Or maybe he watched american psycho and took that into consideration? Who knows what made him do it but at the end of the day it takes an already very sick person to kill anyone. Having been one of the best selling games of all time you'd expect everyone to be slaughtering people in the streets. So bored of newspapers not having enough creativity to think of anything else to blame such as the psychos state of mind... you know real factors!

Long old way to go before anyone supposedly influenced by games catches up with the likes of Ramirez and his supposedly ACDC inflenced exploits. I assume that the Sun has evidence of the games influence? Assume it won't be taking any advertising for it either..

I can't wait for Guitar Hero the Who version to arrive in the shops. Will it mean that I will be influenced to smash up may guitar along with drive my rolls Royce into a swimming pool...... Amazing how the media will blame anything to make a headline.

oh god, ban the game just cos a ****y lawyer tried to blame a game, nothing to do with the fact that his client is a pathetic scumbag. always someone elses or something elses fault for the fact that UK is becoming invested with low life scum.

is just that a distirbed person, doesnt matter what he/she watched/played, they have to be unstable to start with, society likes to blame something for an inhumane act, no one likes to think there are nutters walking around, they feel much more comfortable if there is something to blame,

What about all the thousands of murderers, rapists, drug dealers, thieves, vandals and other criminals that have NOT played violent video games? Surely the ratio here is huge and that in its own right proves that the people who do this are sick and are a problem waiting to happen, video games or not?

Fred West... I doubt he was in to gaming. Same goes for Harold Shipman. Though I am sure The Sun will find some tedious link should the so wish.

Whilst sensationalism of the type carried out by The Sun is utterly inexcusable, sarcastic comments about the gaming habits of Fred West or Harold Shipman aren't likely to help. Nor is complete disregard of the possibility of genuine links.

Case in point: Not every smoker develops lung cancer and not every lung cancer sufferer has been a smoker. Does that mean there's no link between the two? No, of course it doesn't.

The games industry needs to stop living in denial and accept (nay, explore and investigate) the possibility that there may well be links between violent content in games and violent actions in real life. Once the links and causes have been found, then actions can be taken to address the problems.

What about the conection to violent antisocial behaviour with reading of The Sun? Or are they all Guardian readers?

I play skate every day but I cant kickflip for ****

I blame his cap. Look at the way he is wearing it??? An blame Burberry while you're at it. He couldn't afford a real one so he went on a rampage, hijacked a bus load of penguins and lost it on some prostitutes.

@Rhythm

I realise and agree that we must keep an eye on the amount of violence in video games and any connection to real life violence, and this kind of thing does have to be taken seriously. However, at the minuite, based on given and anecdotal evidence I do not believe the link to be strong, inverse in many cases, as a good round of gaming is more likely to relieve my stress levels.

Also comparing it to smoking/lung cancer is irrelevant. A much more accurate comparison would be disturbing fiction in other mediums such as Music, literature, television and film and the effect on people in those regards.

Well i blame the increasing lack of any sense of effect of ones actions and the desensitization of society in general, the cause of this though can be leveled at all sections of the media.

Also after reading the article i noticed he started this at the age of 17, where are his parents, there not even mentioned at all in the sun article?

@Rhythm: The industry has explored and investigted the possibility between games and violence a number of times, every time coming up with nothing, and with good reason.

Now let's move onto the problems, shall we?

I think the Sun should at least take some of the blame if they believe this guy copied GTA4, since they had a double page advertisement spread for the game on the day of release.

I blame MIKE SULLIVAN (Crime Editor) and MATT PICKLES for this sensationalist and misleading reporting. If you want to ask them about the background to this story then why not just ring The Sun newsdesk on 020 7782 4104, or simply email mike.sullivan at the-sun dot co dot uk or matt.pickles at the-sun dot co dot uk to find out more or quiz them on how they figure GTA 'made' this disturbed individual commit these attacks. I would guess that they won't be able to give you much of a detailed psychiatric history of/ assessment of the attacker, because I would also guess that a considered story focusing on the many complex and deep-seated reasons for his anti-social, criminal behaviour would be of little interest to their editors or readers.

I heard that if you take a copy of World of Warcraft Disk two, turn it upside down so it is balanced on the end of your index finger, and spin it anti-clockwise.

Then if you hold it up to the light and squint a lot as it spins you can read a message as it flickers around that says "PSYCHO GEEKS KILL FOR SATAN"

Personally I do feel that many games have become far to un-necessarily violent in recent times.. but I find it hard to believe that anybody's prime emotional motivation for violence against other human beings is because of a few pixels he sees flying around on a glass tube in his bedroom.

I'm with rachel on this one; What happened to being CRAZY? Can't people be CRAZY anymore? It's always video games this,movies that....

The kids just crazy!

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