So the big news in the games industry today seems to be that a teenager of some Texas High School had his house searched and has been shipped off to some reform school because he made a Counter-Strike map of his High School. I guess these days doing so might not seem like such a great idea, but having police raid your bedroom? People are making maps of their high school every bloody week - it's easily one of the most popular themes for people learning to make game levels, and there are already thousands of them out there. You've gotta be feeling pretty hard done by if you're in this kid's shoes right now!

http://kotaku.com/gaming/world-gone-mad/teen-arrested-for-counterstrike-map-257045.php

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

My first map was my High School in Paris. Two years ago I made part of my university campus for HL1. In both these cases, some teachers got to see my work and they though it was creative and interesting, and in no way part of a plot to murder them... But then again, there was no way I could easily get hold of a real weapon, so they had no reason to be scared (one teacher said I should replace the HL1 weapons with flowers or pencils, but the rest of the teachers insisted they wanted to see some shooting in the map).Now imagine I lived in Pennsylvania. I could be in jail for making such a detailed CS map of a real building. It's incredible how violence has existed since the dawn of mankind, but some people want to put the blame on the videogame phenomenon, which basically started in the last quarter of the XXth century. Incredible.

Kasperg, are you planning on shooting up the Kaufmann House? Be honest now! Lying will only make this worse.

I wonder if I'd get investigated by Homeland Security for making a GTA map of my city...

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o

I read about this yesterday. It's absolutely ridiculous. I made parts of my high school as well with a friend, and I haven't killed a soul so far (neither has my friend!). They should reward the kid for making something different and creative. Wonder when they'll realize video games, or mapping for them for that matter, is not the source of each and every bad thing that happens in society.

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What the Snarkpitters listen to!

Hello Hate Crime Legislation!

Look here for the small print.

well, all these darn violent kids these days, /me rolls eyes

What they don't get is that FPS engines are the only way to build state of the art, real-time rendered 3D environments you can walk around in. Everyone who's interested in architecture or just technology in general must love this. And of course the first things you build are places you're familiar with.

Man we had this so many times. I'm just eagerly waiting for my and coming generations to get into politics.

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Why snark works.

I don't think he was actually arrested in the end as if happens - the police searched his house but they didn't have anything to charge him on. The school on the other hand decided to stop him from being able to attend for the time being and shipped him off to some "alternative education centre" though, which is going to mean he misses his graduation. Some of the school board were going to hold a meeting to let the parents argue against the decision, but some of the board decided not to turn up which meant it couldn't go ahead. Apparently lots of politics going on behind the scenes, but really I couldn't give a s**t about some school board in Texas. I'm just appalled that recreating what is no doubt one of the most familiar environments to this kid in 3D so he can play it in a computer game managed to get him punished.

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

I blame Dr. Phil.

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o