day of Retribution. I will be a god, punishing women and all of humanity for their depravity. I will finely [sic] deliver to them all of the pain and suffering they’ve dealt to me for so long.”12
In another example of how this sociopath was tied to the world of violent video game fantasy, the killer wrote at length about using violent video games to fill a void in his life. The following excerpts showcase how violent video games played a key role:
My life didn’t start out dark and twisted. I started out as a happy and blissful child.… I was filled with joy when it started snowing outside. I loved playing in the snow. My father helped me build a snowman once. We would start with little snowballs, and roll them around our field until we formed the body, and then we would decorate it
6 Years Old.… Christmas arrived quickly, and for my present I got my first video game console, a Nintendo 64! I had little knowledge of video games before this. I barely knew what they were. My father is the one who introduced me to them. With the Nintendo 64, my father bought the games Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire and Turok: Dinosaur Hunter. I was fascinated with this new form of entertainment, and my father and I would bond a lot over our video game sessions. Of course, while playing these video games, my innocent, happy self knew nothing of the significant role video games would play during a large portion of my life.
Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire was released in 1996. It is a third-person shooter video game developed by LucasArts that is rated Teen (ages thirteen and up) for “Animated Violence” by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB). The April 2014 SPSSI statement on media violence concluded: “Violent media increase the likelihood of later aggressive and violent behavior, and of factors known to increase aggressive and violent behavior, such as hostile feelings and thoughts.” Sadly, that played out fully in the Isla Vista killer’s continuing narrative of his life, in which he turns from a happy, snowman-building child into a teen obsessed with video games:
10 years old.… For Christmas, my mother bought me the new PlayStation 2. I had been wanting it for a long time, and when I unwrapped the present and saw the box, I felt so elated. Beforehand, the only video game console I played was the Nintendo 64 (and the Gameboy, if that counts). The PlayStation 2 was much more advanced in graphics, and it amazed me.
It was at eleven years old when I first started using the internet on a regular basis. The internet was still considered a new phenomenon at the time.… I joined a few chat rooms. The prospect of talking to strangers from a computer was new and astounding to me.… One friend who I met through a chat room suddenly emailed me pictures of beautiful naked girls, telling me to “check this out.” When I looked at the pictures, I was shocked beyond words. I had never seen what beautiful girls looked like naked, and the sight filled me with strong and overwhelming emotions. I didn’t know what was happening to me. Was it the first inkling of sexual desire in my body? I was traumatized. My childhood was fading away. Ominous fear swept over me, and I stopped talking to that person.
Sixth Grade was the peak of my life at Pinecrest [his middle school]. It would only go downhill from there. My mother bought me a brand new video game console, the Xbox… I liked the Xbox much more than the PlayStation 2. The graphics were better and the games were more to my taste. With the Xbox, I got the game Halo. At first, I found Halo to be very difficult and I gave up on it a few times. I had no idea that Halo would soon become one of my favorite video game series that I ever played.
Halo is rated Mature (ages seventeen and up) for “Blood, Gore and Violence” by the ESRB. Bungie created the game, but the franchise is now owned by Microsoft Studios and managed by 343 Industries. It is a series of games, all of which have garnered praise as some of the “best” first-person shooter video games on the market. The games have sold over 50 million copies worldwide, earning the makers billions of dollars.
Common Sense Media, a nonprofit organization that advocates for children and families, reviewed Halo:
Parents need to know that this adult game has been hyped by a massive advertising campaign that extends to normally kid-friendly establishments like Burger King and 7-Eleven. But the ESRB gave this first-person shooter game a “Mature” rating for violence for good reason. Throughout the game, players shoot aliens and humans using a variety of weaponry, and they’ll see vivid images with blood.
The killer was in sixth grade when he began playing that game. That puts him at about eleven or twelve years of age. His video game fixation continued to grow as he moved through puberty.
John Jo and Charlie were very close friends with each other, and eventually I would start to see them at the same time.… When we went back to his apartment, we played Conker’s Bad Fur Day on the Nintendo 64. The Nintendo 64 was a very old console at this point in time, especially after I now had an Xbox and a PS2, but I was entertained by Conker’s Bad Fur Day so much that I asked my mother to buy it for me the next day.
Amazon’s product description states, “Conker’s Bad Fur Day is for adults. The ESRB has rated this game Mature; it should not be bought for—or played by or around—children.” The game was released by Rare in 2001. It features Conker the Squirrel’s story of trying to get home to his girlfriend after a night of heavy drinking with his friends. It features graphic violence, sexual themes, and foul language. Pairing friendly, cartoonish graphics with a lewd and violent story line is particularly insidious and potentially damaging for children. As we know, boys at this age are primed to seek violence and sex as survival data. Of course the killer found this cartoon game entertaining.
John Jo came over to my house, where he slept over for the first time. We played a few video games, and then he told me that he wanted to take me to a place called Planet Cyber, a cyber café that had all of the best online PC games. I knew nothing of the sort, but it was just down the street from my mother’s house. I walked there with him, eager to experience something new. This was my first experience with online gaming. Playing video games with people over the internet invoked a whole new level of fascination in me. Talking to people over AIM was fun and new, but this… this was tremendous. I always loved playing multiplayer mode on video games when I had friends over. With online gaming, I could do it whenever I want. I was a novice to these new games on the PC, but I got the hang of it after playing with John Jo for a few hours.…
I saw Charlie a few days later. Charlie was also familiar with Planet Cyber, and when the two of us went there, he introduced me to an RPG [role-playing game] called Diablo 2.
Diablo II is an action role–playing, hack-and-slash video game developed by Blizzard North and rated Mature by the ESRB for “Animated Blood and Gore” and “Animated Violence.” Common Sense Media warns, “Parents need to know that this game contains almost constant fighting—there is very little story line,” but the plot does “contain torture, demon possession, and battles.”
Another of the games the killer cites in this section is Counter-Strike. It is rated Mature by the ESRB for “Blood and Extreme Violence.” The game basically teaches you how to be a terrorist. It splits players into teams tasked with achieving acts of terrorism or defeating terrorists through violence.
As we’ve noted previously, repeated exposure to violent video games like Halo and Counter-Strike essentially teaches children violent thought patterns that influence their behaviors as they grow. In discussing his study on the topic at Iowa State University, researcher Douglas Gentile compared learned violence through video games to practicing the piano or learning math. According to Dr. Gentile, “If you practice over and over, you have that knowledge in your head. The fact that you haven’t played the piano in years doesn’t mean you can’t still sit down and play something.… It’s the same with violent games—you practice being vigilant for enemies, practice thinking that it’s acceptable to respond aggressively to provocation, and practice becoming desensitized to the consequences of violence.”13
The killer and his friend were eleven and twelve years old, spending hours practicing to be killers, or even terrorists. As Gentile and other scientists have shown repeatedly in their research, you get good at what you practice—even if you’re practicing violence.
The killer continues:
Seventh Grade began.… We sometimes hung out at Planet Cyber until 3:00 in the morning, the latest I had ever been out without parent supervision. We would switch between playing Halo at my house, playing games at Planet Cyber, or skateboarding around the neighborhood. Charlie introduced me to the game Warcraft 3. It was like no game I had ever played before. It enabled the player to build an army and battle against other players online. After the first round of Warcraft 3, going up against John Jo and Charlie, I was captivated. The game was so much fun. I couldn’t help but think about it every second for the next two days.
In its review of Warcraft III, Common Sense Media cautions, “Parents need to know that although the ESRB rates the games as Teen games, they truly split the line between a game for teens and a more mature audience. Considering the amount of violence, the dark nature of the games, and concerns with language and sexual content, these games would be better suited to an older audience.”
My initially happy interest in the game Warcraft 3 had an ominous tone to it. This was the beginning of a long relationship with the Warcraft franchise. In less than a year from that point, they would release their ultimate game, World of Warcraft, a game that I would find sanctuary in for most of my teenage years.
At this point in the story, the killer’s friends lost interest in constant gaming. He never seemed to grow out of it, so he kept walking to Planet Cyber alone. It was there that he became even more uncomfortable with the idea of sex.
One time while I was alone at Planet Cyber, I saw an older teenager watching pornography. I saw in detail a video of a man having sex with a hot girl. The video showed him stick his penis inside a girl’s vagina. I didn’t know anything about sex at the time. I barely even knew what sex was. I was slowly starting to develop sexual feelings for hot girls, but I didn’t know what to do with them. To see this video really traumatized me. I had no idea what I was seeing.… The sight was shocking, traumatizing, and arousing.
Shortly thereafter, he got World of Warcraft as a Christmas gift from his father.
My first experience with WoW was like stepping into another world of excitement and adventure. It was a video game world, but they made it so realistic that it was like living another life, a more exciting life. My life was getting more and more depressing at that point, and WoW would fill in the void. It felt refreshing and relieving. I was only able to play it for a few hours for my first session. It was all I would think about when I wasn’t able to play it.
Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) are among the most addictive video games. World of Warcraft is known as being one of the most addictive. There are websites such as Wowaholics Anonymous, a community where people share their experiences with WoW addiction. One excerpt from this website demonstrates the impact of this addiction:
I started to play online games at 27 after a bad relationship break up. Now I’m 33 and have avoided girls completely in fear of being caught up in something that would come in the way of my tight raiding schedule. I took a look at my total playtime on all my characters and found out that I have about 1 year and 7 months spent logged on! That is just insane, and made me feel depressed.
This is a theme seen repeatedly in video game–related depression and suicide. At some point the gamer looks at the months or even years spent in a virtual world and realizes that it was all empty, hollow, wasted time. It is only a short jump from there to conclude that your life is empty, hollow, and ultimately worthless.
There are also websites for spouses of people addicted to the game. One of the most popular is WoW Widows. An excerpt from this online support group gives a good idea of the impact of this addiction on marriages and families:
Being a gamer widow means experiencing considerable change. You see your husband change. You change. Your marriage changes. Almost nothing is as it was before. Your husband’s addiction affects nearly everything in your life. He isolates himself from family and friends, trading these relationships for those with strangers he has met online. I have tried to explain how much this habit hurts our family, but he just doesn’t get it. And yet he neglects important facets of his life like work, or childcare to facilitate his playing. He suffers personal consequences for his long hours of game play like developing an angry temperament or letting his health decline. He has turned into a different person I no longer relate to. I believe they should carry warning labels, just like tobacco and alcohol.
The killer echoes some of these sentiments, rejoicing when he and his mother moved into a new apartment with high-speed internet so he could play World of Warcraft and Halo, which allows for multiplayer online functionality through the Xbox Live at home. He wrote:
Now that I was able to play World of Warcraft at my mother’s house with no limitations, aside from school and homework, I became very addicted to the game and my character in it. It was all I cared about. I was so immersed in the game that I no longer cared about what people thought of me. I only saw school as something that took time away from WoW.
Studies from around the world have found that approximately 10 percent of students exhibit pathological video game use. A study in the journal Pediatrics notes, “Youth who became pathological gamers ended up with increased levels of depression, anxiety, and social phobia. Conversely, those who stopped being pathological gamers ended up with lower levels of depression, anxiety, and social phobia than did those who remained pathological gamers.”14 The killer in this manifesto certainly echoes those themes.
14 Years Old.… I withdrew further into the World of Warcraft, neglecting my homework and spending all of my free time playing it.… During father’s week, Soumaya [his stepmother] was always on my back about how much time I spent on WoW, but since my room was on the bottom floor, secluded from the rest of the house, I was able to sneak as much time on it as I could.… I drowned all of my misery in my online games. World of Warcraft was the only thing I had left to live for. My grades at Crespi [his high school] dropped dramatically. I just didn’t care anymore. I hated that school. I didn’t think about my future. The only thing I gave any serious thought to was my WoW character. I had become very powerful in the game, and I was in one of the best guilds.
Although you interact with other characters in these games, individual players become more isolated from real people and less concerned about the well-being of others. They think only of themselves. MMORPGs and other violent video games reinforce decisions based on amassing the most material goods and winning the game. As one article on the topic noted, “The gamer is encouraged to think solely in terms of benefit to their character when making a decision.… We are training a generation to make decisions without any attention to the consequences for others of their actions.”15
The killer continues:
High School.… All I wanted to do was hide away from the cruel world by playing my online games, and Independence High School gave me the perfect opportunity to do just that. I only had to be at school for three or four hours per day, and all of the work was very easy with teachers available to help me with anything. After those short school hours, I had all the time in the world to do whatever I wanted, and I spent it playing World of Warcraft.… This was the perfect set up for a World of Warcraft addict. After school, every day, I fully indulged myself in my addiction to WoW. My only social interaction was with my online friends and with James, who would occasionally come over to my house to play WoW with me.…
I celebrated my 16th Birthday at mother’s house. She bought me an Xbox 360, which had just been released.… As summer’s end drew closer, I became more and more depressed. My life had gotten so lonely, and playing WoW barely made up for it… Halo 3 came out in November. I got my mother to buy it for me on the very day it was released.… There was nothing I could really do about my unfair life situation. I felt completely powerless. The only way I could deal with it was to continue to drown all of my troubles with my online games. I played WoW really hard.… At mother’s house, I sometimes played it for fourteen hours a day.
This young man was clearly developing emotional problems, and his parents continued to buy him more video games and laptop computers, and to provide high-speed internet so he was able to spend more time playing video games. He writes that it was the only thing that made him happy, but it’s more likely that his withdrawal into these games was a part of the root cause of his psychological issues. According to a study published in the journal Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, “Teens who reported 5 hours or more of video games/Internet daily use, in the 2009 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), had a significantly higher risk for sadness,” along with thoughts of suicide and suicide planning.16 Additional research published in 2015 demonstrated that not only does video game use lead players to imagine committing suicide, it also appears to make some people more capable of actually committing suicide. The study’s lead author noted that people who are contemplating suicide may develop an “acquired capability” to commit suicide, which is defined as “an increased fearlessness about death, not being as afraid to die, and also an increased pain tolerance.” The study determined that the greater the number of hours a person spent playing violent video games, the greater his or her acquired capability to commit suicide.17 These findings support an association between excessive video game and internet use and risk for teen depression and suicide.18
Why did the killer’s parents buy him video games, PlayStation and Xbox game consoles, and new computers? Frankly, most parents have no idea of the content of video games; nor do they understand just how violent they are. A well-cited Kaiser survey on media conducted in 2010 found that 38 percent of boys aged eight to ten had played Grand Theft Auto. The majority of those young boys’ parents did not know what Grand Theft Auto was about. Parents also did not know about the thousands of media research studies documenting the harmful effects of media violence on young people. An article in Pediatrics addressed this problem, noting, “The media themselves don’t often report on negative media effects.… Research studies and news reports from 1975 to 2000 [show] that whereas media effects were increasing over time in research studies, news reports of media causing harm were actually decreasing. A more recent study revealed similar effects through 2012.”19
In this case, the killer’s depression and social withdrawal primed him for an unhappy foray into the independence of college, where he was able to fully engross himself in his video game addiction without any form of parental interference.
Moorpark College was supposed to be a place of hope for me, but it turned into a place of despair, just like everything else. I was invisible there. Nobody knew I existed or cared who I was. The day of my final exam was December 7th, which was also the day the new expansion to World of Warcraft was released, called Cataclysm. I rushed to Best Buy to purchase the new game. With new WoW expansions, some of those old feelings that I felt when I first played the game came back to me, and I wanted that feeling again. Since my college class was over and it was winter break, I could literally play the game for every waking minute. And so I did. My last stint in the World of Warcraft was an intense one. I reached the new level cap in less than two days, and once I was there I repeatedly took pleasure in killing James’s, Steve’s, and Mark’s characters as they tried to level up, a petty form of revenge for them leaving me out of their group meetings years ago, and because I was jealous that Steve and Mark were more skilled at the game than I was.
It is clear how addicted he was to World of Warcraft. And he was now spending time “repeatedly killing” his own friends’ characters and taking pleasure in it. As discussed throughout this book, being immersed in such an online world can intensify aggression, especially in children and adolescents. As children and adolescents spend more time playing the games, the risk of becoming more aggressive becomes greater. One study on virtual aggression found that “addiction is a positive predictor of control disorder, and… anger in virtual worlds is significantly connected to aggression in the real world.”20 As we know now, this connection to aggression in the real world is potently true for this killer and others like him.
Part 6 Santa Barbara: Endgame Age 19–22.… The loneliness was torturing me so intensely that I even started up my WoW account and played the game constantly for the month of September.… When I dropped my college classes, I crossed a threshold that I knew existed, but never actually believed I would cross. It completely ended all hope I had of living a desirable life in Santa Barbara.… It was only when I first moved to Santa Barbara that I started considering the possibility of having to carry out a violent act of revenge, as the final solution to dealing with all of the injustices I’ve had to face at the hands of women and society.…
I had the knowledge, in the back of my mind, that the Day of Retribution was very possible now. Going to the shooting range while I waited for my laptop gave me the perfect opportunity to gain some initial training in shooting guns, which will be the main weapons I use as vengeance against my enemies when the Day of Retribution ultimately comes to pass. I walked into the range, rented a handgun from the ugly old redneck cashier, and started to practice shooting at paper targets. As I fired my first few rounds, I felt so sick to the stomach. I questioned my whole life, and I looked at the gun in front of me and asked myself “What am I doing here? How could things have led to this?” I paid my fee and left the range within minutes, feeling as if I was going to be sick. My whole world was twisted.
There are a million reasons why a person turns to murder. This manifesto makes it perfectly clear that a withdrawal from real relationships, an immersion in and addiction to online fantasy worlds, and a lifetime spent participating in virtual violence primes violent video game players to kill. And to kill not just one person but as many people as they can.
This killer was on a mission to make the world feel his pain. He detailed his plans for the “Day of Retribution,” which he said was “all I have to live for.”
After I have killed all of the sorority girls at the Alpha Phi House, I will quickly get into the SUV before the police arrive, assuming they would arrive within 3 minutes. I will then make my way to Del Playa, splattering as many of my enemies as I can with the SUV, and shooting anyone I don’t splatter.… When they are writhing in pain, their bodies broken and dying after I splatter them, they will fully realize their crimes.
Once I reach Del Playa Street, I will dump the bag of severed heads I had saved from my previous victims, proclaiming to everyone how much I’ve made them all suffer. Once they see all of their friends’ heads roll onto the street, everyone will fear me as the powerful god I am. I will then start massacring everyone on Del Playa Street. I will pull up next to a house party and fire bullets at everyone partying on the front yard. I will specifically target the good looking people, and all of the couples. After I have destroyed a house party, I will continue down Del Playa, destroying everything and everyone. When I see the first police car come to their rescue, I will drive away as fast as I can, shooting and ramming anyone in my path until I find a suitable place to finally end my life.
Not only was this young man losing contact with any kind of normal life, the dark world of video games was teaching him a set of values and skills steeped in violence. His manifesto included forty-one references to the video game Warcraft. Both his manifesto and his YouTube videos were clearly influenced by language directly taken from the game. For example, in his last YouTube video, he said, “If I had it in my power, I would stop at nothing to reduce every single one of you to mountains of skulls and rivers of blood, and rightfully so.”
Aaron Klein, a reporter with WorldNetDaily (WND), an online news organization, believes that this statement was inspired by Garrosh Hellscream, a Warcraft character. According to Klein, “The Hellscream character similarly went on a diatribe citing mountains of skulls and rivers of blood. Official sound files from World of Warcraft’s Mists of Pandaria have Hellscream, voiced by Patrick Seitz, stating, ‘I have seen mountains of skulls and rivers of blood, and I will have my world.’”21 It’s impossible to deny the connection between this game (and video games in general, which constituted much of the boy’s life up until this point) and his massacre in Santa Barbara.
The World of Warcraft website states, “You will have to defeat the most powerful beings in all of World of Warcraft… to let everyone know that you have proved your worth.”
The last demented writings from the manifesto echo the same theme:
Why do things have to be this way? I ask all of you.
All I ever wanted was to love women, and in turn to be loved by them back. Their behavior towards me has only earned my hatred, and rightfully so! I am the true victim in all of this. I am the good guy. Humanity struck at me first by condemning me to experience so much suffering. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t want this. I didn’t start this war… I wasn’t the one who struck first… But I will finish it by striking back. I will punish everyone. And it will be beautiful. Finally, at long last, I can show the world my true worth.
At the beginning of his manifesto he wrote, “This tragedy did not have to happen.” He was right, at least, about that.
Clearly, video game violence influences violence in the real world. It turns out the reverse is true as well. After the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech, in which 32 people were shot and killed and 17 more were wounded, a twenty-one-year-old Australian man created an amateur action computer game called V-Tech Rampage. In the game, the player controls the killer through “three levels of stealth and murder” that involve walking across the Virginia Tech campus to kill the real-life victims of the massacre, avoiding police detection, and then engaging in a ninety-second shooting spree. Ultimately, the killer commits suicide.
The game is riddled with “obscenities, insults, racist terms, scatological references, and offers of sex from female characters in exchange for their lives.”22
It starts with text on the screen that says, “Locked and loaded, it’s party time. I just gotta make sure no one sees me or lives to tell the tale.”
“The pawns are all in place,” another frame says. “The time has come that I may finally send my message to the world.”
Your first victim is, predictably, a woman. “Emily stayed overnight with her boyfriend, Karl, again last night,” the screen reads. “He’ll be dropping her off at school as always…” Now is your chance!
You shoot Emily but merely wound her. “Mediocrity,” the game tells you. “You let Emily get away! Are you always full of shit, McBeef? Try again, this time don’t be such a wuss.”
You successfully murder Emily and then continue on to murder the only witness to the crime. He clearly has to die, or else you won’t achieve your second objective: to sneak across campus and avoid police detection.
Once you do, you have your final shot at glory. You barricade the entrance to the university classroom you’re in and are challenged with killing every living soul in just ninety seconds. When you do—sharp marksman that you are—you are rewarded with your ultimate award: you, the marksman, commit suicide. Message delivered.23
Maybe V-Tech Rampage doesn’t appeal to you, but other games of the same ilk might spark your interest. School Shooter: North American Tour 2012 is sure to celebrate a parent’s worst nightmare. Like the previous game, it is set in a school. It’s not clear if it’s a high school or a college. You are armed—you have your choice of weapons, the ones used by the killers at Columbine High School or the ones used by the killer at Virginia Tech. The purpose of the game is simple: kill as many students, teachers, and staff as possible.
You enter a hallway lined with lockers and filled with students. You begin shooting. Bodies are blown apart, and blood sprays everywhere. You shoot many students in the head. They all try to get away, but you run after them and gun them down with calm precision.
The hallways quickly clear.
As you walk through the empty hallways, you realize that you are hunting. You go into classrooms one by one, stalking your prey. Some are empty, but when you see students or a teacher, you open fire. They’re easy to kill. Sometimes, even after a student is dead, you keep firing. It’s fun! But you have work to do; you’re after the highest body count.
Where are the students hiding? The hall you’re in slowly starts to slope toward the basement of the school. There are empty rooms here, and you start to panic. Where are the students? Thankfully, you hear voices.
You reach a packed cafeteria. Jackpot! You begin firing, and you’re able to kill scores of students. You shoot over and over again. Some try to fight back, but they’re helpless against you. The cafeteria floor and tables are soon covered in blood.
Then the SWAT team arrives. At first you kill them as easily as you slaughtered the students. Eventually, they corner you.
You knew it would come to this. The fun is over. The game helps you decide what to do next: commit suicide.
Interested in playing this video game, which provides step-by-step instructions for hunting down and killing your classmates? Thankfully, after early versions of the game were released, public reaction caused the company to pull it from shelves.
Around the world, terrorist attacks happen almost every day—and terrorists are learning from our video games. In November 2015, coordinated attacks by ISIS left 130 people dead and hundreds wounded in Paris.24 A suspect in these attacks was a known video game aficionado,25 and his own attorney described him as “the perfect example of the Grand Theft Auto generation who believe they are living in a video game.”26 Sixteen days after the Orlando massacre, one of the largest terrorist attacks to date occurred at the airport in Istanbul. Forty-four people were killed and more than 230 were injured. Many people noted the similarities between the attack and the video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, in which you murder dozens of innocent civilians at—where else?—a crowded airport.27
In some cases, terrorist groups even create their own video games to promote their activities. A study of these games found that their interactive nature offers a more engaged perspective than other media, making players active participants in their murderous plots.28
Our cultural obsession with violent video games also helps explain why it’s so easy for ISIS to recruit Americans. Most people who see a video of ISIS operatives cutting a person’s head off feel nauseated, horrified, and enraged. But some watch the same video and think, “How do I get a piece of this?” Through video games, we taught these people to derive reward and pleasure from simulated human death and suffering. When they see real human death and suffering, we should not be surprised that they want to participate. And they are participating. At least 250 Americans have traveled or attempted to travel abroad to join ISIS, and an additional 900 active investigations against sympathizers are currently running in all fifty states.29
In a deadly cycle, life imitates art imitates life. On December 14, 2012, a mass murderer slaughtered 20 first-grade children and 6 school staff members in less than fifteen minutes at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. When the killer arrived at the school around 9:30 a.m., he had already killed his mother.
On November 25, 2013, the “Report of the State’s Attorney for the Judicial District of Danbury on the Shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School” released detailed findings after the investigation of the mass murder. According to the report:
The shooter’s second floor bedroom windows were taped over with black trash bags. The second floor computer room also had its windows covered. There, investigators found a computer hard drive that appeared to have been intentionally damaged. To date, because of the extensive damage, forensic experts have not yet been able to recover any information from that hard drive.…
Numerous video games were located in the basement computer/gaming area. The list of video games includes, but is not limited to: “Left for [sic] Dead,” “Metal Gear Solid,” “Dead Rising,” “Half Life,” “Battlefield,” “Call of Duty,” “Grand Theft Auto,” “Shin Megami Tensei,” “Dynasty Warriors,” “Vice City,” “Team Fortress,” and “Doom.”
In case you aren’t familiar with these video games, a synopsis of their content follows.
Left 4 Dead, for example, is rated Mature for “Blood and Gore, Intense Violence” by the ESRB. In its summary of the game, the ESRB notes that it is a first-person shooter in which players use an assortment of handguns, rifles, shotguns, Molotov cocktails, and grenades to kill waves of “infected” zombies who attack in extreme “melee” fashion, meaning that the player fights them off in close quarters, engaging in hand-to-hand combat, with frenetic movements and loud, shrill screams. In the game, you frequently blow your enemies’ heads and limbs off, splattering blood on the walls and floors.
Five other games on the list (Metal Gear Solid, Dead Rising, Half Life, Battlefield 4, and Shin Megami Tensei) are also rated Mature by the ESRB. The reasons for the rating vary, but each game features some combination of blood and gore, intense violence, mature sexual themes, and strong language.
Battlefield 4, in particular, is rated Mature for “Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, and Strong Language.” The ESRB goes on to describe the game as follows:
This is a first-person shooter in which players assume the role of a U.S. Marine (Recker) and his Special Forces unit as they battle enemy forces in China and Russia. Players use sniper rifles, machine guns, rocket launchers, and mines to kill enemy soldiers engage [sic] in frenetic, realistic battle. Some sequences involve stealth tactics, in which players sneak up on enemies to stab them at close range. Combat is highlighted by realistic gunfire, large explosions, and screams of pain; large blood-splatter effects also occur. One sequence requires players to use a knife to cut off the leg of a wounded comrade; another depicts a character getting beaten and electrocuted by an interrogator.
You may recognize Doom from the list of games this mass murderer enjoyed. It is rated Mature for “Intense Violence, Blood and Gore” by the ESRB. A description of the game on the publisher’s website reads as follows:
Featuring dramatic storylines, pulse-pounding action, revolutionary technology and unique sci-fi based weaponry, DOOM is the franchise that ushered in the FPS revolution and evolved the genre into the juggernaut it is today. With several installments featuring some of the most frightening and gripping first-person gaming experiences ever created, the DOOM franchise is a cultural milestone that has transcended the realm of video games on the way to becoming a mainstream entertainment phenomenon.
On May 13, 2016, DOOM returns as a brutally fun and challenging modern-day shooter experience. Relentless demons, impossibly destructive guns, and fast, fluid movement provide the foundation for intense, first-person combat—whether you’re obliterating demon hordes through the depths of Hell in the single-player campaign, or competing against your friends in numerous multiplayer modes.
Notice any trends? In addition to all of them being rated Mature, all of the video games in this list are first-person killer games. The state’s attorney report also indicated: “Online first person shooter games that the shooter did play as determined by a search of the digital media in the home, ‘Combat Arms’ and ‘World of Warcraft[,]’ were played on the computer using a keyboard to control the player.” The report also noted that one of the items “found within the digital evidence seized” was the “computer game titled ‘School Shooting[,]’ where the player controls a character who enters a school and shoots at students.”
Although School Shooting was described by the state’s attorney as “a very basic stand alone PC game,”30 there are other, more sophisticated games with similar titles that have been distributed, including the previously described Checkerboard Studios’ School Shooter game.
According to the report on Sandy Hook, the day proceeded as follows:
On the morning of December 14, 2012, the shooter parked his 2010 Honda Civic next to a “No Parking” zone outside of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Shortly after 9:30 a.m. he approached the front entrance to the school. He was armed with a Bushmaster Model XM15-E2S rifle (also Bushmaster rifle), a Glock 20, 10 mm pistol and a Sig Sauer P226, 9 mm pistol and a large supply of ammunition.
The doors to the school were locked, as they customarily were at this time, the school day having already begun. The shooter proceeded to shoot his way into the school building through the plate glass window to the right of the front lobby doors.
The main office staff reported hearing noises and glass breaking at approximately 9:35 a.m. and saw the shooter, a white male with a hat and sunglasses, come into the school building with a rifle type gun. The shooter walked normally, did not say anything and appeared to be breathing normally. He was seen shooting the rifle down the hallway.
Just down the hallway from the main office, in the direction that the shooter was to be seen firing, a 9:30 a.m. Planning and Placement Team (PPT) meeting was being held in room 9, a conference room. It was attended by Principal Dawn Hochsprung and School Psychologist Mary Sherlach, together with a parent and other school staff. Shortly after the meeting started, the attendees heard loud banging. The principal and school psychologist then left the room followed shortly after by a staff member. After leaving the room, Mrs. Hochsprung yelled “Stay put!”
When the principal yelled, “Stay put!” to the parent and staff members in the room, she saved their lives, even as she put hers in danger. This reminds me of a photograph taken on 9/11. It shows a stairwell in one of the World Trade Center towers full of people streaming out of the building, plus a single firefighter. After looking at it for a few seconds, you realize what is so powerful about the picture. Everyone in the photo is walking down the stairs, but the firefighter is walking up. He’s moving against the crowd, against every human instinct to preserve his own safety first, so he can save lives. That firefighter and Dawn Hochsprung both knew that it was likely they would not survive. Dawn Hochsprung and school psychologist Mary Sherlach didn’t try to escape the danger themselves—they moved toward the man with only one objective: to save the lives of the children in their school. As much as I refuse to give the mass murderers who commit these crimes the infamy they crave, I am equally passionate about giving as much credit as possible to the heroes who risk—and often lose—their lives trying to stop the violence.
The report continues to describe the heroism of Dawn Hochsprung, Mary Sherlach, and the other staff member who followed them:
As the staff member left the room, the staff member heard gunshots and saw Mrs. Hochsprung and Mrs. Sherlach fall down in front of the staff member. The staff member felt a gunshot hit the staff member’s leg. Once down, the staff member was struck again by additional gunfire, but [lay] still in the hallway. Not seeing anyone in the hallway, the staff member crawled back into room 9 and held the door shut. A call to 911 was made and in the ensuing moments the telephone in room 9 was also used to turn on the school wide intercom system. This appears to have been done inadvertently, but provided notice to other portions of the building.
At the same time the shooter was firing in the hallway, another staff member was at the far east end of the hallway near classroom 1. The staff member was struck by a bullet in the foot and retreated into a classroom.
Both Dawn Hochsprung, 47, and Mary Sherlach, 56, died as a result of being shot. Both wounded staff members shot in the hallway were later evacuated to the hospital. They survived.
After shooting and killing the two adults and wounding the two others, the shooter entered the main office. The office staff had taken shelter in the office. They heard sounds of the office door opening, footsteps walking inside the office and then back toward the office door. Staff members heard the door open a second time and then heard more gunfire from outside the office. They called 911.
Where the shooter specifically went next is unclear. The evidence and witness statements establish the shooter went down the hallway in an easterly direction ultimately entering first grade classrooms 8 and 10. The order is not definitively known.
Just as in the video game School Shooter and the first-person killer games that the murderer owned, he was hunting. He was trying to accumulate the highest body count, and so he killed the people who could stop him and then turned on the most helpless and innocent victims he could find. He went into the first-grade classrooms.
The report states, “While in classrooms 8 and 10, the shooter shot and killed four adults and twenty children with the Bushmaster rifle. Twelve children survived, one from classroom 8 and eleven from classroom 10.”
As players are encouraged (and even trained) to do in the game School Shooter and other first-person killer games, the mass murderer in Newtown shot his young victims multiple times while he racked up his body count.
There were many heroes in this horrifying story, including a school custodian who stayed in the hallway locking classrooms to stop the killer. Lauren Rousseau, a substitute teacher, died trying to shield students she had hidden in a bathroom, but she and all but one of the children in her classroom were killed. First-grade teacher Victoria Leigh Soto hid five children in a closet and the rest under desks. She tried to convince the killer that her class was out at P.E., but when a few students ran out of their below-desk hiding places, she used her body to shield them. The murderer fatally shot her. One of the boys in the class is reported to have yelled, “Run!” to his classmates, an act of bravery for which he was also shot and killed. Police found the five children Victoria Leigh Soto had hidden in the closet unharmed when they entered the classroom, and six other children escaped from her classroom.
As we all struggled to make sense of this particularly awful mass murder involving so many innocent students and educators, several theories popped up to explain how the killer could be so cold-blooded, brutal, and heartless. Some tried to link the killer with autism or Asperger’s syndrome, but there’s no evidence that these diagnoses alone would explain such a despicable crime. The Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee, an independent federal advisory committee that provides advice to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on autism spectrum disorder (ASD), issued the following statement regarding the tragedy:
There is no scientific evidence linking ASD with homicides or other violent crimes. In fact, studies of court records suggest that people with autism are less likely to engage in criminal behavior of any kind compared with the general population, and people with Asperger syndrome, specifically, are not convicted of crimes at higher rates than the general population.31
Some people have brought up mental illness as a possible explanation for the Sandy Hook massacre, but mental illness is not a catch-all explanation for mass murder. In April 2014, the American Psychological Association reported: “Most offenders didn’t display patterns of crime related to mental illness symptoms over their lifetimes.” In another report, the Institute of Medicine concluded, “Although studies suggest a link between mental illnesses and violence, the contribution of people with mental illnesses to overall rates of violence is small.” Further, “the magnitude of the relationship is greatly exaggerated in the minds of the general population.”32 For people with mental illnesses, violent behavior appears to be more common when other risk factors are also present. A major risk factor for violence, as we’ve seen so vividly elsewhere, is playing violent video games.
A study published in the journal Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice titled “Violent Video Games, Delinquency, and Youth Violence: New Evidence” found strong evidence that violent video games are a risk factor for violent criminal behavior, even when controlling for psychopathic traits. According to the authors, “When critics say, ‘Well, it’s probably not video games, it’s probably how antisocial they are,’ we can address that directly because we controlled for a lot of things that we know matter.” One author of the study emphasized that “the results show that both the frequency of play and affinity for violent games were strongly associated with delinquent and violent behavior.”
The massacre at Sandy Hook was one of the most ghastly tragedies our nation has been forced to endure. How many more are needed to convince the powers that be that something needs to change? How much more can we endure?
The official report on Sandy Hook ends with the following:
What is clear is that on the morning of December 14, 2012, the shooter intentionally committed horrendous crimes, murdering 20 children and 6 adults in a matter of moments, with the ability and intention of killing even more. He committed these heinous acts after killing his own mother. The evidence indicates the shooter planned his actions, including the taking of his own life.
It is equally clear that law enforcement arrived at Sandy Hook Elementary School within minutes of the first shots being fired. They went into the school to save those inside with the knowledge that someone might be waiting to take their lives. It is also clear that the staff of Sandy Hook Elementary School acted heroically in trying to protect the children. The combination saved many children’s lives.
The heroes in this event saved many children’s lives, and we should all be grateful to them for their selfless acts. In their honor, and out of respect to all the children, mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers who have died at the hands of killers like this in the last forty years, we must change.
After attending the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in the summer of 2014 (shortly after the UCSB massacre in Isla Vista), the New York Times reporter Nick Bilton wrote a column33 about revisiting the issue of video game violence and real violence in our society:
It is hard to argue that there isn’t some level of desensitization after a day spent at E3. At the main entrance of the Los Angeles Convention Center, where the conference was held, people lined up to play the new game Payday 2. In this game, you team up with friends to rob a bank. Killing police is a big part of succeeding.
As I watched people picking off cops and security guards with sniper rifles and handguns, news broke that a real-life shooting in Las Vegas had resulted in the death of two police officers and three civilians (including the two shooters).
He went on to quote President Obama’s reaction after the Sandy Hook massacre, writing:
After the Sandy Hook shootings in Connecticut, when it became clear that [the killer] was a fan of first-person shooters, including the popular military game Call of Duty, President Obama said Congress should find out once and for all if there was a connection between games and gun violence.
“Congress should fund research on the effects violent video games have on young minds,” he said. “We don’t benefit from ignorance. We don’t benefit from not knowing the science.” Yet more than a year later, we don’t conclusively know if there is a link.
And gun violence in the real world—and the gaming world—goes on.
In response to the column, many readers wrote in to the New York Times with their own stories, urging us to do better. In a follow-up column,34 Bilton wrote:
My inbox was filled with messages about the cause and effect of violence in games, and dozens of readers left comments on the site addressing their personal views.
Some experts weighed in, saying that in their opinion, guns in games can invariably lead to real violence.
“I am a clinical social worker with many years of experience and strongly believe that there is a correlation between violent video games and lack of not only empathy but lack of an emotional and cognitive distinction between fantasy and reality,” Paula Beckenstein wrote. “Of course, this is not true for the majority of game players, but it is for those individuals whose psychological boundaries are blurred.”
There were those that likened games to high-fructose corn syrup. “Eventually, we will look at first-person shooters like we do high-fructose corn syrup. Do we really need our kids consuming these?” a reader wrote. “The answer is obvious. Make food healthy, make video games healthy. And adults should control this.”
Now is the time. We must do better. We must rewrite the ending of this story, which we’ve all heard too many times.