February 16, 2008 -
The New York Post, a daily tabloid, has a story in this morning's edition with this screaming headline:College Killer Crazy for Violent Vid Game
The article, written by a pair of Post reporters, claims that NIU rampage killer, 27-year-old Stephen Kazmierczak, was "obsessed" with Counter-Strike, which the paper describes as "an ultra-violent video game."
The Post quoted a former dorm mate of Kazmierczak's, Ben Woloszyn:
He played a lot of video games, especially Counter-Strike, really loud.
The Post article appears to draw a linkage between the player's actions in the game and Kazmierczak's shooting spree:
In the game, players use imaginary money to buy shotguns, pistols and other equipment they need to move around an imaginary world in which they're constantly under threat of being killed by roving terrorists.
In real life, Kazmierczak - who had become "erratic" recently after shunning medication for an undisclosed illness - purchased weapons like those used in Counter-Strike, including a Glock handgun and a pump-action Remington shotgun...
Down near the bottom of the article, the Post also mentions the killer's very short-lived stints in the Army and as a corrections officer. These episodes appear to suggest an unstable nature.
GP: While the Post article seems to confirm other reports indicating that Kazmierczak had significant mental health issues, exactly why the paper chose to focus on his past video game play is not clear. Personally, I'm far more concerned about a disturbed person with a gun than I am about a disturbed person with a video game.
We should note that the New York Post is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who also owns Fox News, which, as GamePolitics readers well know, frequently uses sensationalized reporting to smear video games.
Is there a connection?
Hey, as they say on Fox, we report. You decide.
I'd be remiss not to point out that game violence critic Jack Thompson alerted me to the Post report via several e-mails, one of which arrived under the subject line:
Screw Dennis McCauley and Hal Halpin and the ECA Donkey They Rode In On...
I kid you not.
Full Disclosure Dept: The ECA is the parent company of GamePolitics.
UPDATE: A piece in the Northwest Herald also mentions the shooter's Counter-Strike play:
Kazmierczak often would play the video game Counter Strike, a first-person shooting game, the roommates said, but they were quick to add that the game was nothing unusual for dormitory halls.
Comments
the common counter-arguement to "I play games and I'm not violent" that people like jack thompson use is "we don't care" or 'you haven't gone violent YET" so trying to reason with them is impossible
Andrew Eisen
Maybe he saw it as logging out....
..too soon?
maybe Penny Arcade was onto something with thier Mass Effect strip awhile back..lol Are gamers godless liberals?
and as evidenced quite a bit on newshounds.us and other left wing watchdog groups...FOX news and thier pundit parade really pushed for Mitt Romney in this election. And many of us know how Romney feels about violent video games...heh heh
I could be just drawing conclusions...but remember. video games makes on awesome scapegoat for those that never played them.
Yup
"jackthompson wrote on Feb 16, 2008 4:21 AM:
" IMMEDIATE NEWS RELEASE - Feb. 16, 2008
Illinois School Shooter Rehearsed for Massacre
on Counter-Strike Video Game
On Friday, Miami attorney Jack Thompson appeared at 10:15 am on the Fox News Channel to warn of the role of violent video games in numerous school shootings such as the one authored by Stephen Kazmierczak at Northern Illinois University, as well as Columbine and countless other such incidents.
Thompson specifically mentioned the ultra-violent first person shooter game Counter-Strike which was played obsessively by Robert Steinhaueser, the author of the worst school shooting in European history-at Erfurt, Germany-and by Cho of Virginia Tech, as reported by the Washington Post. You can see Thompson's specific reference to Counter-Strike on Fox yesterday morning in streaming video at www.gamepolitics.com.
Note that Thompson said to the Fox anchor that it was too early to know if Stephen Kazmierczak was into violent video games like Counter-Strike by saying "We'll see."
Well, now only the blind will not see, and by their choice.
The following is to be found presently on-line at the Northwest Herald at [www.nwherald.com]
From his two college roommates, as reported yesterday afternoon:
"Kazmierczak would often play the video game Counter Strike, a first-person shooting game, the roommates said, but they were quick to add that the game was nothing unusual for dormitory halls."
What is unusual is for school shooters not to have wittingly or unwittingly rehearsed themselves on these murder simulators. These games not only feed an appetite for violence but they are teach killing tactics and scenarios.
Yesterday afternoon at 3:55 pm, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich opined on Fox News that "violent video games" figure in these massacres. He was right. Thompson was dead on right in identifying Counter-Strike as a likely training device.
Thompson wrote legislation passed unanimously and signed into law in Louisiana about these murder simulation games. A recent poll taken by the video game industry itself found that 65% of Americans want federal legislation to restrict the sale of these murder simulators. That percentage will grow after the Valentine's Day School Massacre.
Contact Jack Thompson for more information
++++++++++++++++++++++
Jack Thompson is a Miami attorney who has appeared on roughly 250 national and international television programs about the hazardous sale of violent video games. He has appeared on 60 Minutes twice, the Today Show eight times, and before state legislatures testifying as to this public safety hazard. He was recently profiled on ABC's Nightline, and he is the author of the internationally distributed Tyndale House book Out of Harm's Way about this problem. The publisher deleted from this book the chapter presenting a fictionalized account of a student who jumps onto the stage of a school auditorium and opens fire with a shotgun. The publisher said it was "too disturbing" and would alarm the public."
What won't Jacko use to promote his agenda? I mean seriously.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1aZcsY-O8Q
February 16th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
Oh, and you don’t commit suicide in Counter-strike either.
Andrew Eisen "
I went to see if there was a console cheat code for "suicide", but I think it depends on which "Counter Strike" it is.
Nightwng2000
NW2K Software
Write your comment in a word processor, copy and paste, and DON'T move the cursor in the comment box (not even a space, which is funny because spaces count as words).
Mouse your cursor to the code box and click there. The word count should stay at "1". Enter the code and hit the post comment button.
I noticed that though it says it only allows 100 words, John Bruce's post was longer. I wondered how he did that. Then I realized he probably just copy/pastes his press releases into lots of comment sections to spam all the news articles and make certain his lies and deceit are spread everywhere.
Nightwng2000
NW2K Software
Just strike me as odd that when somebody kills in the name of God, nobody blames the Bible, they just blame the individual as being mentally ill. Why isn't it the same here?
You see, Jack Thompson is advocating Sodomy and beastiality!!!
Now that we see what a reactionary statement is, lets move on...
Elomin, normally something like that, because it doesn't garner a shock reaction, is just given the most brief of mentions because the new agencies want to trump up something that can cause a panic. If you are familar with "The Music Man" or at least "Trouble in River City", it follows along those lines. Create a scare about something rather mundane (in the case of The Music Man, a pool table) then start harping about the evils of said mundane thing to whip the mob into a fervor of panic about it. Then start 'selling' a solution, cure, fix that will ease all their minds and put a nice and tidy profit in one's pocket. This, in a nutshell, is broadcast news.
Strangely enough, it never really seems to come up. It gets mentioned but you have idiots like Jack saying, "ZOMG! VIDEO GAMES DID IT!" and that sadly gets the press.
We knew he was obsessed with gay porn, but the beastiality is new...
Two simple questions:
1. Who owns the rights to Counter Strike?
2. Why aren't they suing our favorite gay porn distributor for slander and/or libel and/or defamation?
but it said AFTER he stopped taking his MEDICATION
Some reasons I see:
Some people are just looking for blame, they don't care for facts, they just need to blame something. No matter what to help them feel better or sleep at night. They think all causes have a simple effect.
Then there are those with an agenda. From anti-gaming to media outlets that see gaming taking up slices of their profits. Anything to crush the industry so that their's is secure.
Also, some people want to be ignorant. They don't want to look at facts because they just KNOW they are right no matter the evidence.
And that's the short version of the story.
Of course, there are a great many details, and the Northwest Herald does an excellent job of diggning into that issue. And the overwhelming stories about how he was while he was on his meds versus what happened when he went off them paints a very decent picture of his life over the last 10 years. There are, of course, many details we'll never know, but I think that these stories in detail give us a fairly accurate... "rationale"... for what happened. Even if we can't excuse or fully understand what happened, we can get a fairly decent image of why it happened. In some part anyway.
Nightwng2000
NW2K Software
And that's Thompson in a nutshell. You can mention the following in this case:
--Suspect was legally an adult when Counter-Strike came out in 1999.
--Suspect had military training and possibly civilian weapons training.
--Suspect had a history of mental illness of some sort.
--Suspect was taking medication for aforementioned mental illness.
--Suspect was legally able to purchase weapons (and did so.)
--Suspect stopped taking the medication that made him normal.
--Suspect was an avid Counter-Strike player.
Jack will pick one of those facts and run with that one and ONLY that one.
Tabloid trash will not see this fact, or the rest of the story in a rational light. Instead they will speculate, further the moral panic spreading in our country, and cause more damage by giving this killer the press he most likely desired--much like the Virgina Tech and Columbine shooters received after their heinous crimes.
SHAME ON YOU NY POST.
Its easy to want to give up the good fight and let these "trashloids" run our games through the mud but I believe that with this online community, and many others, we can have our voices heard. We've done so before with Faux News on the Mass Effect debacle, and also with our favorite conservative blogger who reported on the single sex scene in the game. We should respond to this article in the NY Post, and other similar sensationalist articles that will no doubt surface, with brief but poignant e-mails, letters, and phone calls.
If the offender played Counter-Strike at some point before killing innocent people, it must be the reason for the killing.
Stunning, really. I can't wait for the part where anybody who disagrees is decried and incessantly mocked.
I think the problem with all the classic, logical fallacies is that they're all named in Latin, so people don't notice them when they happen in English.
I personally would consider that it might have been a factor, but in consideration to everything else its involement would be minmal in impact. However, I am not a certified psychologist or anything so I certainly cannot belive that my word is true. I'll just wait for the reports later on.
On a whole irrelated topic, I saw Bill Clinton speak at my university, and got to shake his hand also. I was too dumbfounded to say anything, but he is a very eloquent speaker. He didn't say anything about videogames or anything, but brushed on the subject of public health care (universal health care) and talked a little bit about mental illnesses and how we need to be more proactive about it. I don't know who I will vote for, but it was an opportunity I'm glad I didn't pass up.
Clearly, we must immediately, for the safety of us all, ban Jodie Foster.
people actually believe what they say? what a sad world we live in
Lol! I read that and I spit my drink all over my desk when I saw that.
And I would lke to add something, I believe Lewis Black said it best.
"I'd be nice if we could get someone to teach us [Americans] it [common sense], but who the **** are we gonna get?"
The guttertrash do flock like some out of control skin virus, don't they?
John Bruce, FOX News, LaRouche too probably (if not yet, then soon).
But, gee, look at the guttertrash that has joined in:
http://www.godhatesfags.com/written/fliers/index.html
Press Releases > Other press releases tab:
"Thank God for NIU Carnage. Thank God for the Shooter. Thank God for 6 dead. "
Sick perverted Mental Molesting bastards.
Nightwng2000
NW2K software
Why does history HAVE to keep repeating itself!!!
And this just shows how desperate Thompson is to have ANY game connection. He likely wants to show that even adults should be denied access to violent games.
Actually, there's no evidence that he was a "violent person".
He had an undisclosed mental health problem, but that isn't evidence that it was violence related. Just going off medication won't make someone instantly violent. Something, a word or act, overhearing and (mis)interpreting something overheard, any number of things might have set him off while he was off his meds that might not have had the same effect if he had been on his meds.
We just don't know. And only he could have answered that without speculation.
Nightwng2000
NW2K Software
Kid plays The Sims; Starts living life.
God, I can´t believe those people really exist! They make look Jack Thompson a funny and unharmless dude!
But people do, all the time. Though it's a lot harder to drum up support for something like banning or restricting the Bible than banning or restricting video games. And people who stereotype all Christians come off as bigots to the majority of the population, while people can make uninformed statements stereotyping "gamers" without rising as much ire in a lot of people.
Regarding killers playing video games, I'm just waiting for people to finalize realize that pretty much everyone from certain generations plays video games now, so pointing out the fact that a killer played a particular video game, by itself, has about as much relevance as pointing out that he breathed oxygen.