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Since the horrific murder of a 14 year old was commited by a 17year-old British citizen, who played the bloody game "Manhunt", the media has been on a frenzy for "violent" games which they lovingly called "Murder simulations".
The British paper "The Daily Mail" has included a "hitlist" (what a ironic choice of words) of these "murder simulations".Doom3, Manhunt, UT2004, Soldier Of Fortune 2, GTA3 and various others should be banned, according to this paper.
A news post at BeyondUnreal states :

Quote:
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Anyone in the UK who read a newspaper or watched a TV news channel yesterday will know about the controversy surrounding Rockstar Games’ Manhunt and its alleged connections to the murder of Stefan Pakeerah. The story and knee-jerk response from the media mirrors the reaction to similar cases in the US where games have been blamed for murders committed by teenagers. This February a 17-year-old named Warren Leblanc killed 14-year-old Stefan Pakeerah with a claw hammer and knife in order to repay a drugs debt. Now it seems that the murderer’s copy of 18-rated game Manhunt has ended up in the dock. The murdered boy’s parents claim that the killer was “obsessed” with the game, and that the victim’s injuries match the way in which players are encouraged to kill in Manhunt. Because of this, they now wish to launch a Corporate Manslaughter case against the game’s developers and publishers.
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But frankly, these sort of articles annoy me.
Murder, in any way or form, is NOT excusable.
Not because of games, not because of music, not because of the fact your trigger finger was itching.
Isn't it so that Manhunt is supposed to be a 18+ game ?
What is a 17 year old doing with it ?The age rating is there for a reason.
Even worse, the murder was drugs-related ! That's something that's illegal anyway.

Moreover, what is the whole point here ? Do violent games create killers ?
Simple enough, they don't create killers, a game is created for people to relax and play away some daily stresses.
Simple maths is enough to question the paper's reasoning :
Calculate the amount of violent games sold, add about 20% due to warezmonkeys.
Divide that by the amount of gamers and you'll get about 4 violent games per gamer.
Now this number is not even NEAR a percentage of game-related murders, but it's easier to blame the outside influences, rather than look inside your own home.
Denial of self-responsibility is a suiting name of such a disorder.
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DavidM wrote: all who say games make murders etc are dumb

this topic is so annoying and so wrong
whenever something happens the media have to find something guilty, and they keep making up bullshit: "he was playing murder games" etc....and later it's been found out that he didnt even have a computer, but he was in some shooting club, but the media dont mention this...

this topic is boring me, its so old

RaGe|DB wrote: This topic is so wrong? I never stated that games could make murderers, I disagree at all with that, I'd just like to know how other opinions are...

Also, in the article it states that the guy killed the boy with a hammer and knifes, just like the game... He would have killed the boy anyway? What if he played some war game (i.e Battlefield 1942) and he would have had a normal gun? Or he would have seen Saving private ryan and used a pistol? Does that change the fact he killed the boy? No. Does it change in what way he killed the boy? Yes. But does that really matter? No.

edit. Also, the 17-year-old used drugs, did he not? otherwise there would be no drugsdeal. That just cant be right either.