On the other hand... if everyone in the theater was at home playing Eve 12 of them wouldn't be dead

It was a Gank... plain and simple.... which therefore must mean that it was the miners... err.. Movie watchers fault for not paying more attention to their surroundings.

You have absolutely no reason to title this thread "Batman" mass-murderer.....hopelessly addicted to EVE?, and it smacks of a shameless attempt at attention-getting.

If you're going to troll for your 15 minutes of forum fame at least switch the title from EVE to MMO's.

The media has blamed video games for every single ******* act of violent rampages since kids were playing Dr. Mario. Nobody's even paying attention to this **** anymore.

I do love that the media gives these incidents 24-hour international coverage for a week or more and then scratch their heads wondering why these things keep happening

Yup. America is low sec anyway.

Here's the link.
Wow. Not a pretty picture for the MMORPG industry....this is big.

From the article:
"It is believed Holmes was due to be kicked out of his flat and may have recently broken up with a girlfriend, while one friend said his addiction to video games meant he had lost touch with reality."

"It is not known exactly when Holmes stopped going to classes but it is thought he was nearing the end of the 30-day grace period. A former classmate from the University of Colorado suggested another cause for the killings, saying Holmes had lost touch with reality after becoming 'obsessed' with video games.

The classmate told the Daily Mail: 'James was obsessed with computer games and was always playing role-playing games.

'I canGÇÖt remember which one but it was something like World of Warcraft, one of those where you compete against people on the internet.

'He did not have much of a life apart from that and doing his work. James seemed like he wanted to be in the game and be one of the characters.

'It seemed that being online was more important to him than real life. He must have lost his sense of reality, how else can you shoot dozens of people you donGÇÖt know?'"


Witness the destruction and downfall of your typical 24 year old nerdish introvert.
Addicted to a MMORPG - completely loses touch with reality, wants to be a character in the game,
his girlfriend dumps him, he trashes his grades and drops out of grad school. No job or friends. Eviction notice was in the mail.

Life spiraling out of control, he goes and massacres dozens of people as if he was a character in a video game.

Its well known that companies such as CCP intentionally introduce countless positive feedback elements to entrap gamers - force them to continue consuming their highly addictive product....much as nicotine entraps smokers. Companies such as CCP in effect, are profiting from their socially irresponsible product.

For every James Holmes, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of other victims who manage destroy their lives in many smaller, but less shocking ways.

While individuals are capable of making their own choices, that argument no longer flies in civilized society. 'Individual responsibility' is the fig leaf that all purveyors of addictive products hide behind. A large share of blame should fall on the corporate entities that profit from the carnage.

The discussion should start now.
First, what can CCP do? What steps should CCP take to sell their product in more socially responsible way? How can CCP market EVE in a way that earns them a modest profit - while still protecting those (like James Holmes) most vulnerable to abuse? Because if they don't get ahead of this emerging threat, the federal government will.

What can the government do? The MMORPG industry is literally the Wild West, federal regulations almost non-existent. Yet the destructive/addictive properties of the internet and gaming are becoming quite evident. Reasonable regulations should be drafted to restrain the irresponsible elements of this industry. Oversight and firm enforcement "with teeth" - to prevent bad actors within the industry from doing severe damage to the fabric of our nation. The threat of stiff financial penalties have a way of bringing errant corporate entities around.

CCP intentionally introduce countless positive feedback elements

err do they!!!!
I'v had nothing but a big "**** you do it yourself" from day one

If Pac-Man had affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive electronic music.

Also, what the hell is your government going to do about a foreign game?

My life is going to **** and you don't see me taking it out on innocents.

Narcissist scum bag cracks because asking for help is, oh gosh, so damn hard. I just wish someone put him down before he did it. Taking out your problems on others is pathetic. I would have retained empathy if he didn't commit an atrocity because his crises management skills were inferior to that of a toddler. Also his parents said when they heard about it they thought it was him.

Umm, if you honestly believe your child is capable of doing that and actually might, it's your responsibility to step in. Useless parents, useless child.

The rest of the gaming community and the nature of MMOs cannot be blamed for the actions of the genetically inferior. The parents and child both had no idea what to do in such an obvious situation. I wonder how many months the guy was like that, all of his family and friends not giving a **** and him too stupid to.

tl;dr: Not our fault he couldn't handle his **** and his parents were as helpful as a barbed wire enema. Not even the common WoW player is that stupid.

I don't really think this has anything to do with genetic inferiority.

I don't really think this has anything to do with genetic inferiority.

I hope by genetically inferior that Lyskal Oskold isn't referring to people that suffer from mental illness, just because discussion of it is still marred by a stigma doesn't mean that it is an inferiority, 25% of people suffer some form of mental illness in their life and the FHC forum thread on mental health is an indication it could be more than that .

On the other hand... if everyone in the theater was at home playing Eve 12 of them wouldn't be dead

*skims text*

They suspect it's World of Warcraft. All is well.

Considering all of his family, friends and he himself basically just left it even though they admitted he could do something like that brings me to the conclusion that something had to be in the water or something. It's like knowing for a fact someone is going to try and murder you in an hour and you don't call the cops, because it could sort it'self out.

No, they said it was a game where player's compete against one another. Investigation will lead back here due to everyone screaming the Eve is a pure PvP game.

No, the investigation will not take place, because it's a knee-jerk GÇ£blame [common young-people-activity] for the ills of societyGÇ¥ moral panic response.

Actually investigating anything like that would mean finding underlying problems that have nothing to do with what the pundits want the problem to be, so no-one will be stupid enough to do that.

I personally blame T2BPO's for these pointless deaths, he was clearly enraged about T2BPO's. If only I can get the daily mail, fox news and the BBC onto the remove T2PO agenda victory will be mine!

Ok, Brewlar. Time to stop spamming every thread you touch with your rabid campaign.

CCP needs to take steps to show that they take these issues seriously. .

I would suggest that any American of voting age visit this website:
http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/

Then write your congressmen. Bring these issues to their attention...
Let them know that addictive products such as MMORPGs need a strong measure of government oversight to help prevent tragedy before it happens.....

Computer game addiction can be as destructive as any addiction so denying that as a cause is just wrong. It may very well be the primary cause of shootings or a combination of things only time will tell. You can't say that shooting people in the face 300x a day on a screen does not slightly de-sensitise you to it especially if you lose a grip on reality.

Computer game addiction can be as destructive as any addiction so denying that as a cause is just wrong. It may very well be the primary cause of shootings or a combination of things only time will tell. You can't say that shooting people in the face 300x a day on a screen does not slightly de-sensitise you to it especially if you lose a grip on reality.

That classmate make it quite clear that he believed that James Holmes' mental deterioration was directly caused by MMORPG addiction.

Not much of a bleeding heart. but nonetheless, not funny, dude.

Assumptions, the mother of all **** ups.

Desensitization was a buzz word pushed around, what, nearly a decade ago? Since then peer reviewed (read: real) studies have failed to show any causative link, or any desensitizing effects to be associated with gaming. Seriously, the army even wanted to use them for that purpose and decided not to because it was simply a load of crap.

All they found was that new soldiers trained with VR games were still just as likely to intentionally miss kill shots in real fire situations. Although IIRC since then they have tried using that VR software for treatment of post traumatic stress for soldiers, as well as actual training.

Never let facts get in the way of a good story.

Did you know that some psychiatric group put out guidelines on respibly reporting on mass murders to avoid copycats?

They suggest the following:
DonGÇÖt start the story with sirens blaring
DonGÇÖt have photographs of the killer
DonGÇÖt make this 24/7 coverage
Do everything you can NOT to make the body count the lead story
[and] not to make the hero some kind of anti-hero
DO localize this story to the affected community and make it as boring as possible in every other market."

Oh well...

Computer game addiction can be as destructive as any addiction so denying that as a cause is just wrong. It may very well be the primary cause of shootings or a combination of things only time will tell. You can't say that shooting people in the face 300x a day on a screen does not slightly de-sensitise you to it especially if you lose a grip on reality.

Video games are not the issue. It's like blaming hamburgers and ice cream for making you fat.

Mental health is.

Mad cow disease can be spread in burgers and make your mental health go away