KEY POINTS:
There's always some idiot who will spoil things for us all.
Some Sydney guy who calls himself "Master Pigpen" has played right into the hands of the politicians who say video games are dangerous and violent and should be banned. We went through all that when police claimed the guys behind the 1999 Columbine high school shooting (Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold) were obsessed with the game Doom and Wolfenstein 3D and used them to "practice" their shooting moves.
The Wikipedia entry about the massacre says Harris often created levels for Doom that were widely distributed, and can still be found on the internet as the Harris levels. But rumours that the layout of these levels looked a bit like Columbine High School circulated and have been debunked, but some analysts argued that part of the killers' problems may have been desensitisation because of their exposure to the game.
Thankfully, no one could find any connection between the Virginia Tech shooting by Seung Hui-Cho and games, as he was never seen playing games but was obsessed with violent Korean movies.
So we all breathed a sigh of relief when that anti-game 'wannabe president' Hillary Clinton was unable to use the Virginia Tech shooting to propel her call for more restrictions on the sale of games.
Along comes Master Pigpen who has created a Virginia Tech game with a trigger-happy character and a similar scenario (including the dormitory shooting and the package sent to the media). It's a pretty basic game similar to others on the popular Newgrounds website where people can post games they've created.
On his own site (which has since been suspended), Pigpen has done something even more stupid. In a message to people angry about it he says, "I will take this game down from Newgrounds if the donation amount reaches $1000 US, I'll take it down from here if it reaches $2000 US, and I will apologize if it reaches $3000 US."
There is a "make a donation" button. No doubt the US media will soon pick up on it and the usual suspects will be back on TV saying it is the most shocking thing they have ever heard of and it's time to get really tough about banning video games.
Pigpen, named by Sydney media as Ryan Lambourn, said he did it "because it's funny".
It comes the same day as efforts in Australia to introduce an R18+ classification for video games. Thanks Ryan. We'll be lucky to get away with that!
