Catch THIS! - The Washington Post

by Jonas Alsaker Vikan

Original article on catchgamer.no


Catch THIS! is one of our weekly segments at Catch Gamer where former professional gamer Jonas Alsaker Vikan focuses on gaming-related issues that demand our attention.

This weeks edition focuses on the gaming witch-hunt in the aftermath of the tragedy at Virginia Tech.

Debbi Wilgoren, Sari Horwitz and Robert E. Pierre wrote on April 17th about the Virginia Tech tragedy;

"...Several Korean youths who knew Cho Seung Hui from his high school days said he was a fan of violent video games, particularly Counterstrike, a hugely popular online game, in which players join terrorism or counter terrorism groups and try to shoot each other using..."

The following is not a way of politicizing the terrible events that occurred in Virginia this week, this is one mans opinion on the way an established media outlet could sway public opinion towards gaming in a very negative direction by associating it with the brutal and tragic murder of 32 human beings.

It was, at best, a shamelessly populistic way of smearing computer and video games as being delivery devices for violent behavior. Gaming and electronic sports have since its very infancy had to face problems with stigmatization, particularly surrounding the issues of violence. As have all new forms of entertainment the last 30 years including cable TV and Hollywood movies.

The quote in the Washington Post article was removed during the early hours of Wednesday but the damage seems to have been done without any way for the gaming community to answer the journalists of the Post, much less Dr. Phil who got to appear on Larry King or Jack Thompson, attorney behind the "video games are murder simulators” campaign.

Chow Sung Hue was 23 years old when he committed his awful crime earlier this week, the quote citing his devotion to "violent video games" with Counter-Strike in particular is derived from unnamed "Korean youths" who supposedly knew Hue during high school.

To me this feels like some hidden agenda cheap shot. American kids usually graduate high school around 17-18 years of age whereas Hue was 23 years old when he ended his own life this week. So Counter-Strike had an incubation period of several years before it finally surfaced as an extreme urge to recreate the virtual situations from the game’s visual expression onto his university campus and fellow students?

Moreover, working as a journalist usually means taking a critical approach to the facts and they're absent in this case, leading Dr. Phil and Thompson down the path to blame the games and gaming in general – on TV. A giant foregone conclusion that contributes to potential hysteria among the parents of kids and young people that enjoy playing games as a pastime.

How does that help a country or a society deal with a tragedy of Vtechs magnitude? Even if he did go off the deep end on behalf of some game how does sensationalism help grieving relatives?

We have all seen the multimedia manifest now so we know the fingerpointing was ill-advised and borderline irresponsible from a recognized media outlet like the Washington Post. A medium people trust to give them credible insight into the big and small events of our world.

The terrible video shows an angry Cho Seung Hui who's stating his mission and justifies his outrageous acts to the rest of the world. He raves about the marginalization of his own person and distances himself from the rich in society.

A society, any society, has the right to decide what's suitable and what's in accord with the key values its citizens choose to live by. While computer and video games clearly was not to blame for one of the worst tragedies in the history of the United States it's clear that we are asking the wrong questions..

Are we doing enough to prevent a game taking over some kid’s world? Are we doing enough to prevent kids living their lives through televised entertainment, substituting that for the real world?

This discussion should be had over every dinner table and in every classroom. Because it is important. While the media and a narcissistic television persona got it wrong this time we certainly do not want to be around when it happens again, and when they are "right" in their assumptions?

With internet and our "modern" age we opened the floodgates to unlimited sources of visual and auditive stimuli without really knowing what we were getting into. Young people are better at navigating it than their parents so the question is a just one.

It makes it all the more important to make the distinction between what's REAL, and what's VIRTUAL - existing only as vibrant colors on a screen and in our imaginations.

That's a challenge for all of us.

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