Grand Theft Auto sales halted after Thai taxi killing

Grand Theft Auto sales halted after Thai taxi killing

www.guardian.co.uk

Distributors of Grand Theft Auto yesterday suspended sales in Thailand after a teenager allegedly killed a taxi driver in a bloody frenzy, re-enacting scenes from the blockbuster video game.

Police who caught the 18-year-old at the scene said he confessed to having planned the attack to find out if robbery was as easy as depicted in the violent game.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Okay, I played the game too for some time, but I didn't kill anyone. Lately more and more real killings are being thrown at the computer game industry, as this becomes a big problem in the last 10 years.

Should such violent video games be forbidden? GTA isn't the most violent game i played. Just have a look at POSTAL, maybe the most violent game ever - final goal of the game: Kill as much innocent people as you can.

From the review of Postal:

Never before has the computer gamer been able to act out the darkest fantasies of a homicidal maniac with such abandon, but the impressive volume of carnage is the only thing setting Postal apart.

So is this our future? I wonder if I become a maniac too, if I play that game 24/7 for some weeks. Maybe not - because "I have brain" - but what about those kids, 13-14 years old, who don't have parents that are checking their PC's. If you are violent in a computer game at some point, you will spreading violence in the "real world".

Who has to be responsible for the latest killing? The kids? The Game Industry? Movies? Their parents? The country (for not banning such games) ?

No answers.


A gamer (reviewing Postal wrote

If you like GrandTheft Auto, this is the game for you...

"...for no reason you just start out in middle of a house area with a machine gun and you just start shooting around and kill everybody.

The game is straight violence and cruelty, half the enemy(?) in the map is civilian who will just run off screaming and when they are shot you hear them screaming and suffering crawling on the ground and eventually dies, which is realistic."


Another reviewer wrote:

"Bringing people down with a machine gun and then executing them while babbling something about politics as never been this fun."

www.guardian.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

edit: quotes

[edit on 5/8/08 by absente]

[edit on 5/8/08 by absente]

[edit on 5/8/08 by absente]

People will find some excuse because they dont want to blame themselves for their actions..

This goes along with kids wit ADD.. or some... They put these kids on drugs cause the sorry ass excuse for a parent dont wanna take care of the kid.. so they get the drugs do it..

blaming video games for violent behavior is as stupid as when they use to blame dungeons and dragons. i played d&d at least 3 times a week for any where from 5-10 hours at a time and never once did i take a sword and stab someone to death and then take their coins and try to see if their equipment was magical. its retarded, lazy and irrersonsible to blaim forms of entertainment for someones lack of morals, judgment, and behaviour.

[edit on 8/5/2008 by krill]

What makes me laugh at a story like (whilst sympathising with the drivers family) is that one incident makes the Government take a game off the shelves. Its an isolated incident people.
How many of any game have been sold and how many of these 'tradegies' have happened?
You get a game and it sends kids off the edge and they will go on killing sprees.
YEAH RIGHT.
Can you say car racing games?
Kids are more likely to buy a car racing game , grow up and then get a car to go tear arsing around town trying to do drifting or skid turns , then kill someone and drive off?.
But are cars banned?
No.
so why ban a game just because one unhinged person kills someone 'because it looked fun'?
I buy a lot of games that involve shooting characters in game (BF2142, doom3, COD4 etc) but does it want to make me get a gun and go postal? Dont think so.
Obvsiously this is one sick in the head person looking for a get out card and therfore blaming the game. He tried to rob someone, got caught and because if he'd admitted trying to rob the guy he'd get a heftier sentance than if he blamed a game, saying it corrupted his mind and he may get a lighter sentance.
Dont ban games unless theres more than one occurance people.

I have played many violent games in my time and even though i have emotional and mental issues, i have never tried to re-inact anything i saw in a game.
I have played every Doom game there has ever been and the same with quake.
One of the first PC games i ever played was the original Wolfenstien and even at the young age i was (about 8 i think) it didn't influence me to go around shooting Germans or anyone with a bad side parting and a funny little mustache.
I played the orignal GTA when i was about 15 i think and it was bought for me by my grandmother (who brought me up along with my grandad) and knew the content of the game but also knew that games have little effect on me with regards to acting them out in real life.

I love Sonic The Hedgehog but so far i haven't dyed myself blue and rolled at people on the street or jumped on their heads while grabbing gold rings out of shops.

At the moment i have just started playing Crysis and i cannot see myself running around a jungle with a selection of guns shooting Koreans.

It is not the games that are the problem it is the people who play them.

Stupid and pointless to take the game off the shelves. I used to play GTA4 for hours and hours before I started getting bored of it. Now I play for an hour or so a day. The game is pretty realistic and I can see how budding psychopaths could use the game to practice their fantasies.

The game didn`t give them their fantasies though. If GTA wasn`t around, this psycho would have practiced on other similar games. This would have happened with or without GTA.

That douche Jack Thompson`s gonna have a field day

en.wikipedia.org...

[edit on 5-8-2008 by Lethil]

Video games don't affect us. If Pacman affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in dark rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music.

the situation would not be different if the video game didn't exist. the kid would probably wonder if it is just as easy as imagining it and then carry out the crime after planning it out from his imagination. since he's a violent messed up kid to begin with... who just happens to be attracted to violent games.

[edit on 5-8-2008 by curiousbeliever]

[edit on 5-8-2008 by curiousbeliever]

I spent a few hours playing Crysis tonight, and you know i dont really feel the urge to see if it is easy to shoot Koreans in a jungle.

I played a few other games today and you know something i dont feel like i am a scrabble tile a boggle cube or even a chess piece.
I dont think that tomorrow i am going to move everywhere diagonally or one step forward and two steps sideways or even two steps forward and one step sideways dressed as a horse.

GTA influencing that guy to do what he did is about as ridiculous as me doing any of the things i mentioned above.

double post sorry

[edit on 6-8-2008 by full997]

The answer, in my book, is that there is no excuse for this murder.

I too play GTA and partake in the relentless and horrifying killing objectives, but in real life I would never comit such crimes without proper justification.

I am not a violent person.

The problem is that parents aren't responsible. Games have a rating for a reason.

There's also a maturity factor. Obviously, this kid wasn't anywhere near mature enough to play GTA. You need to be mature enough to know that you are playing a game and that the actions seen in it are not apropiate for real life. Basically, maturity is knowing when and when not to be imiture.

[EDIT^] But no, I don't see this as GTA's fault.

I've played the game. It changed my thinking. Like the way I see firetrucks. I now want to steal them and jump them over something.

reply to post by absente

Okay, I played the game too for some time, but I didn't kill anyone.

You can honestly tell me, playing GTA, you did not kill one person? Every single version you have to kill at least one person. GTA4, you can't get past certain parts without doing some assassinations.

Originally posted by jhill76
You can honestly tell me, playing GTA, you did not kill one person? Every single version you have to kill at least one person. GTA4, you can't get past certain parts without doing some assassinations.

You're right, but that's not mindless murders. In GTA, you can choose just how moral you are. If you want to run down old ladies in the street, you may do so. If you want to stop at the red light, you may do so too.

The ban on the game is just downright silly. If he was a 8 year old or something, I'd call it horrific and partly blaim the game (and mostly blaim the parents and whoever sold it to him). But no. He's an 18 year old, so what he did was on his own accord.

Personally I think these people dont play games *enough*. Someone that's played the original GTA (as in no numbers, back in the good old days) would appreciate the lightheaded humour the series had and to some degree still have. Someone jumping right into the latest while having little to no moral standards... Well maybe they cant see it.

reply to post by jhill76


Dude, i think he means that he played the game and never killed anyone in real life

Originally posted by jhill76
reply to post by absente

You can honestly tell me, playing GTA, you did not kill one person? Every single version you have to kill at least one person. GTA4, you can't get past certain parts without doing some assassinations.

What I was trying to say is that i didn't kill a person in real life
Of course I was killing people - in the game.

reply to post by absente


It's an excuse. They really want to remove the game because that homeless guy spills the beans on reptilians.

Seriously though, I challenge any opponents of the game to play through GTA4 and see if it turns them into killers. I'm one of the most peaceful persons you could know, and I've played through the game myself. It doesn't feel like a "murder simulator" as I've heard some people like Mr. Thompson describe it. It has almost a cartoony feel, and believe it or not, the game actually has morals in some of it's stories. The game itself feels more like a satire of the way American life is portrayed in the movies.