More Video Game Violence

Yesterday, the online version of the Daily Mail seized the opportunity once more to connect video games with violence. Reporting on a shocking case where a 21 year-old father stands accused of killing one and seriously injuring another of his twin baby sons, its story gave perhaps undue prominence to the fact that he played video games in the evenings by headlining the piece ‘Computer Games Addict Killed Baby Son’.

But the right wing rag’s fantasy has become a disturbing reality in another, unconnected story. A jury yesterday heard how an eleven year old boy actually [I]stabbed a baby[/I] whose crying exacerbated the frustration he felt at continually failing at a level on a videogame. Fury described by the boy as 'an erupting volcano' caused him to use a kitchen knife he had picked up to fix a toy to stab the baby, the boy’s nephew being cared for by his mother. Though seriously injured, the infant survived the attack.

The boy had expressed to his mother that he felt excluded by the attention that the baby received and had also said to a teacher, "There’s a lot going on in my head". The family was going through a difficult period at the time, with the boy’s sister undergoing treatment in hospital.

Indeed, it seems a number of unsettling factors in the young boy’s life contributed to his mental state, which led to the horrific attack, but expect a fresh bout of video game vilification to start any time soon, nonetheless.

If you’re wondering which Rockstar title the boy was playing at the time, you’re on the wrong track. The game was in fact The Incredibles, the game of the CGI animated film (which incidentally, features a baby). Video game testers asked to report the difficulty curves of games they are working on might want to remember that it could really be a matter of life and death.