I AGREE WITH FATHER TIME.... LIBERALS AND CONSERVATIVES A RE POINTLESS AND JUST ANOTHER WAY TO STEREOTYPE AND DIVIDE PEOPLE INSTEAD OF UNITING THEM.

hi, your all controlled.
do somthing about it go here -universalseed.org/

i wouldnt want anything like that to happen at my school bt i am a HUGE counter-strike fan but he took it to far.

I think is overreaction.

There is no possible way to "Train" on a computer game to act out what you want to accomplish.

I can remember a few times in my life when I thought it would be cool to have levels in games that were copies of the places I knew in the real world, not because I wanted to do anything bad but because I thought it would be cool.

I don't see why what he was doing at home was any of the schools business, sure I could understand if he was threating kids, but just because he has a level that looks like his school on a computer game you get to take disciplinary action against him? I mean is this what society is becoming... if you are a little bit different we will punish you?

Gee whiz, my buddies and I played Doom custom maps set in high school and nobody batted an eyelash.

Different times, I suppose. I can certainly understand the concern, but it seems like due diligence was done and it is time for the kid to get back in class.

They've already proved that video games had nothing to do with the VT shooting so it's pretty obvious this wouldn't had happened if he weren't asian. Which ethic group is next? Indians?

When I was at college studying Computer Systems, we had to submit a Final Year Project at the end of the 4 year course. You could come up with whatever project you liked, as long as a member of the Computer Department agreed it was a worthwhile project and to be your supervisor/sponsor. Each memebr of the department had their own particular areas of study and interest and to help students, they posted up a list of suggestions for projects they would be happy to oversee.

One of those projects was to model the entire University of Limerick campus in the Unreal engine.

When a member of a respected faculty such as UL can see no harm in this, I fail to see why this boy is being reprimanded and investigated. I believe it is just backlash from the V. Tech shootings, where they are seeing an asian kid and linking that with the unproven ridiculous claims of "training" via video games, putting 2 and 2 together and coming out with "He's going to murder us all!".

If the guy had demonstrated the same kind of fascination with hatred and revenge, or the same disturbed behaviour as Cho Seung Hui had, then perhaps there would be cause for concern. When it is just a normal person being creative, there should not be this uproar.

What if he had made a likeness of the school out of Lego? Or drawn a scale map of the school? Would he be investigated for that? As it stands I see no difference in rendering a likeness of the school, no matter the medium.

It is unfortunate that there is going to be a blanket "condemnation" or at least scrutiny of asian students because of this, just as nerdy people in trenchcoats were viewed with suspicion after columbine, or Muslims in neighbourhoods were watched more closely after 9/11.

One last thing I would like to point out about the "training" you can get from a video game. In Counterstrike, you are playing against other players who are shooting back at you. In any school shooting, people will panic, try and escape, some might be frozen with terror, some will hide. In some cases people will show incredible bravery and try to protect others such as the lecturer in V Tech. Are we to assume that artificial intelligence can accurately predict the reactions of people in a situation such as that? It's laughable to even suggest this.

Counter-strike is terrorists versus special forces, not crazies versus students.

I've often thought about real-life places in terms of FPS-ability or even in terms of paintball-ability. Using familiar locations, or real-life ones, in cops-and-robbers type of play is not a crime.

This kid's only crime was being an Asian-American that plays Counter-strike after VT.

Can't say if what they were doing is related to being a race thing, and I also don't blame the Chinese-American community backing the kid up. However, back in the day I created DOOM maps for just about anywhere I had ever been. Like a previous poster mentioned, it's just fun to play in a specific place. When I originally created my maps I was more doing it to see how close I could model the real world in a game engine (which is pretty darn hard in DOOM since certain structures are impossible to model).

What I think is more of a problem is now people's liberties are going to be violated over these "infractions." I mean so now if you were to make a CS map of a public place you're going to have the police involved? What happens if someone downloads your map (maybe only plays it once) and then goes and flips out? Are you liable?

We all know that computers are used to train airline pilots. Therefore, computers can train kids to run around with guns and shoot people. It's a perfect one to one correlation. They both use a simple point and click interface. There is your connection!

This just sounds ridiculous. It's like you can't condemn these actions enough! This kid went to the trouble to learn how to build a map and he designed one of his school.

Here's an idea: Rather than punish him, encourage and reward him. Hell maybe even help him get into computer programming or video game design school. He's obviously shown an interest in that field. According to the Joystiq article, he won't even be allowed to take place in "graduation ceremonies". Does this mean he won't be allowed to graduate? This would be even worse!

I think we've all thought of places that would make interesting maps. Counterstrike in school or the mall? Halo in a theme park? The Airport? Movie Theater? A store? Building these maps wouldn't mean you were gonna go on a shooting rampage. It would just mean you would love the challenge of going down the toy aisle, while worrying of an ambush coming from sporting goods. You should only worry if they populate the map with avatars based on real defenseless people, where the objective is to kill them. If the objective is to protect them, you may have a little issue for worry, but it could just be an interesting challenge (or a way to act out the powerless frustration we all share at the Virginia Tech shootings).

I'm not familiar with map-building. Could you even put people into the maps? And, if so, can you place mission objectives on them, like kill or protect?

@Gameboy

It really depends on the game.

Some games allow you to place NPCs in the game some don't, I'm not too sure about Counter Strike but I would imagine you could place the same objectives that you have on any other maps Counter Terrorists rescue the hostages and terrorists do what terrorists do.

I still don't see why this was any issue with the school, I mean he was on his own computer playing the map is that really the schools business?

It's interesting to note that there's no mention of them investigating the students who downloaded the map. Seems like a double standard to me.

Forgot to mention, there is a Wal-Mart, Mcdonalds, Burgerking, Bestbuy, and many other real places as CS maps, lets use the school boards thinking and go on lock down of whole country! Someone is training on counter-strike to get Wal-Mart! (/sarcasm)

BIG overreaction! what in the States is going on down there! what about the kids who played that map? Their parents saw and complained to the one who made that map and what about punishing their own kids by sending them elsewhere like they did to that poor guy?

I wonder what's the students' reactions? I hope they're better than the adults around them.

Everything that is done there is so hypocritical and hysterical, i'm rooting for that guy. Glad to be living in Canada!

@CyberSkull

QFFT. Seriously, I cant think of how many custom maps of real world locations we made for games. I think we had:

my highschool
my grade school
2 local shopping centers
US Airways arena
Local waterfront

and many more realistic locals. Were they perfect scale replicas? No not at all. However, real life provides amazing architecture to use in games. It is also much more fun to sit down an play when there is no question of knowing the maps(we lived in them).

I totally believe he did this just to do it. How many artists practice by drawing what they know, how many authors draw from personal experience in their writings. Same principle, different medium.

This school district stepped WAY out of line. This was an invasion of privacy to the extreme. Yes, the school needed to notify the parent, but that is the extent of their jurisdiction. This was done at home, distributed on private servers, nothing to do with the govt at all.

His punishment was the responsibility of the parents, not the state. Yes the parent should sit down and talk to the kid to see why they did it. If he was seriously just learning and had no issues, that should be the end of it.

Sheesh. So if I were to make a map based on a place I knew in real life, would I become a danger to society?

This is horrible. What the hell is happening to our freedom of speech? I used to make levels of my school in Doom for the fun of it. I for one do not welcome our Fascist overlords.

So they arrested him, and transfered him to another school in his senior year? I'd say overreaction. I understand people are on edge after VT (whether it's logical or not), but he didn't deserve all this!

According to the Houston Chronicle story, the school learned of this from a report made the day after the VT shootings. I'm guessing another student knew about this custom map prior and freaked when he heard about what happened in Virgina, and reported this kid.

Actually, what I'd like to know is who went runnin' to this board in the first place? I know that some school boards check Myspace, but now CS sites? I don't think they're that quick to pick up stuff, even if they are lies.

Ah America where you can have so much freedom until people become paranoid and declare a witch hunt against you.

"So was he playing a terrorist that plan to blow-up his school or did he play a conter-terrorist to heroically save his school?"

See, did anybody think about that? If a terrorist situation DID occur at the school, anybody playing the map might know the best points to move in at. *shot at* Seriously though, people only seem to want to focus on the Terrorist aspect of Counter-strike, and not the counter-terrorist aspect.

Wait, the kid was transferred to a different school because not enough board members could be bothered to show up at the meeting?

I would be ecstatic if this happened to me. This kid has an air tight lawsuit against the school system for Title IX Discrimination, Invasion of Privacy, and breach of First Amendment Rights.
That is a BIG can of worms to open up.

This is just another scapegoat for peope to use so that parents don't have to blame themselves for horrible parenting and control of their own children.

Should we be so quick to judge for fear of the consequences? Is our freedom of speech and expression worth the value of the lives that could potentially be lost? There is absolutely no proof of any legitimate “wrongdoing” here and it shows. No one made any threats, there appear to be no plans, and common sense has been thrown out the window in favor of wild-eyed conspiracy from the school board. There will be people who will try and make a connection to the Virginia Tech Massacre, but they can only rely on scraps of evidence in order to establish a correlation. Unless the student has been found to harbor deep-seeded emotions of hatred and aggression and is found to be mentally unstable, I honestly feel that the school board has embellished the facts of this case due to the proximity of the incident at Virginia Tech.
What I am trying to ask is where does proof of an act to commit terror actually begin? I believe that no one truly knows until clear-cut threats have been made and detailed plans are found. Until then, you are infringing upon a person’s natural rights.

Cyberskull is on target. If you have any kind of involvement with FPS mapping communities, you learn that one of the first type of maps that mappers think of making is a familiar place ... and for school age mappers ... that place is often a high school or college. Not because they have Columbine-type fantasies, but because they know those spaces and think it would be fun to fight in them in a virtual sense. Totally normal. And of course, whenever the subject came up, I would point out that it was probably also a bad idea ... for all the reasons that the critics come up with. Non-gamers would misinterpret it and find sinister motivations. Essentially, it would be bad PR for games.

I would say "Schools would make good Paintball arenas" but I have never played Paintball and virtual versions don't leave messes of paint to clean up.

sometimes you go into a building and you think "wow, this would make a great map for a FPS."

there's nothing wrong with this.

I thought that was what everyone did. Faced with a freshly-downloaded mapping program and a blank canvas, don't you usually try to recreate something you know? Moreover, it works in reverse too. Who hasn't looked out on rolling hills and seen chokepoints for an archer ambush? You just know that planter would make an awesome kicker to that handrail on the stair set. And can anyone, in all honesty, say that for a few weeks after playing Thief they didn't see just how perfect that shadow is near that scalable wall?

People see something and associate it to other, similar things in their memory. This isn't just normal, it's a vital tool for surviving in life.

You have a 3-D editor that allows you to create a structural environment like a house or a building, so what building do you create? Does it surprise anyone that you might model, as your first attempt, an environment in which you are most familiar? A school is an especially sensible choice, since your home would not be large enough to fit the requirements. Anyone playing around with that 3-D editor for more than a few minutes would start designing either their workplace or school or where they are putting their in eight hours a day.

Out-and-out racism would be one rational way to view their decision, given the past history of the area. Otherwise, these people do not seem to be thinking rationally.

the creative process has a foundation in reality. all great works of art are grounded in reality. this kid has done what any great artist / novellist / musician does...

he has made art based on his experiences.

what else do we expect of people? this stuff should be in a museum. his experiences are most likely very similar to every other kid in the western world. i personally made a doom map of the university i went to over 10 years ago and suspect that countless others have done the same since.

anybody know where we can download the map to play it?

Chalk me up in the over-reaction camp. I don't think this is a good reason to go after the kid. It might be interesting info if there were some other reason to look at the kid (threatening letters, emotional trouble), but like everyone else is saying: If you make a map, you often make it about something you know. As was pointed out, schools make particularly good areas for a game like Counter-Strike.

And seriously, what if the guy was living out his fantasy? What if his fantasy is to be a special ops soldier who saves a school full of kids taken hostage? Is that a bad thing now?

...this taught me something: weapons are easy to control.

Who needs basic training for weapons? All you need is "WASD" and a mouse and you can kill using an gun!

I know how to operate M249 SAWs now, yay!

Time to train how to use an gravity gun in HL2...cause I might see one of them in reality...

i agree here with a few people this is way overreacting on something that shouldnt have turned into a big deal

he just made the maps for fun so there is no harm in that and sadly that is how society is getting these days and thats how it is if you are strange then you get treated like you have very few rights or none at all

This may indeed be an overreaction, but I can't say I blame these members of the board who decided to take action given past criticism that not enough was done before shootings took place. This theme of failure to predict the tragedies beforehand must be taking its toll on those who are in a good place to do just that. It seems this was mishandled, and I expect that the student will be permitted back into his original school soon enough if half the board thinks they've gone too far. I can't blame them for be cautious about this.

Besides, I'm not so sure that this kid didn't expect any of this to happen if he made a CS:S map based on his own school.

In a game where you are able to design maps, the goal is to create maps with interesting strategic and tactical ramifications. It is trivial to argue that a map based on institutional buildings, like a school, presents a very different challenge to players than one in a car park, a mansion estate, a limited city-scape, or a fantastic airship.
That someone would choose to create a map where these challenges exist is not at all surprising, nor is it indicative of any kind of malicious behavior. That someone would choose to model work they do upon something they know intimately, or fills them with some kind of narcissistic pleasure is also unsurprising and not at all indicative of malice, as evidenced by the large number of avatars in Maxis' theSims. Finally, that he would choose to allow his fellow students and net-friends to use this map implies that he does have a supportive and hopefully healthy peer group. It is ostracization (if that is a word) and a sense of either self-loathing or righteousness that seems (at least at first glance) to prompt these acts of wanton peer violence. That is to say, that he desired to share this content with his peers is evidence that he is at significantly reduced risk for such an act.
The only thing that is even vaguely suspicious is the possession of those decorative blades. Which, as the police point out, are rather more edged than a lead pipe, though probably not much more dangerous.

[...] Because he’s not so bright it seems. [...]

I believe this was a bunch of crock. I play viedogames (mostaly FPS) every day and i have no urge AT ALL to shot any oneor anything in real life. The only thing i feel is gratification that a annoying gamer was finaly killed

As stated an overwhelming amount of times. He just wanted to play game in a place he knew in the real world. Pretty much every gamer that plays First person shooters has thought of a real world place that would be cool to play in. I do understand the schools concerns but I think they overreacted a bit.

My heart broke for this kid when I read the story. GamePolitics is such a rollercoaster sometimes; you got MC Thompson failing for the umpteenth time, and then this...

Has anyone gone through the Fort Bend comment thread? Everyone here is talking about the overreaction of the school officials in the context of VT, but many of the Fort Bend posters seem to think it is nothing more than political posturing due to their upcoming BoT elections. Nobody is talking about that here, and personally, if that is the case, I find that to be despicable on a whole other level.

If they're really afraid he's going to snap, it seems like going out of their way to ruin his life and stuff probably isn't the best way to deal with things...

I know plenty of guys who make custom skins of their enemies (Jack Thompson skins are popular) and then shoot them up.

Watch out they are going to arrest the developers of Tom Clancy Rainbow Six Las Vegas next. they the developers at R* because they have created similar city maps.

I dont understand how video games are used to "train" killers. They can be used to strategies but not to train. Common who hasnt wanted to try out a football play they made on Madden? Or try to come up with some security setup u couldnt get pass in splinter cell? Hell I used to think it would be fun if people / "terrorist" attacked my school and I new the layout and I was able to beat them all.

Video games cant teach you to reload a gun in under a min. All we do is press a button. and yes we all can jump 10 feet in the air. And carry an arsenal of equipment up our a** like you do in Metal Gear. and learn how to fire a rocket launcher.

I m just waiting for when they start arresting LARP people because they enacted a scene at school that could be harmful if they didnt use nerf guns.

So, are we getting closer to a country where designing a videogame map at home is an arrestible crime?

horray...

@F**cked Up
They're not even that good for practicing strategy, especially if you're playing against other people. As much as CS looks like it could possibly be realistic, and has realistic elements, having untrained people playing both sides makes it useless as a tactical simulator.

Take your example of trying a play out of Madden, but substitute the idea of designing a play for Madden, without knowing the real intricacies of football. For example, you might design a play where you blitz all three linebackers and a safety while all four linemen also rush. It might work in the game, but in the real world the odds are that they'll all run into a big jumble and leave two or three guys open underneath.

That's what playing an FPS against other people is really like. You may be able to take out a bunch of other guys who don't really know what they're doing, but if you try something on actual trained people, you'll be boned.

So Cowboys and Indians, and Cops and Robbers are ok, but Terrorists and Counter-Terrorists aren't?

Seriously this is screwed up, and that school board needs replacing. Kids enjoying playing in familiar locals. This is just the high tech virtual version of running around the playground or the neighborhood with squirt guns. We don't blink an eye at teenagers having a good time paint balling, or playing laser tag so what's the problem with this? It's the same god damn thing, only done in a way that doesn't entail any mess to clean up.

I'm going to share this story with my school administrator at HUSD, but my friends who are young parents are in awe that a school district could be so clueless.

The whole thing seems very unconstitutional to me. On what basis is the school board allowed to kick this student out of their school. His only crime was creating a CS map based off of his highschool. Okay, so now we've established that creativity is a crime! I still can't believe they came to this decision after raiding his home and finding nothing criminal. There weren't any guns, and he didn't show any signs of mental problems. Ridiculous, ridiuclous, ridiculous. Oh well, it's not like the Bill of Rights mean anything these days anyway. *sadness*

If i were him I would get a lawyer maybe appeal to the chinese community to help pay for it, I predict it would be a pretty easy win considering school rules should not apply outside the school . . . EVER, and this could very well be a violation of his rights. Crap such as this should not be tolerated from school districts, if it is discovered that the student had no previous record. I would love to see the school suffer because of this.

@ Sparkz

You call us violent and yet you threaten to kill every last one of us? You really are an idiot.

Oh and yes making the student distrust authority figures for the rest of his life is a great way to make sure he doesn't go on a rampage (sarcasm).

Ignore Sparkz- he is either using lousy sarchasm or is a Jihadist. Either way, not someone worth noting. Move along...

[...] They arrested him for this..? GamePolitics.com

@KTsamurai
"I can’t say I blame these members of the board who decided to take action given past criticism that not enough was done before shootings took place."

Yes, the blame can be layed with these people. The criticism (in the Virginia Tech instance) is about people who knew that Cho Seung Hui was dangerous and unstable, yet never followed up on his case, never thought to check up on him, and never considered the idea, nor made sure that a person like this couldn't buy a gun. When you have previous knowledge that a person is unstable, when you know that he has stalked and harassed women in the past, and that this same person has written some disturbingly violent prose and you do nothing, you deserve every piece of criticism that is layed upon you.
In the case at the Texas school, the blame for this incredible injustice lies solely with the school board. Instead of looking into the issue and taking the student into consideration (a popular honours student with no record of trouble), they immediately screamed "ASIAN + VIDEO GAMES = SCHOOL SHOOTER!" The only evidence they could have reached this decision on is the fact that the Virginia Tech shooter was Asian, and untrue claims that he played video games combined with spurious claims that video games are linked to violence. Any sane people would have looked at what kind of person he was before practically ruining his academic life. People will say that the student will get over this and it is better to be on the safe side, but are they taking into account the stigma attached to something like this? If you were accused of child molestation, but cleared by a court, and this lawsuit came to the attention of the media? For the rest of your life you are the guy who was accused of child molestation. Not the guy who was acquitted, or the guy who was wrongly accused, but the guy who was accused in the first place.
The same is going to happen with this poor individual. Instead of being "the guy who was wrongly arrested over incorrect suspicions that he may be harmful, driven by incorrect media opinions", he is going to be "The guy they thought was going to shoot up the school".
This school board have done irreperable harm to this young man's reputation and credentials. It is entirely their fault for overreacting and being too heavy handed in a case where a little sense and logic would have prevented this mess.


"I’m not so sure that this kid didn’t expect any of this to happen if he made a CS:S map based on his own school. "
If I made a sculpture of someone at my school, does this mean I am trying to train for the best way to kill that person? If I build a model of my school out of lego, do I expect them to arrest me as a "terroristic threat" and ransack my room looking for more evidence? Let's say a teacher of mine has a distinctive face and I exercise my artistic talent by drawing a portrait of him, am I planning to kill this individual? To suggest that a person would anticipate this kind of trouble just from using a level editor to portray a familiar location is laughable.

No-one who shows creativity in a harmless manner as this expects anything like this to happen. If I wrote the kind of violent and hate filled trash that Cho wrote I would probably expect people to complain/be concerned about it. The only reason this student has undergone this humiliation and unfair treatment is because his sin was to be interested in video games and be of Asian descent at a time when both are under unfair hype driven scrutiny.

Hmm, I am quite surprised that I do not see anyone from Clements commenting on this (at least here), so let me put in my experience as someone who goes to school at Clements right now. I heard about this about a week ago, and I was in awe at the injustice done here. The guy who made this map actually made it about two to three years ago, and it was not until recently, as is obvious, that he got into trouble over it. They sent him to the "alternative school," and for those who haven't already realized it, "alternative school" here means that he is sent with the rest of the "problem children" that parents don't want to socialize with THEIR kids. So essentially, his transcript and permanent record will be torched forever with the mark of "Terrorism," and he could get the shit beaten out of him by someone at the alternative school, or worse. So instead of fostering a modeling career that could have been quite successful or recognizing a talent in architectural observation, instead my school district has decided to essentially fuck him two times over. Outstanding.

I'd like to take a minute here to applaud Fort Bend Independent School District's profound wisdom and foresight. Truly, the world is a better place because of people like our administrative heads.

I wonder if there will be any "legal defense fund" or something for this guy. I would gladly pitch in $$ to help him out of this.

Some other comments (why no edit function?):

I kind of knew Paul Hwang, and I'll say this, he was a good guy. He was a year ahead of me, so I didn't really know him well, but I met him a couple times and he seemed like a standup guy. Also, talking with his friends, I got the same feeling.

The swords they found in his room were an ornamental collection, and an unsharpened one at that. I cannot believe they actually used this to accuse him of terrorism or being a threat. My best friend had a rifle in his house when he was a teenager. He used it to hunt with his grandfather. Tragedy. Also, he had a substantial collection of swords himself, of varying lengths. Right now, he has enlisted to the US Army and is undergoing basic training right now. Clearly, he is a terrorist (sarcasm for those too dense to get it, like the FBISD Board)

Everyone at the school hates our new principal Moran. His policies suck because he wants to make it seem like he's doing something different, but all of his "new" rules don't actually do anything at all (switch from 6 weeks schedule to 9 weeks schedule, etc). In fact, many of his rules irritate and hamper students, such as locking school doors all around during the school day, making seniors with off periods have to wait outside until someone passes by and opens the door. However, I think this has got to be the culmination of his stupidity and ignorance, showing his clear overreaction to, at best, marginal threats. MAYBE advising a slight investigation into Hwang's mental state, ie sending him to a counselor, was in order, but royally screwing his future with an arrest and sending him to the alternative school was about a million times stronger than what was necessitated by the situation, even with the recentness of the Virginia Tech incident.

As a parent of two graduates from Clements High School I am shocked at the actions of the School district. This appears to be liberalism at its worst.

Even though nothing was found at the students home, no indications of any social problems from this student, BUT the school district STILL sends hime to the Altnerante School.

This is not Right, What happened to Common sense? These actions only confirm my opinion of the steady decline in the qulaity of education

I can definetly see why people are reacting, though. For one, Counter Strike is a bad game. I'd want my school to be made in a more respectable engine that doesn't fake fysics so much.

But honestly, I think many of you here are missing the point. Where do you draw the line? Is a game where you traverse a building killing everyone in sight too far? If it isn't, then is it ok to make a map of your school in this game? Even if the people in the game are "terrorists" that can be positioned at classroom desks?

Honestly, there's a line between art and hate speech. I think this was an attempt at art, but it's NOT unreasonable to investigate and seriously question an act like this. It's my personal opinion that in order to recreate or mimmick someone or their property's image in a videogame, you must have their express permission. This encourages artistic merit as opposed to hate speech. If I as a game developer am required to request express permission of a business or dean in order to recreate their workplace or school, my intentions are made clear and obvious.

Of course, that'd require people consider videogames art. I could get started how neither videogame advocates or people like JT are both stopping the legislation and laws that are VERY badly needed at the time to both protect videogames/freedom of speech, and also protect the safety and feeling of safety of our free people.

@Brandon St. Germaine
a) I don't think it was THAT detailed to include desks and all that stuff.
b) I agree about the art/hate speech thing.
c) I believe that it WASN'T irresponsible to have an investigation, but I believe it WAS irresponsible to have him arrested and sent to alternative school instead of sending him to a counselor or something.
d) I didn't think CS was THAT bad. :)

Oh, I totally think this case was blown out of proportion. I don't think people's posts here are very helpful towards our cause. You can't ignore a situation like this, and say it's all ok until he starts making threats.

Oh, and I was talking about desks as if someone were to make a mod. Is that the line? Where is the line?

Another thing we have to question is the availability of such maps. He might not consider it anything more than art, but what if someone else thought differently, downloaded the map, and entered the school with intention to kill? While few people here would blame the map for that, we have to realize the immaturity and lack of respect many people have over the sense of security others have.

It is very threatening, however unintentional, to have people publically firing real life weapons in a videogame in an obvious and detailed version of your school. It doesn't matter how innocent the intentions are. If we don't recognize that threat, we'll never gain any ground on the JTs and others who would see videogames as a scapegoat for evil and horrible people.

@snakestream, try to get in contact with the guy and advise him to get a lwayer, or write an angry letter to the prinicpal/school papaer or even the official school board or the head of whatever county it's in asking for investigation on the matter (and no they can't get you in trouble for doing any of this). I'd do it myself but since I don't live there my sayings would have no impact. We can't let this thing slide.

God bless America.

The question remains, will this kid be SMART enough to sue? It seems to me that some people have the perfect chance to sue someone, but don't because the thought never crosses their mind until it's too late. Someone should inform him that he should sue over this atrocity, because he might not decide to.

Sparkz Says:
"you game makers and game players are training a new generation of mass murderers. studies show that children raised without violent images or idea in thier homes are significantly less violent in later life."

Somehow, I doubt you've read any of these studies, or have a grasp on the written word at all for that matter. For some reason, the only word capitalized in the post is "jihad."

My what a sad state the world is in, that students making maps is considered terrorism.

I did the same thing this guy did with Duke Nukem 3D's map editor, recreating a large portion of my high-school in full. I actually remember it being one of the maps at the time which was popular in online play because it managed to feature three stories of play without major lag.

Let's hope the school board reverses this decision. Failing that, let's hope the ACLU steps in, because this is exactly the sort of thing for which they were created.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME? DONT YOU GET HOW THIS STORY HAS BEEN WORDED? "CHINESE-AMERICAN" STUDENT!! IM A WHITE MALE TEEN WHO PLAYS COUNTER STRIKE BUT I CAN ALMOST GURANTEE THAT THEY WOULD NOT OF SAID "WHITE-CAUCASIAN MALE STUDENT" IF IT WHERE A "WHITE" KID. THIS IS A LUDICRAS OVER REACTION...ITS ALL RELATES TO CREATING FEAR THROUGH THE AFTER MATH OF V-TECH!!(WHICH WAS A BLACK-OP)..I WILL ADMIT MAKING A SCHOOL THEMED MAPP IS RATHER ODD BUT I MEAN COME ON ITS A DAMN GAME..THE MILLITARY HAS NO PROBLEM TELLING YOU YA COME JOIN YOU GET TO COME KILL SOME IRAQIS!! DID HE HONESTLY SEEM A THREAT? AND THE FACT HE HAD SWORDS IN HIS ROOM!! WTF!! I GURANTEE MOST OR SOME OF THE SCHOOL OFFICIALS OWN A GUN/KNIVES ECT..COME ON NOW .. AND IVE READ THE KID DOESNT GET TO GRADUATE WITH HIS CLASS? WELCOME TO FACSIST AMERICA PEOPLE..ITS SAD... VISIT WWW.INFOWARS.COM ...

@Scoops

But thats the point. you can strageies, It doesnt mean your strategy will work. We all should know that simulation are not real world, We can simulate as much as we want but then doing it in the real world is a different story.

kind of reminds me of how the strategy in Iraq was that we were going to be greeted as liberators. And not invasion forces. It was a strategy, bad one. Makes me wonder what simulations they did?

This kid was a real moron for making something like this.

It's like parading around an Arab Flag after 9/11

This is a total over-reaction. I may not play counter-strike, but I remember when I used to imagine my high school as a shooting game map, it's a place we've never been in gaming before, and it woudl be really fun and interesting. Besides, the kid probably only made the map of the high school because it would be easy to map out and it'd be a fun place to be, no harm in that. If i was to make a map, it'd either be my high school, or an intersection near my house with a few businesses. What are they gonna do, sue me?

Woah, overreact much? Its not like there was any indication that he was going to do anything whatsoever.

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[...] I never finished the game, and chances are it’s buried somewhere next to Jimmy Hoffa, but I’m looking at this article in Game Politics. It’s about a student there that used his school for a map her created in Counterstrike and was arrested out of fear for being a terrorist threat. It really is a drag to think how much things have changed in the past few years. I did ponder the thought of taking my old diploma over there and saying “Hey guys, you know all those people who are getting kicked out of school putting it in a game? Well I did the same thing twelve years ago, do you want my diploma?”. [...]