Grand Theft Auto
 

Righto, so shanda can't make threads and I'm making this for her... ENJOY!!!

Can a violent videogame called Grand Theft Auto be responsible for an 18-year-old murdering three people? That's what the families of the victims are saying in a lawsuit

EDIT: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/...in678261.shtml

thanks again pastor...

i don't think video games and such are NOT responsible for the violent behaviour of the youth. i think people always have choices when it comes to taking a gun to school and all that. music can and does influence emotions but it doesn't hinder our ability to make choices. same with games, yes okay so you might be actually doing the action, but i don't think it's more than playing with barney and using your imagination. the players should be told that these things aren't real and a teenager should be aware that games and such are just games and not always to be taken seriously.....he was 18 years old.....

and the link is wrong.....sorry..it's this:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/...in678261.shtml

I don't really think it can be said to be the games fault.

We are living in a world of war and children are growing up seeing things on tv that are real life like lately the London Bombings that no child should have to see. And also all the murder cases on the news or whatever they see that which could make them think they could get away with murdering someone. The game could have had an effect but i think they'd need to be not right in the head to do something like that.

Its also the same when Marilyn Manson always gets the blame if one of his fans or a goth kills someone as the case in Scotland where i don't think he's to blame. I love his music and i don't want to kill someone. I play Grand Theft Auto and as far as i can tell i haven't murdered anyone.

^Mm hmm. I was about to say its nice to see they're expanding their horizons now, so its not always Marilyn Manson.

Ye it seems he always gets the blame

yo man, if your dumb enough to have a loaded rifle in your house just laying around, with a teenage kid, then you shouldve been the one with the cap in you head. kids will always be violent, no matter what music they listen to or what games they play and what they watch on television. and if guns are simple enough for anyone to use, then maybe we shouldnt have them laying around in public residences.

That is very true

If someone is so easily swayed that they would murder because of a video game, then you know theres something wrong with them. Its not as if one day they were perfect kids, they saw a murder on a game and thought "HELL YEAH LETS BURN THE TOWN!! KILL EM ALL, BITCHES!!" The idea woulda been in their head before.

yes.... but the thing is whether prolonged use of such a game contributed to the point until the person actually did it..... each of us has some element but whether or not it is strong enough to come to the fore is another matter.....

word, i could kill the mailman who is at my mailbox right now, but i dont. do you know why? its called "self control"

Hell no. Sorreh if you think Im being ignorant here, but I dont see how anyone can blame a game because of murder. If it did contribute enough to make them kill, then thats fair evidence the kid was severely messed up in the first place.

yes i agree with that... however, this is america ;)

I've played GTA (and all its subsequent sequals) many many times. I also play a ton of first person shooters for hours and hours, some of which are very gory and realistic. I have yet to kill anyone! Amazing eh?

I think you will find this ploy to blame the game is just a scape goat that the lawyer is using to try to prove his client "innocent". If you can blame the game, then the "kid" is "innocent", right? "The GAME MADE him do it". Its the biggest load of crap I have ever heard. What about all the people who kill and have never played a video game in their life? By the sheer volume of people who play video games, you are bound to get some "killers" in there. There is a reason those games are rated Mature. Children aren't supposed to be playing them because children are impressionable and have a less strong right and wrong "meter". Parents are just too lazy to keep their kids out of trouble and from watching movies and games that aren't age appropriate. And if people give easy access to a loaded gun to children or to people who are mentally unstable, then they are partly to blame, not some game.

I just see people blaming all their problems, issues, and actions on everyone and everything but themselves. As far as I know, we all still have personal CHOICE. No one is making anyone do anything. Start taking responsibily for your own actions!

Perfectly true. It wouldnt surprise me either if the parents of the kid tried to sue the makers of the game, then sell their story to the highest paying magazine. Is just the way of the world I guess..

^ Yeah, no doubt. "Lets take a terrible tragidy and make money off of it!!". That would be the first time anyone did that...

Hah, like with the poverty bracelts that people sell for their own profit? I should really stop bringing that up... Has nothing to do with this really. It just irritates me.

yeah, true. it's still kind of strange that they blame it on the game because the kid was 16 when he bought that game so he must have had some sense of what's reality and what's just a game! i don't even remember how young i was when i watched my first r-rated movie!
it's the victim's parents that are doing this and the guy might get the death penalty i heard, i don't know where they are since it's illegal in some places

whats illegal? killing people?

^ death penalty.....

in response to phoenix flames, i can see how you say that we have personal choice but the issue at hand i think is whether or not the boy was influenced to the degree until he killed someone..... just as listening to a certain band may influence you when creating your own music, playing a gamme may influence your actions.... im not saying the game caused it, but i think it needs to be looked at.... there are ratings for a reason.....

I agree, and to some extent we are influenced by everything we see. As I stated in my post, there is definatly a reason such things are rated mature. Studies say that children aren't able to distinguish reality from fantasy as well as adults, and as we all know, children are easily impressionable.

I'm not saying games don't influence people, but I think those that snap and kill others were probably going to do it at some point anyway, reguardless of the game. These games are made for adults and should only be played by adults (which I think we all agree on). If he started playing the game at 16, then appearently his parents wern't doing the job they should have, whether or not the game influenced him.

You are right that music you listen to can influence the music you create, but that is a far cry away from games influencing you to kill people. And as has been said before (just not here), millions of people play these games, and it is only a very small few who are "influenced" to kill people.

yes yes, very true.....

but like ive said before, it is america, people will sue for anything.......

Ain't that the truth! It appears we are evolving into a society of people who sue to get rich and blame our stupidity (Oh, you mean the coffee was hot??) on someone else. Life goes on.

indeed life does go on........

it's surprising people can make money off the strangest things. that's why i've stopped reading warning labels, they make me feel stupid.....

yea its really stupid. im a big fan of all the gta games, and play em quite often, and i do enjoy going around killing random people, and running em over. but i would never do that in real life because these people have families and relationships, and are obviously alive. the 'people' Moore was 'killing' in the game were computer graphics, just a shape and colours, maybe the game did provoke him to do kill those people, but that was because he already had that thought in his mind or had other problems in his life. - as it says in the report "Moore had a profoundly troubled upbringing, bouncing back and forth between a broken home and a handful of foster families"

The game is escapism... You do it in the game because you know you cant and wont in real life. It doesnt encourage you to go and do it at all... If it does, then youre messed up.

yes.... but if the game has pushed you over that line then people could claim the game is responsible... i dont agree with it, but it is in human nature to look for someone else to blame: we dont want to think of ourselves as bad or wrong... :)

Shurrup. If the game could push you over the edge, so could many things. Like if your toast got that little bit too burnt... BUT NO-ONES GONNA BLAME THE TOASTER, ARE THEY?!

no, thats exactly my point.... they need something to blame, so they look for something...

like i have said before, if youre looking for something, youll probably find it...

well, not always, but i mean if youre looking for someone or something to blame then you will probably find it.....

Go back to sleep.

yes... i think i need more sleep, that post didnt make very much sleep... i mean sense... :)

its funny how no one ever blames violent movies though...its always games. and even though australia isnt particuarly religious like some parts of america, huh oh **** this isnt going to make sense. hmm maralyn manson dones seem to get blamed here much but i gather he certainly has a bad reputation in America like Metallica and Slayer...hey what ever happened to the Memphis Trio that Henry Rollins was defending...
the three kids were heavily into metallica and werent too liked in the town and got blamed for the murder of someone... although no one really knows who killed the person....keep in mind this was a big religious town so their choice of music didnt go down too well with anyone....

they blame the tv too, at least where i live. people are responsable for their acts ad im sure really violent games would have that age warning on them so people older than 15 or 18 should know what theyre doing.

i havent read all the posts so if this has been said, sorry fellas.
i just think games are games and if kids take them serious, every fucking game would make them kill.... even hide and seek or whatever. cause if you dont realise its a game, fucking poker could make you kill too. i do have a point here

well, once in my little african city, there were these boys who made weapons from pieces of metal they found cuz they wanted to be Shaka Zulu. a show they shouldn't have been watching cuz it was on at like 3am and it was rated!!..it was their own stupidity cuz they were still old enough to know not to do it, but they were just bored pre teens trying to be cool.
then my older brother tried jumping off a giant slide and then the roof cuz he thought tying a towel around his neck would give him flying abilities(pfff). he's a whole different story though.

They do. All the time. There were a few cases involved in the original Dawn Of The Dead (if I remember rightly).

I was thinking about this the other day, and I remembered those tango ads we had over here a few years ago, with the big orange dude who came along and slapped em in the face.. All the kids were slapping each other in the playground because of it, and one kid was actually deafened by it. So they changed the ads.. But still, it shows that the media does have an effect I guess. Although, theres a big difference between young impressionable children slapping each other to be cool, and teenagers and adults taking lives because they did it on a video game.