...that's just sickening.

Anybody ever read any of Terry Brooks's "the Word and the Void" books, like "Running with the Demon" or "Knight of the Word"?

Our civilization is increasingly seeming more and more to be following the same path of self-destruction that the world does in those books.

Look, there are 300 million people in America. I guarantee you that on any given day there's a 300 million to one shot that someone is going to do something totally, incomprehensibly frucked up. Meanwhile, in the same day 299,999,999 other people DON'T do something like this.

These events aren't typical of life overall, but they're bound to happen. What I don't get is why do people want to make themselves miserable by focusing on extremely rare events like this or by giving them some wider meaning than is justified by the rate of their occurence?

THe guy's a nutter. Society isn't degraded by the actions of one mad man. And it being a video game is, I think, coincidental. It could have been knocking over a beer, or pulling the plug from the back of the TV. All sorts of things could have set this guy off.

Obviously a very messed up story.

I find this hard to believe. He never went ballistic until now? Almost sounds like the mother is buffering herself from warnings that this might have happened. A horrid thing a child dying like that.

Clearly the realism in nex-gen videogames has raised them from low-poly murder simulators, to murder enablers by blurring the lines between the virtual and reality. The proven power of HD virtual worlds to affect the same receptors within the brain as stimuli from the real world is causing users to slowly be lulled into a living digital reality, one however in which the moral and social rules are as transparent as a lowered gamma control.

....ummm. I dont believe that at all. Did I get you, just for a second? I was just roleplaying a politician hoping for a few extra votes.

What an unecessary death, obviously brought on by problems inherent in the individual. I don't care how wound up you get by the heat of a moment of a game, if it escalates to something like that, something must be wrong with your frontal lobe... isn't that the part of the brain that inhibits behavior?

Curiousity makes me wonder what game he was crazed about. However, at the same time, I dont want to know as it would just add an unecessary link between videogames and this idiot.

Sounds like he wasn't playing anything. The kid just broke the game system.

I'm tired of the Jack Thompsons and irresponsible reporters of the world. Obviously the thing that set this guy off needs to be reported, and so far I haven't seen anyone blowing it out of proportion. It could have been anything, like 1Dgaf said.

All that said, anyone who thinks that a video game could cause someone to harm a child or otherwise commit some horrid act that they are otherwise not disposed to commit is a complete and total idiot, and making it manifest by saying so. I know this is obvious, I know it's been going on for years, but I had to say it. I'm talking absolutely brain-dead people here.

Guys like this father need to be locked up or put out of our misery, and that's it. Any attempt to link a pathetic murder like this to video games, movies, rap music, etc. is just making excuses, trying to justify and unjustifiable act.

This isn't to say that I think no one is affected by, say, the glorification of violence found in some movies and music, but the people who are so affected are idiots who have been poorly raised (if at all) by their idiotic parents.

I agree with what you said here completely. Heck, we all have our "nutty" sides. The availability of information definitely help accentrate the "rare" events. That said, the behavior of that guy is just disturbing...

I am sorry to have help spread more negativity to the world *I need to stop reading the news...*

Horrible...

There should be some sort of Sociopath/Psychopath litmus test you can just swab on to someone and see if it changes colors. As far as I'm concerned, punching a 17 month old in the face twice (regardless if it results in death) is grounds for revocation of your membership in the human race. *sighs*

oh my...

I don't think we're "degraded this much". There are a lot of awful people out there. And consequently a lot of awful parents out there. From meth-abusing parents who cook it in their house or prostitute their kids out, to parents who kill their kids because they realize later they can't handle the responsibility to parents who tackle kids on the football field (happened recently) in a youth game. There are lots of awful people and awful parents.

Thus the answer isn't to change culture. Culture is going to be decided by what people want, be it violent games, whatever. Like someone else said, he probably would have done the same thing over a scratch on his car or spilled kool-aid if he was a car afficianado. Bad parents are bad parents. Period. End of story.

The real tragedy is that they're allowed to breed so easily.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. As tragic as this is, there are millions of more kids that are neglected and turn violent themselves and are running around like ticking time bombs.

Once again, there are a lot of bad parents.

I completely agree with DSGamer. Unfortunately I don't believe I can elaborate on that without pulling a Paleo.

See, this is why I play mages. You're just never going to see "Man turns dog into a sheep for barking too loudly."

couldn't have said it better...

I don't think anyone here is saying that that's not the case.