That age-old debate...
Obviously, despite all the fun and exciting Nintendo news, Canadians today are still shocked and upset by the shooting at Montreal's Dawson College yesterday afternoon. One person was killed and 19 were injured when Kimveer Gill opened fire in the school's cafeteria. A very sad and scary event, it was hard to watch as frightened teens ran from the school.
But, in true Sun Media-style, we see this morning's headline "Video Game Killer" on the front page. And the accompanying article isn't much smarter:
On a scary website, Kimveer Gill describes himself as a potential killer and admits that his favourite video game is Super Columbine Massacre.
The 25-year-old Laval man wrote: "Work sucks, school sucks, life sucks ... What else can I say?"
On goth lifestyle forums where he regularly participated, he signed his posts as "Fatality666" and finished all his comments with: "Life is a video game and you gonna die sometime."
Hmmm.. "scary website," and "goth." The slant is here is very obvious. A slant that really plays into the media sensationalizing by publications like the Sun. It pigeonholes and only perpetuates the binary that all video games are bad. While I've never played Super Columbine Massacre, I'm sure there are millions who have, who all live "normal" lives - just like there are millions of Grand Theft Auto players who are not jacking cars and beating up hookers in their spare time.
What do you think?
posted by Nicky at 2:22 p.m.
1 Comments:
UPDATE: Brian Crecente has postd the transcript from his interview with Super Columbine Massacre RPG creator Danny LeDonne.
It's a very good take on the whole situation and points out the irony behind the media using SCMRPG as a scapegoat in the Dawson College Shooting, since SMCRPG was created to demonstrate how certain art forms (games, music, film) are used as scapegoats for violent situations. Read it here
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