What more evidence do we need as a society that ultra-violent video games are poisoning and de-sensitizing young suceptible minds?? These types of `games` should be X-rated! When will there be consequences for the companies that peddle this crap to our kids?

After reading this article I would suggest whomever wrote it to be more specific when they write that it is a microsoft game. It was a modification of the game Half-Life that was produced by Valve. Meaning it was created by fans of the game originally and was not in fact "created" by any company or organization it simply used the Half-Life graphics engine. Also, games are not what cause people to go on a rampage neither are guns some people just go crazy and that is life.

I feel for those injured and wounded yesterday during this horrific incident, but I feel even more pain for the family of the shooter. The familes of the victims have each other to console and support in this time of anguish, but I feel that the Cho's will experience a backlash not seen before, and will be left alone to cope with this incident. To all the families involved, including the Cho's, my thoughts and prayers are with you all. Hokie, Hokie, Hokie Hi, Virginia Tech will survive!

1) Microsoft doesn't publish CounterStrike, Valve does. Fact checking is fun!

2) Thousands upon thousands of people of all ages play CS and similar games, including the US Army's own America's Army which is just as violent if not more so than CounterStrike given it's reliance on realism. And yet, somehow.. SOMEHOW.. we are not in the middle of a never ending massacre of children with assault rifles. Easy reason why: the games aren't the issues, it's the individual. Obviously, the gunman had other problems which lead to this unfortunate day.

3) Speaking of America's Army, where are people complaining about their use of it as 1) a marketing tool, and 2) a way to bring in and in some ways train possible new recruits. There have been recent reports of them stating that they want the best players to join the Army, hence their sponsoring of First Person Shooter tournaments.

actually tittergirl, microsoft *does* publish the xbox version of counterstrike.

goppatriot,

Censorship is never the answer. Consequences for the companies making a product? Please. Policing what games a child has access to is the parents' job. Personal accountability in the United States is a clearly a forgotten concept to you and everyone else it seems.

You could also argue that violent movies are poisoning the youth. If violent video games are the cause of violence, especially with the number of people who play violent video games(200,000 counter-strike players alone in 2006), there would've have been AT LEAST a dozen of these cases a year. I believe Cho suffered psychological problems like Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. And being a Korean, I feel some sort of responsibility for this even though I have never met this guy. After hearing the news my first thought was the serious repercussions that would affect the Korean person. I pray for the families of the victims, and we really need to make great strides in our education system to prevent such terrible things.

Study after study has confirmed that violence on TV and in games has dramatic effects on people, including resulting in violent action. Mandating seat belts has proven to be a good idea even though not everyone who doesn't wear a seat belt dies. Similarly, should we be more restrictive on entertainment content even though it doesn't drive everyone to homicide? Only if you value the next 32 innocent lives...

And don't bother with saying that kids aren't influenced by what they see on TV... it's the whole organizing principle of the medium in this country. If we weren't influenced, we wouldn't buy the advertised products and keep the medium alive.

Most people realize that video games are fiction. Having said that, there is a difference in games. I have no problem with games where you are a police officer or an American soldier killing armed enemies who deserve to die, such as terrorists, drug dealers, criminals, or enemy soldiers. But a game like Grand Theft Auto series where crime is glorified and the gamer is encouraged to kill cops and innocent civilians is a whole different story. I'm not saying these games should be censored but their makers' morality and values are definitely suspect.

I have been following the story for the past two days and the question that has kept coming back to my mind again and again is how did this 23 year old English major who had only owned firearms for approx. 4 weeks learn to use the gun and handle himself so methodically during the shooting? How is that possible? No major news sources seem to be asking that question.

Eyewitnesses on Monday stated repeatedly that he seemed very methodically, calm and well trained, as though he knew what he was doing. It is my understanding that he was wearing an ammunition vest and re-leading quickly. Again, I ask...how is this possible if he had no previous training?

In my personal opinion, the idea that he was a video gamer and possibly learned from First Person Shooter (FPS) games seems highly likely. I'm not personally a gamer and I know that many people are upset on the blogs that anyone would blame gaming, but how else would he have been so capable of using the gun and remained so calm during the shootings?

do you really think that there should be actions taken against the companies that make violent video games? Thats insane! I'm a parent and I dont rely on the government or anyother business or organization to censor the things my children watch on tv or play with! This is our jobs as parents to actually pay enough attention to our children to know what they are doing and to censor some of the things that may be inappropriate. This man just had mental issues that nobody helped him with and that was truely the problem! It was not that he played violent video games or watched violent movies! Millions of people play these violent games everyday but it does not turn them into mass murderers. And if you really do some research you will find that murder is human nature, it has been happening since the beginning of time (and yes believe it or not people were committing murders before there were video games)! People really need to stop expecting others to take care of their children and get off their lazy butts and protect your children from these things themselves. As a parent you have the responsibility to teach your child right from wrong and instill them with good morals and values and if they do have mental issues that is the parents problem to get their child some help. What are parents for if they cant teach their chilren these things? Have parents just gotten lazy and expect everyone else to take care of their children for them? Get over it and actually start paying attention to your children and stop blaming messed up kids on everything but your parenting.

Actually cgoines, Turtles Rock Studios developed the port to Xbox, not Microsoft. NT though. Wiki is your friend.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-strike
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle_Rock_Studios

About 100,000 players on at any given time. http://www.steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=stats&cc=US

Surely the game would be responsible for more people's deaths than just this one incident with this user base. Right? Truth is games aren't responsible for deaths, neither are guns. Insane people are responsible for incidents like this. You can try and pin the blame on the media, games, music and availability of guns. Its all BS and boils down to a single individual's insanity.

by benheather:
"...In my personal opinion, the idea that he was a video gamer and possibly learned from First Person Shooter (FPS) games seems highly likely. I'm not personally a gamer ..."

Allow me to address your comment. Since you say you are not a gamer, I'll assume a lack of familiarity with FPS games. FPS games can be used to a certain extent to teach movement. However, the motor skills reqired to use the weapons can't be learned through playing a first person shooter. In many games, reloading is an automatic action that takes place when a weapon is empty. Or, often times, it is done by pressing the "r" key on the keyboard. As far as aiming and pulling the trigger, there is no similiarity between clicking a mouse button and firing an acutal weapon.

To factors exist to make this person efficent. The first in the manufacture of the weapons. They're designed to be easy to fire and reload. I've had the pleasure of training with some ATF agents. I'm by no means a trained shooter, only having worked with guns a very minimal amount, and I was amazed how quickly I was able to reload and get back on target.

Two, the shooter was dealing largely with people in a confined space. This limitted the places his targets could move to, and reduced his need to aim. I hate to say it, but if he had been well trained, it would have been even more terrible than it was.

The risk, if not the date, of the Virginia Tech shooter's actions was foreseeable, if he was, as reported, both a veteran of training by means of relevant types of video games and with correlated types of personal habits.

Relevant forms of aberrant behavior associated with habitual use of relevant types of video games, is a sign of such a risk. The capabilities exhibited by the shooter show that exactly such a foreseeable risk was present, waiting for the set of circumstances to set off the relevant type of event, as at Columbine earlier.

Unfortunately, there has been a lobby for the types of video games which either promote such aberrant mental states through video shooting games, or sociological morbid other forms of children's and adolescent's video-based play-habits. These types of well-heeled lobbies have promoted the preconditions for a foreseeable increase of this type of behavior among adolescents and young adults.

Violent video games may have played a role in setting the stage for this man to become an assassin.

However, the following piece of information is just as damning: "the Chos were hardly ever home".