A 17-year-old in Ohio has been convicted of murder for killing his mother and shooting his father in the head. This was after they punished him by taking away his copy of Halo 3–a rather trivial matter, it may seem, which became a flashpoint for a murder. However, the judge took the opportunity to take a swipe at a certain entity. No prizes for guessing what particular first-person-shooter role-playing adventure game set in the 26th century on alien ringworlds that was.
I’m not saying that the teenager murdering his mother is in any way an acceptable action for taking away a video game. However, blaming the video game is not only lazy, but, it seems, becoming more typical as the war on video games continues.
They didn’t accept his insanity plea (which was based on him being addicted to video games)–however, the judge has demonstrated himself to be clueless with this comment:
[The defendant] had no idea at the time he hatched this plot that if he killed his parents, they would be dead forever.
Now, if the defendant really thought his parents would just respawn after he’d shot them, he has got something seriously wrong with him–such as not knowing the facts of life. The vast majority (viz. all, bar a few exceptions) of people can tell the difference between using a deft movement of one’s controller finger to shoot an alien and pressing the trigger on a handgun in front of a real, living human. People have murdered each other over much less, and, according to certain sources, the defendant had been talking about killing his parents for weeks beforehand. Considering that the murder took place at the end of October 2007, mere weeks after the launch of Halo 3, it seems highly unlikely (to me, at least) that killing aliens was a contributing factor.
There’s no denying the game was a contributing factor, in that it was the item that was taken away and caused a flashpoint (it was the object of desire). However, the content of the game had nothing to do with it. If it had been some other precious item to the teenager, then I suspect a similar response would have occurred.
It seems that the defence team tried to use the game as a scapegoat, claiming he was ‘addicted’ to it. In my opinion, that’s no excuse. Capital murder is capital murder, no matter what the motivation is. Needlessly taking another human life, and attempting to needlessly take another, is purely deplorable. The defendant deserves a life sentence, and there should be no lenience based on the fact that the object of affection was a relatively violent video game. Halo isn’t even that violent–Grand Theft Auto, Manhunt and even, to some extent, the later editions of the Call of Duty series are far more violent and realistic, and GTA in particular is set in the world of organised crime, projecting a far more negative influence on youngsters.
Blaming a game that which can be compared to Star Wars, Aliens and Dambusters with regards to its level of violence and subject matter accordingly is merely an easy scapegoat. Naturally, the web is up in arms: Slashdot’s commenters take the judge to task for his naïveté in criticising the game, and the forumers at halo.bungie.org’s forums seem to range between ‘furious’ and ‘analytical’ (but, to be fair, they are a Halo fan site, so we can let them off for a bit of bias in the game’s favour).
