WRC-4, Washington D.C.'s NBC affiliate has a video report on the V-Tech Rampage controversy, including footage of Ryan Lambourn, the game's creator, who said:

You do it for some negative reaction to laugh at.

However, Virginia Tech grad student Vasanth Ganesan rejected Lambourn's terse explanation:

Because he's an outsider, its just another scenario for him, for his game. For those of us who are here [and] knew people down in Blacksburg, it's really scary.

....another in an occasional series of reports about gamers who gave their all:

As reported by the Lynchburg News & Advance, Christopher Murphy, 21, was killed in Iraq on Saturday along with three fellow soldiers. Three other soldiers were abducted by insurgents and remain missing. According to his obituary:

Christopher Edward Murphy had a generous spirit... would give away his treasured video games and systems to friends... Even since he was a young boy playing every strategy-based video game he could find, Chris had wanted to join the military.

“You want to talk about our house sounding like a war zone,” Rosemary reminisced of Christopher having a group of friends over to play Halo 2, a warfare video game.

“He was pretty shaken by everything he was witnessing,” she said. “He was on his 13th helmet and his ninth tank when he came back. He didn’t want to go back to Iraq this last time.”

GP: Rest in peace, Christopher.

The Entertainment Software Association has a new boss.

An overnight press release from the ESA, which represents leading video game publishers, brought news that Michael D. Gallagher will take the reins later this month. He replaces Doug Lowenstein, who helped found the organization in 1994 and left earlier this year.

Gallagher is a former Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications & Information and served as chief telecommunications and policy advisor to the Bush Administration.

Said Microsoft exec Robbie Bach, who chairs the ESA Board of Directors:

Mike's outstanding technology, policy, and government relations experience makes him a strong fit for the ESA, where issues like intellectual property, self-regulation, and industry social and economic contributions are at the forefront of the agenda.

Jerry Berman, president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, added:

New York State Senator Andrew Lanza (R), who is spearheading efforts to pass video game legislation in the Empire State, has taken note of the V-Tech Rampage controversy.

Lanza told the Staten Island Advance:

There are certain things in life you don't make light of and should not be turning into a game. It's not a game, it's a tremendous loss of life.

Perhaps not grasping the amateur nature of the game, Lanza called on retailers, manufacturers and websites to boycott V-Tech Rampage.  The newspaper also reports that Lanza compared the Flash game, programmed by an unemployed Australian man, to the upcoming Grand Theft Auto IV: 

You've got Grand Theft Auto where you murder police officers. To me, I can't imagine people marketing and distributing it, and putting it in the hands of kids, but it's happening.

Retailer Best Buy announced yesterday that its website will henceforth feature video game ratings from watchdog group Common Sense Media at its online store.

The new look at BestBuy.com has the ESRB rating and Common Sense Media ratings displayed side-by-side. By way of example, check out Best Buy's Gears of War page.

GP: We're not sure what prompted the move, which seems to provide Best Buy with a redundant layer of ratings. As it stands now, customers can see the entire ERSB rating on the product page, but need to click through to access the Common Sense Media information. CSM's Gears of War rating page is partially shown at left.

The move also seems to say that whatever the ESRB is doing isn't enough as far as Best Buy management is concerned.

WRIC-8 in Richmond, Virginia ran a news feature last night on V-Tech Rampage.

The station called the game "disturbing" and said:

Sources say [game creator Ryan Lambourn] has tried to capitalize on tragedies before including Hurricane Katrina and the death of crocodile hunter, Steve Irwin.

KXLY-4 (Spokane, WA) also has a video report, including some interview footage with Lambourn.

As expected, it didn't take long for news of the highly offensive V-Tech Rampage to be picked up by the mainstream media.

Today's Roanoke Times has a report on the amateurish web game, which is based upon the recent horrific shooting spree at Virginia Tech. The game was created by an Australian man, Ryan Lambourn.

Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker told the newspaper:

It's so contemptible it's beneath response.

The Roanoke Times piece cites GamePolitics' coverage among its sources for the story.

GP: We certainly haven't heard the last of this one. Let's just hope that media reports accurately portray V-Tech Rampage for what it is: offensive, exploitative, and attention-seeking, and not typical of video games or gamers.

Now would be a good time for the ESA, as the public face of the video game industry - to make a statement condemning - and distancing itself - from V-Tech Rampage.

UPDATE: We note that an Australian newspaper has also picked up the story. The Sydney Daily Telegraph has an interview with the game's creator, who was born in Australia but lived in the United States until he was 14.

UPDATE 2: GP readers note - and we have confirmed - that Lambourn's website is down. Could be bandwidth issues with the host, could be something else...

Did Saints Row contribute to a Portsmouth man's violent rampage?

The Daily Mail reports that Dominic Anderson spent last November 13th smoking pot and playing Saints Row before going off the deep end. The 20-year-old threw himself onto cars and attacked police officers. From the newspaper's coverage:

Police today said that Anderson's extreme behaviour bore "shocking similarity" to the video game and warned youngsters about the dangers of smoking cannabis...

After playing Saints Row on his Xbox 360 console he fetched a 12inch carving knife from the kitchen, slit both his wrists and attempted to stab himself through the chest.

A police constable reportedly said:

Massachusetts Senator - and former Democratic presidential candidate - John Kerry is a gamer, at least a casual one.

An item in the Boston Globe reports that Kerry recently was observed playing an unnamed game on his Blackberry for three hours during a cross-country flight:

According to Bay Area blogger Lil Mike, the senator was recently spied playing a video game on his Blackberry -- for three hours. "Here's the guy that I voted for for President of the United States sitting next to me totally engrossed in a video game. . . . As the game sped up, (Kerry) got really into it and his body would jerk as he was trying to make the right moves."

GP: Too bad Kerry didn't make more of the right moves in 2004. How different would the world look today...

Over at the San Jose Mercury-News, reporter Mike Antonucci - whose piece on game violence was cited by GP yesterday - writes:

A valuable site, GamePolitics.com (I must have mentioned it before!), has cited a story of mine about game violence that was in the Mercury News Saturday...

But it’s not my piece that spurred this post. Rather, I want to alert folks to how smart the GamePolitics readers are. The thread of comments about my article seem (to me) much more interesting than the article. Yikes!

On behalf of GP readers, Thanks, Nooch!