Local student hits big time

Not quite the height of ignorance, but a good example of media hyperbole. Irony is this coverage will probably help this guy in his career. It's been all over the radio here in Vancouver as it is a local 'event".

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/dailybrew/former-b-c-high-school-student-under-fire-185802362.html

It's like people think you can only plan a gun massacre with a video game. What ever happened to paper maps? Isn't that how we usually fight wars?

Obviously, it's mostly a case of news media not understanding the issue, which happens an alarming amount.

Though, it's obviously not a smart idea to rebuild your school in a game where you gun people down. We've all thought that our schools have had amazing layouts for these games ... it's likely because they're designed to get people from one location to another quickly. But ... if you're going to do it ... just lift the layout, you don't need to recreate all the details. (In fact, it'd probably be a better, less juvenile, map if the creator just lifted the design of the building, rather than replicating the entire thing)

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

The news media isn't ignorant. They play up to their audiences ignorance. Doom sayer sells. They know exactly what they're doing.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

I'm not entirely sure, to be honest. On a lot of issues, yeah, I agree it's them being conniving. But on some issues, it appears to be actual ignorance.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Crono said:
I'm not entirely sure, to be honest. On a lot of issues, yeah, I agree it's them being conniving. But on some issues, it appears to be actual ignorance.

I still run into people who insist video games create bad kids through violence but when I point out that there was far more violence in a bugs bunny/wile e coyote cartoon they laugh it off. People are stupid and media knows it.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Ya, I did just that. I made a CS:Source map of my high-school, and before I finished it, my parents caught wind of it and challenged me to show it to the principle, and I thought, why would he care? Then they told me some anecdotal story about a kid in Texas who did the same thing and was actually arrested. (never did check out that story), but it was enough to scare me not into doing it.

I saved it, because I actually did work really hard on it, to fit the actual dimensions of the school. (Parents wanted me to delete it immediately) Taught me a bit about scale in Hammer trying to recreate a real world place.

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Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202

Wait ... who would report you exactly? Your parents are literally the only people in that situation who can link the map to your actual identity!

Crafty devils.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

I'll always remember how, when I was in middle school (amazing to think that when I started mapping, and using this site, I was twelve years old, half my current age) I considered making a map of my school, and then I realized grimly that people might react like this. Obviously, I had no intention of filling it with effigies of real people so that I could pretend to kill them, the way some people allege the Columbine killers did. When you're a kid, and you love action movies and video games, you're constantly picturing them coming to life in the settings around you; and recreating those settings in a video game is a unique way to make this fantasy all the more vivid.

In general, it was a weird time to be a kid with an interest in making any kind of art. You knew that although people wouldn't react to most of the things you'd make, but there were a few little triggers that could set off terrible consequences for you if you included them in your work. Any reference to death or killing in your work would be certain to be interpreted in the most simplistic terms, as an expression of an intention to experience them personally. And depending on your situation, being attributed that kind of impulse could mean being put through therapy, taken out of school, etc. etc.

I remember getting into a flame war (as we used to call them!) on one forum when I was in fifth grade. It was a site where people went specifically go engage in flaming, more or less for sport. I wrote some post where I said I would shoot someone. Not out of any impulse to actually do so, of course, or even in anger. But I was instantly mortified when I realized what would happen if anyone were to see that I had said something like that, even if it meant nothing, and there had never been any other indication that I was a danger to myself or others.

It was a strange time to be someone my age. And I'm sad to see that, apparently, it isn't over.