Lurker films sells an awesome Cthulhu fish for $8,
Day: May 16, 2006
Parents in China Sue Over Warcraft Suicide
Parents of a 13-year-old Chinese boy are suing the distributor of “Warcraft: Orcs and Humans” in that country after their son committed suicide after playing the real-time strategy game for 36 hours straight.
The Associated Press quotes a Xinhua News Agency report that the boy left behind a suicide note saying he wanted “to join the heroes of the game he worshiped.”
The basis of the suit is that in the United States “Warcraft: Orcs & Humans” is rated by the ESRB as T (Teen) meaning the game’s “content that may be suitable for ages 13 and older.” The Associated Press story incorrectly suggests that T (Teen) means the game is suitable only for children older than 13.
And that leaves aside the obvious problem of how a 13-year-old ends up playing a game for 36 hours straight. Is poor parental supervision actionable in China?
The only upside to this might be if we could persuade Jack Thompson to take his violent video games dog and pony show to China. Permanently. Certainly, the Chinese seem to have the same respect for freedom of speech as Thompson does.
Source:
Game distributor sued over boy’s suicide. Joe McDonald, Associated Press, May 12, 2006.
Chessops — A Basic Online Guide to Chess Openings
Chessops is an online, interactive introduction to all major chess openings and defenses.
Decrypting a Coded Message 137 Years Later
Kent Boklan has a lengthy, fascinating account of purchasing a coded Confederate Army document at auction and then proceeding to decipher the message contained therein.
About Those Terrorist Video Games
In early May, Reuters ran a story about a hearing of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence where a Defense Department official claimed that terrorist groups were using video games as part of their recruitment efforts. According to the Reuters story,
Tech-savvy militants from al Qaeda and other groups have modified video war games so that U.S. troops play the role of bad guys in running gunfights against heavily armed Islamic radical heroes, Defense Department official and contractors told Congress.
The games appear on militant Web sites, where youths as young as 7 can play at being troop-killing urban guerillas after registering with the site’s sponsors.
“What we have seen is that any video game that comes out … they’ll modify it and change the game for their needs,” said Dan Devlin, a Defense Department public diplomacy specialist.
The basis for this claim was in-game footage of Battlefield 2 that Devlin showed lawmakers. Again, according to Reuters,
“Battlefield 2” ordinarily shows U.S. troops engaging forces from China or a united Middle East coalition. But in a modified video trailer posted on Islamic Web sites and shown to lawmakers, the game depicts a man in Arab headdress carrying an automatic weapon into combat with U.S. invaders.
“I was just a boy when the infidels came to my village in Blackhawk helicopters,” a narrator’s voice said as the screen flashed between images of street-level gunfights, explosions and helicopter assaults.
The only problem is that the evidence turns out to have almost certainly been this Battle Field 2 recording and the “narrator’s voice” mentioned in the Reuter’s piece is dialogue stolen from Team America.
In other words, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence got pwned by a parody passed off by idiot contractors and defense department officials as a genuine terrorist production.
Sources:
Islamists using US video games in youth appeal. Reuters, May 4, 2006.