If preliminary reports are any indication, video games are in for a media beatdown on Canadian TV network CBC tonight.

News program the fifth estate will air an investigative piece on the tragic Brandon Crisp case at 9 P.M. Eastern. GamePolitics readers may recall that 15-year-old Brandon ran away from home following an October, 2008 dispute in which his parents confiscated his Xbox 360.

Brandon was an avid - his parents say addicted - Call of Duty 4 player and the early days of the investigation focused on the theories that he had either run away to join a professional gaming league or been abducted by someone he met on Xbox Live. In the end it turned out that Brandon had fallen from a tree not long after leaving home and died from injuries received in the fall.

The Globe and Mail previews the program:

Some kids get hooked on Guitar Hero, but the vast majority of gamers today spend more money — and time — on shockingly graphic search-and-destroy video games. Turning every violent teen male fantasy into reality, these games have a simple primal theme: kill, and kill again. And then keep killing...

"As a parent, I was shocked by how little I knew about this world," says [reporter Gillian Findlay]. "The violence of these games is so real and beauty of the graphics is almost overwhelming. You can see how seductive these games can be to teenage players..."

In an exclusive interview with Brandon's parents, taped between the time of his disappearance and the discovery of his body, the extent of their son's video-game obsession is revealed.

We're dismayed at what sounds like a cheap media manipulation:

MLG also operates big-ticket tournaments... Findlay sits down with the members of a Canadian team of professional gamers...

 

"When we talked to them, we had large monitors playing video-game footage as background, and you could see it: They couldn't take their eyes off the screens," says Findlay.

Did the reporter really conduct this interview in front of large monitors and then blame some kind of video game effect for the subjects' eyes wandering? Would it have been any different if a hockey game or House was running on those monitors? Maybe that's why most reporters don't conduct interviews with their subjects facing TV screens. They're, you know, distracting...

For those who don't get CBC, the episode will be available on the web at 10 p.m.

Looking for background on the case? GamePolitics covered Brandon's disappearance in great detail. Click here for all of our reports on the case.

GP: Thanks to numerous readers who alerted us to this story...

UPDATE: Steve Tilley, who covers video games for the Toronto Sun, has previewed the show and weighs in with his take:

There's a journalistic responsibility to become as informed as possible on a subject before speaking on it with authority, and [reporter Gillian] Findlay clearly has not.

I'm not talking about forgivable oversimplifications, but rather a glib, faux-concerned approach that treats teenaged gamers like slack-jawed addicts obsessed with virtual mass murder. It's demeaning not only to the majority of gamers for whom this is harmless recreation, but to the non-gaming viewing audience who might not know better...

It's lazy, cheap and disappointingly one-sided.

Last week GamePolitics reported that some Nebraska librarians were under investigation by State Auditor Mike Foley (R) for - horrors! - purchasing a PlayStation 2 and Rock Band set for use in the library.

Foley's final report on Nebraska's library system is now out, including his findings on the video game issue:

[Library] Commission employees have occasionally provided their own personal game consoles for trainings and demonstrations...

GP: Now that's dedication, a quality that government bureaucracy is so good at beating out of its employees. No good deed, as they say, goes unpunished.

The purchase of gaming equipment is a questionable use of public funds. It is common
knowledge that children enjoy games and toys, so there appears to have been little need to
purchase the games.

GP: Wait - kids like games, so the library shouldn't buy them? Does that mean they should expend their budget on things that people don't like? WTH?

Moreover, none of the games purchased were so complicated or out of the ordinary as to require the Commission to demonstrate their use to library staff and others...

GP: Because absolutely everyone who walks into a Nebraska library - including older librarians - has an innate sense of how to set up and play Rock Band or Dance Dance Revolution? Thankfully, the Library Commission defended it employees against the Foley-crats:

Gaming equipment and games have become increasingly popular and in demand resources for library programming and service. The Library Commission purchased game equipment in response to requests from Nebraska librarians for demonstration and instruction. The Library Commission’s actions in acquiring gaming equipment and a few representative games are proper and in accord with the agency’s state statutory mission and its purposes in introducing new technologies, techniques and providing information and instruction in the use of these technologies.
 

GP: Bureaucracy... Grrrr...

Via: Nebraska State Paper

UPDATE: Cornfed Gamer has a terrific report on the situation with lots of additional details.

Omaha's Action News 3 is running an exposé on some Nebraska Library Commission employees who posted a video of themselves setting up and playing Rock Band on company time. But did the workers do anything wrong? From the Action News report:

Were some Nebraska state workers paid to play? A video that appeared on YouTube is creating a firestorm of reaction and suggests so...  Employees at the Nebraska Library Commission are accused of wasting [taxpayer money] and then posting video and pictures of the whole thing on line.

Nebraska State Auditor Mike Foley told Action News that a YouTube user spotted the video at left and made a complaint, leading to an investigation by Foley's office. However, Library Commission Director Rob Wagner has backed up his employees:

In a phone interview... Wagner says the workers did nothing wrong. He says the library system is branching out into video games to bring more young people into the libraries. 

GP: While library systems around the country are increasingly adopting video games in an effort to attract teens and stay culturally relevant, that word seems not to have filtered back to either Action News 3 or the Nebraska Auditor General's office.

If libraries are going to offer games like Rock Band, wouldn't it make sense for the employees to at least know how to set them up and be able to explain them to library users?

It's too bad that the local media and the state bureacracy is screwing them over for their efforts at innovation.

The tragic death of Canadian teen Brandon Crisp was easily gaming's saddest story of 2008.

In a sense, it was also one of the most frustrating stories for gamers as they watched their hobby maligned publicly, yet again. For several weeks in October and November, mainstream media reports fueled speculation that Brandon, a dedicated - perhaps even compulsive - Call of Duty 4 gamer, had been abducted by someone he met on Xbox Live.

Early on in the case there was even the highly improbable suggestion that Brandon had left home to join a professional gaming league. This was, perhaps, the modern equivalent of a 19th century child running away to join the circus.

Throughout the investigation and its aftermath, the notion that Brandon was addicted to Call of Duty 4 remained a constant theme. Not written about much, but just as likely, was the fact that Brandon was experiencing the same issues that plague many adolescents: difficulty in finding one's place and conflicts with parents.

In the end, Brandon was found dead not far from home. A coroner ruled that he likely fell from a tree soon after running away.

Now that a bit of time has passed since Brandon's death, Canadian journalist Jesse Brown takes a retrospective look at the case for his CBC Radio podcast. Unfortunately, what Brown ultimately serves up is a blanket condemnation of Call of Duty 4 multiplayer.

Brown, a non-gamer, spent time playing CoD4 and recording his impressions. In the end he was seemingly put off by the trash talk on Xbox Live. Hey, who isn't, from time to time? But there are ways to deal with XBL jerks that don't involve condemning the entire CoD4 experience, as Brown unfortunately does in his wrap-up:

Brandon Crisp played video games compulsively and Brandon Crisp died in the woods after falling from a tree. And those two things might not have anything at all to do with each other.

But as I played Call of Duty 4 late at night, crouching in a digital simulation of a snowy field and then collapsing in the leaves as a stranger somewhere in the world pushed a button and cursed in my ear, it was eerie to think that Brandon Crisp was here too, virtually killing and virtually dying thousands of times.

 

This world is a sad place and it's awful that Brandon Crisp spent so much of his time here when he had so little to spend.

What Brown doesn't get is that CoD4 may have become for Brandon a place where he could fit in, have fun and enjoy a sense of community and accomplishment.

GP: Thanks to GP reader Joseph M for the heads-up...

Although the information is sketchy, at best, an exchange on the f13.net forums suggests that some employers may be discriminating against those who play World of Warcraft:

The anonymous poster is known only as "Tale":

I met with a recruiter recently (online media industry) and in conversation I happened to mention I'd spent way too much time in the early 2000s playing online games...

He replied that employers specifically instruct him not to send them World of Warcraft players. He said there is a belief that WoW players cannot give 100% because their focus is elsewhere, their sleeping patterns are often not great, etc. I mentioned that some people have written about MMOG leadership experience as a career positive or a way to learn project management skills, and he shook his head. He has been specifically asked to avoid WoW players...

No WoW-hating companies are named. On the other hand, a firm that outright dismisses the WoW crowd de facto shrinks its global applicant pool by - what - 12 million potential employees?

They can't all be addicts.

Via: Raph Koster

Fat, angry and stupid is no way to go through life, son...

At least, that's what an education consultant seems to be saying as he cautions parents against buying video games as holiday gifts for their teenage sons.

In a guest column for EdNews, Bill Costello writes:

Boys are spending more than thirteen hours a week playing video games. As a result, they're spending less time outdoors playing and exercising. Perhaps this is partially why they are four times more likely to be obese than they were thirty years ago.

Research consistently confirms that the more time boys spend playing video games, the more likely they are to do poorly in school—regardless of age. At a time when boys are already underperforming in school, video games only make the situation worse.

Many recent studies suggest that playing video games saps the motivation of boys and disconnects them from the real world... Violent video games are especially harmful. A definite link has been established between violent video games and antisocial behavior. Games like Grand Theft Auto and Halo can make your son more aggressive.

So if you're thinking of buying video games for your son this holiday season, you might want to reconsider.

Critics have blamed violent video games for a number of egregious behaviors over the years, from school shootings to attacks on homeless people to garden variety aggressiveness.

But an article on the American Spectator posits a new - and baffling - theory of game blame. Writing for the conservative website, author Bill Croke blames violent game fans for the illegal slaughtering of animals.

By way of makinghis case, Croke mentions a couple of research studies linking violent games to negative behavior and, in an impressive leap of faith, draws a link between games and the wanton killing of wildlife:

It's a sickeningly familiar story. Two moose shot and left to rot... Two yearling grizzly bears killed... An increasing wasted antelope body count... Senselessly murdered mule deer left on the ground... All this has nothing to do with the legal autumn hunting seasons... it's "thrill killing," as wildlife managers call it... It's actually a national problem.

According to studies extant, these wildlife atrocities are committed mostly by young men aged 15 to 22, the video game generation. Much has been written about the nihilistic violence that kids are exposed to when they play some of these games...

I think it might be an easy jump to get up from a computer game, go out and pull the trigger on an elk or a deer, and then walk away with a laugh. After all, it's only a game... Yet, I think our four-legged friends will get a break soon, as the video game-thrill killing trend graduates to a higher plane: human beings.

Video games are mindless, as are the parents who let their kids play them.

UPDATE: Following up on GP's coverage, What They Play made a call to the Salmon, Idaho Public Library (Croke mentions watching teens play shoot-em-up games there in a portion of his column not cited by GP):

Interestingly, a call to the Salmon, Idaho Public Library revealed that they do not, in fact, carry video games which obviously casts some doubt over how thorough Croke has really been in his "research" for this piece. "We do not carry games, just books, DVDs, CDs, and books on tape," said the nice lady who answered the phone.

Over at GamerTell scribe PJ Hruschak is a bit frustrated with a security analyst who likened the Mumbai terror attacks to a "video game killing fantasy."

RAND Corp. analyst Brian Jenkins made the comment during a recent interview with NPR's Talk of the Nation:

We’re talking about a warrior subculture here. And I suspect that those who actually carried out the attack certainly were convinced that going down shooting was better than secretly planting bombs in public places... This in a sense for them was an opportunity to demonstrate their conviction, courage, although it doesn’t require a lot of courage to gun down unarmed people, but it becomes a kind of a real-life video game killing fantasy for the actual attackers themselves.

Jenkins probably meant no offense, but his remarks will likely rile some gamers. Hruschak explains:

Taken out of context, that sure sounds like Jenkins is a gamer hater. Really, he’s just trying to give a visual way of describing the attacks for an aural media. It’s more trying to describe the psychological state of the terrorists rather than specifically likening games to terrorist acts.

Even so, describing bombings as “unmanly” (inferring that gunning down innocent people is manly), indicating these terrorists are part of a “warrior subculture” and that “going down shooting” is a “a more attractive ending” and then summarizing it all as a “real-life, video game killing fantasy” should not sit well with many gamers.

After all, how many people has Cooking Mama, er, Mario killed?

mediawatch-UK can dish out criticism, but apparently has trouble taking it.

The self-appointed media watchdog group complains that it was flooded with e-mails from angry gamers in August after the head of the organization called for a ban on Sega's upcoming Madworld.

mediawatch-UK's autumn newsletter contains a whinge about the e-mails, which started when the organization's director, John Beyer (left), told the Daily Mail that he hoped the British Board of Film Classification would deny Madworld a rating, effectively banning the game in the U.K.

Within hours of these remarks being published a rain of hostile emails from gamers poured into our office telling us to "shut the f*** up", suggesting that we have "got our knickers in a twist", demanding, as though we were on trial for an heinous crime, to know what right we had to impose our "narrow minded bigotry" on them and stopping them playing an "adult" game of their choice.

Others, of a more sober character, asked reasonably why we should be so concerned about games when there was so much violence in films and on television!  We were also accused us of being "cowards" for not responding properly to belligerent strictures and one ‘emailer' observed glibly that "violent acts are not a symptom of video games and films, but rather the human condition".  Another said: "If you don't like violent content, don't view or use it"...

Feature articles, grossly exaggerating the significance of our comments, were written in computer game magazines exonerating the multimillion pound games industry and headlines were achieved on Google News UK and dismissive remarks made in The Guardian newspaper... 

mediawatch-UK's conclusion from all of this?

It is evident from this that the battle for standards has rather shifted away from television towards games and the internet. 

GP: Make up your mind, mediawatch-UK. If you want to be a player in this debate, learn to deal with people who not only have an opposing view, but will be directly affected by the censorship for which you are lobbying. Moreover, your whining about negative media coverage is silly. Why shouldn't those in the media who disagree with your advocacy of censorship speak out?

There's an old saying about the heat and the kitchen that seems applicable in this case.

Via: Mediasnoops

As many gamers know, Gary Gygax (left), the famed creator of Dungeons & Dragons, passed away earlier this year.

By way of honoring the man and his achievement, the folks behind GenCon’s yearly charity auction decided to donate the proceeds to Gygax’s favorite charity, the Christian Children's Fund.  The auction, held at this year's GenCon, raised more than $17,000.
 
Unfortunately, according to a post on Live Game Auctions, the CCF refused the donation when it found out that the money would partially come from the sale of D&D merchandise.  GenCon instead donated the money to the Fisher House Foundation, an organization that enables family members to live nearby their hospitalized loved ones.
 
A curious member of the Giant in the Playground forum e-mailed the CCF about its decision and received the following reply:

Christian Children’s Fund made the decision to decline the gift from GenCon, LLC as the request presented to us gave the appearance that CCF (the organization) was an endorser or supporter of a gaming convention, which CCF was not.

 

As [with] many non-profit organizations, CCF is selective in its endorsements or support in order to maintain the integrity of its name and logo. We cannot lend our name to an event for which we have no involvement. This decision should in no way be interpreted as CCF holding an opinion on Mr. Gygax, gaming enthusiasts or the game Dungeons and Dragons.

GU Comics offers an amusing take on the situation.
 
-Reporting from San Diego, GP Correspondent Andrew Eisen