Writing the headline for this story was difficult, because there’s a lot of info to be clarified in a single sentence. Julien Barreaux, a 20-year old Counter-Strike player from France, decided that after losing an in-game battle to another player, he would track down and kill his rival. To be absolutely clear, this man decided that a fitting revenge for losing an online game would be to track down and murder his opponent- in real life.

As heard in a court in Cambrai, northern France, the man decided that he would plan to kill his rival player and did so for seven months, before showing up at the victim’s house and stabbing him in the chest with a kitchen knife, missing his heart by four inches.

Barreaux was sentenced to 2 years in prison and psychiatric and anger management. The judge said to Barreaux that “You are a menace to society. I am frankly terrified of the disproportionate reaction you could have if someone looked at you the wrong way in the street.” Fortunately in this case, the violence has not been attributed to the game, but to the man responsible. I can’t help but think it might be different if he had killed the unfortunate victim.

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The recent story we reported about the kids supposedly using Mortal Kombat moves to kill a seven year old girl has got me thinking: How do people go about linking videogames to real-world violence?

I read today about a woman picked up for stealing videogame merchandise from a Wal-Mart in Cocoa, Florida. The article also mentions that the 23-year-old woman was previously in trouble with the law for neglecting her son to the point where he wandered off and was found dead in a ditch.

Obviously the woman was charged with manslaughter on top of the neglect, but the case was thrown out of court due to “insufficient evidence”.

So here we have one individual that was involved in two totally unrelated crimes spaced almost four years apart. How easy would it be to associate one behavior with the other?

People like Jack Thompson and Dr. Phil love to search the history of people involved in violent acts and automatically associate their videogame activities with their real-world actions.

Exhibit C: Douchebag

It is my opinion that the aforementioned “Mortal Kombat” killers are associated with the videogames for three reasons:

1. They’re young. Thirty years ago it would have been Black Sabbath instead of Mortal Kombat.

2. The young man used videogames as his alibi, stating he wasn’t involved.

3. Money. The gaming industry is larger than Hollywood, and lawyers want a piece of that pie.

At this point in my life, I’ve read significantly more stories about violent crimes not associated with anything than I have about violence associated with rap music, heavy metal, videogames, or cartoons.

The bottom line is that I do think videogames can be “inspirational” for deeply disturbed people to do deeply disturbed things. Violent people are naturally drawn to violence, even if it’s only digital.

I also submit to the idea that videogames increase aggression, but no more so than any other competitive activity like football or even bowling, and it’s not a permanent effect.

A Fine Example of Pleasant Conversation

A normal kid is not going to kill his parents because he spent 8 hours straight pushing buttons on a controller. If anything, I think it’s quite the opposite.

I personally find videogames to be therapeutic. Whenever I may get the urge to kill people, I can take out that aggression on digital characters without the real-world consequences of guilt, jail time, physical harm to myself, or blood on my new pants.

If someone happens to do something violent and happens to also play videogames, that does NOT mean that videogames actually cause any violence.

This is a clear case of simple stereotyping, and we all know that’s a no-no. So I say to all you stereotypers out there: stop being dicks, or I will kill you.

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