Gamer's Aren't Murderers

Posted by Robert Janelle Apr 16, 2007

Many Muslims have said after a terrorist attack, they pray that the perpetrators weren't Muslim.

I know how they feel.

Every time a young person commits a heinous act of violence, I watch the news and wait for statements that video games made them do it.

Following yesterday's horrific massacre at Virginia Tech, it'll only be a matter of time before video games, or "murder simulators" to use anti-game activist attorney Jack Thompson's term, are in the spotlight taking the blame.

In fact, game blog Destructoid reported earlier that Thompson himself was on Fox News within hours of the shooting spouting just that rhetoric.

It never fails to amaze me that whenever something senseless happens, there's has to be something other than the perpetrator to blame. It was the music, the Internet or video games.

Even blaming the state of Virginia's lax gun laws, although possibly more related, seems ridiculous. How many people live in Virginia under the same laws and how many of them go on killing sprees?

Yes, it's a tragedy, but it amazes me that we as a society can't seem to accept that some people have serious problems and will probably go off with or without the help of any kind of media.

There's millions of gamers worldwide and I'd wager that many of them have never touched a real firearm and many never will.

As Sun Media game journalist Steve Tilley put it after the Dawson College shooting in Montreal: "Hate the player, not the game."