Guest Blogger – Stephen Pratt

Ok, so here’s the much anticipated guest blog… may i add that these thoughts are those of the editor and not those necessarily held by myself or the other pea brainers =P

It may seem spaced out, because i copied and pasted. for those who don’t know, a ‘frag’ is a kill in a video game.

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Gamers Frag in games, not in the real world

A few weeks ago, I heard about an incident in Taiwan, in which a 19 year old boy murdered and robbed a taxi driver, because he wanted to see if it was as easy in real life as it was in Grand Theft Auto IV; a game which he was addicted to.

Being a gamer myself, I was interested. A Google search led me to the London Times website, where I found out that the teenager had freely confessed his motives during questioning and had shown no signs of mental problems.

Excuse me? He’s just killed a taxi driver and robbed him in order to get more money for gaming at an arcade; because that’s really normal and people do that all the time, and there’s no reason at all to doubt his sanity!

A glance at the related links column told me that the London Times was just another media organisation that shows prejudice towards gamers; all the links were to articles about the detrimental effects of violent games and making the UK rating system tighter.