Breivik, The Press And The Ongoing Myth Of The 'Violent Gamer'
from the tragedy-as-soap-box dept
Anders Breivik's trial for the murder of 77 Norwegians had barely commenced before Breivik gave the press something they could work with. During his opening statements, Breivik referred to two video games, World of Warcraft and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, both of which he referred to in his sprawling manifiesto. Despite making two completely different comments about these games, the press lumped both games together, resulting in misleading headlines such as this one from the Montreal Times:Anders Behring Breivik trained on video games World of Warcraft, Call of DutyJohn Walker at Rock, Paper, Shotgun swiftly dismantled the reports, most of which were seemingly based on an early Reuters article, which swiftly spread to other news sites with a minimum of fact checking.
Today the Times (paywalled) ran an even more sensational headline.This year of gaming, supposedly to train for his killing spree, was actually a "gift" to himself, which helpfully doubled as an alibi for his withdrawal from his social life. Simply quoting Breivik's own words would have dispelled any notion of World of Warcraft serving as some sort of terrorist training grounds."Breivik played video games for a year to train for deadly attacks"Despite Breivik's ranting describing his year with World Of Warcraft, which took place between 2006 and 2007, as a "gift" to himself, something he wanted to do before he gave up his life, the reports in multiple stories are claiming he was using the game to "prepare" for the attacks. It's a not particularly imaginative reinterpretation of Breivik's words, which really only suggested he played the game because he wanted to have some non-social fun because he believed he deserved it."I deserved to take a year off to do what I wanted to do, especially with the upcoming so-called suicide action - I wanted to have no remorse for what I would lose out on. I wanted a martyrdom gift, so I wanted a sabbatical year."For the usually rambling man, he's oddly clear here about the purpose of playing. It was a break from his obsessive planning. If anyone is unfortunate enough to have read through his 800,000 word manifesto, they'll know quite how much "work" Breivik put into his actions, albeit mostly nonsensical and convoluted, and rarely as he intended. The result is a terrifying tome of this peculiarly clear-minded madness, an exhausting collection of his beliefs, theories, and a diary, on his collecting of guns, bomb equipment, and his attempts to acquire the ingredients for chemical warfare. And from this, he now says, he took a year off. Or as he called it, a "sabbatical". And what did he actually say about it during the trial, that almost no paper is reporting? He said World Of Warcraft was,"pure entertainment. It doesn't have anything to do with July 22."
Breivik's statements about his time spent playing Call of Duty were a bit more disturbing:
"It is a war simulator. It gives you an impression of how target systems work," he explained.First-person shooters have carried the dubious title of "murder simulators" since the days of Doom and the title of "scapegoat" ever since the Columbine Massacre. To hear a defendant casually refer to the game's ability to do exactly that is somewhat surprising. Usually this is attributed to the killer post-facto. Perhaps this caught some of the journalists by surprise, which would explain the baffling conflation of the two games and their intended use.
And it's of course far more widespread. Headlines have appeared in the last 24 hours like,Walker predicts this is only the tip of the iceberg. There's more where this came from and if past experience is anything to go by, it's only a matter of time before legislators and policy makers begin taking turns on this particular soap box in hopes of pushing their agendas through.
CNN: Admitted Norway killer Breivik says he trained on video games
They then mention the games for 51 words out of nearly a thousand.
London Evening Standard: Anders Breivik: Online games helped me plan killings
This article includes the extraordinary line, "He said his training on World of Warcraft, an online game, focused on situations where he would be flanked by two commando teams." Which means the reporter, Bo Wilson, not only didn't bother researching about the game, but didn't even listen to what Breivik said.
The Star Online/Reuters: Breivik used computer war games to plan attack
Repeats the refrain that Breivik can't distinguish between WoW and real life.
Al Arabiya News: Breivik: Playing ‘World of Warcraft' helped me prepare for the attacks
During which they count the months between November 2010 and February 2011 to be sixteen, to give Modern Warfare a better showing.
The Irish Times: Breivik used games to plan attack
Yet another article that deliberately suggests that playing WoW was part of his training, rather than the holiday from it that Breivik so clearly states. It's also a hasty rewrite of the Reuters piece.
But remarkably, most reporting (at least, any "reporting" not simply composed of juicy misquotes from the Reuters piece) has been even-handed. One can only hope that with Jack Thompson safely disbarred and Baroness Susan Greenfield having yammered her way to irrelevance, the reactionary "violent video games beget violence" trope may be reaching the end of its life cycle. Time Magazine's Techland blog delivered this to-the-point headline: "Norway Killer Played World of Warcraft, Which Probably Means Nothing At All." Norway's own Dadbladget rounded up gaming experts to get their opinion on Breivik's claim that he used Modern Warfare 2 as a killing-spree trainer. Their statement (roughly translated)?
If so, there are millions of experts on the war in front of TVs out there.CNN tried a different tactic, lobbing an underhand(ed) grenade into the fray with the headline "Norway mass-shooting trial reopens debate on violent video games," swiftly abandoning the debate in favor of trotting out gamers' arguments in favor of violent video games as some sort of "let's have a bit of a chuckle at these hot-headed gamers and their predictable arguments." Enlightening, it isn't but at least it's not another writer leafing through a dodgy "Violence & Video Games" study and drawing his or her own conclusions based on the lack of evidence therein.
The problem with this sort of headline is that Breivik's statements don't actually reopen the debate on violence in video games. It doesn't because the debate never goes away. It just lies dormant until a tragedy like this brings it back to the surface. The noisiest "debates" will likely be located in several countries other than the one in which the tragedy actually occurred. Countries with a historical resistance to violent video games like Australia, Germany and of course, the US, tend to make the most noise.
Gamers and gaming have been a popular scapegoat for most of the last 20 years. Most legislators, already gleefully ignorant of the internet's inner workings, are also on-the-outskirts-peering-in when it comes to the subject of video games. Between these outsiders-with-power and many members of the mainstream media, the image of gamers conjured in response to situations like these is that of a dangerous fringe element who prey on impressionable minds of pliable teens and tweens. This is despite the fact that the average gamer is now 37 years old, most likely off doing useful and proactive stuff like paying taxes and raising kids of his or her own.
Trading on fear and ignorance to present gamers as automatons one flip of the switch away from a killing spree is still altogether too common. Not only is this representation insulting, it's also blatantly false. Gaming is the fastest growing sector of the entertainment industry. As the number of gamers continues to swell, the likelihood of the next sensationally violent criminal also being a gamer increases as well.
For the sake of argument, here are a couple of diagrams:
The overlap of "gamers" with "violent criminals" is due to the fact that even violent criminals have downtime. Gaming culture is very much not a fringe sector, even if someone like Breivik clearly is. It's not impossible to imagine a future where gaming's ubiquitousness has managed to engulf the entirety of the subset "violent criminals."
At this point, the statement: "All violent criminals are gamers," is true, but what is often ignored is the fact that "violent criminals" remains the subset, rather than the other way around. Even if you play devil's advocate and accept the assertion that violent games can be used as "war simulators" and help desensitize gamers towards violence, you still have to accept the fact that violent games are only a small part of a much larger toolset (so to speak).
Breivik, for example, also had several hours of live weapons training, a fanatical hatred for Islam, an obsessional focus on preventing "dilution" of his "culture," and most importantly, the willingness to kill fellow human beings. These additional "tools" are simply not "available" to 99.9999% of gamers. Hanging Call of Duty (and games like it) out to dry because of Breivik's actions is as repugnantly stupid as asking Microsoft to "dumb down" Flight Simulator because the 9/11 terrorists used it to train for their mission.
The problem with various entities (including the press, special interest groups, politicians and prosecutors) playing along with the "violent gamer" myth is that now even the criminals themselves are getting in on the act, citing violent games as an "I'm-not-really-a-bad-person-but-for-the-games" deflection/defense or injecting them into the conversation simply to up the level of controversy. Either way, it clouds the issue at hand and sends feckless "do-gooders" down well-worn paths, all leading away from the uncomfortable fact that evil acts belong solely to the person performing them and not the entertainment surrounding them.
Consider the case of the teen who brutally beat a homeless man to death, saying it was like a "violent videogame." Penny Arcade covered the story and found themselves on the receiving end of an eye-opening letter from the stepmother of the murder suspect. Included in the long, harrowing letter (which details the teen's other activities, including stealing cars, setting fires, beating up handicapped kids, having his parents detained on false abuse charges, etc.) was this statement:
The thing that really gets me with this whole thing is that the kid knows full well that by equating what he's done to a video game, that he will generate controversy and media coverage. It makes me sick that the media is jumping all over this, because that is exactly the result that he wants.Maybe the brief flareup of stories hyping Breivik's gaming past will be nothing more than that: a flareup. Perhaps the media and other interested entities are finding fewer and fewer members of the public willing to humor these bits of conflation and moral panic, especially in the face of an anomalous (and horrific) tragedy of this magnitude. In the end though, what really matters is how society moves on from this and what lessons are learned. The Norwegians themselves have certainly set the example with their reaction to Breivik's massacre, choosing "openness and love," rather than allowing "cowardice and fear" to take hold. Hopefully, the rest of the world will choose to do the same, rather than returning to business-as-usual witch hunts and scapegoating.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: anders breivik, call of duty, modern warfare, video game violence, world of warcraft
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
REALLY? WoW *trains* you to be a killer?
The Hoarde is more devious than I realized.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The press really has to learn the difference between causation and correlation.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
↑ ↑ ↓ ↓ ← → ← → B A
Unlimited life: unlocked
Unlimited ammo: unlocked
Because we're going to need it as these enemies just won't stop coming.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
super contra: → ← ↓ ↑ A B
at least thats how i remember it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Lets Stop Other Popular WAR Games Also
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Lets Stop Other Popular WAR Games Also
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Lets Stop Other Popular WAR Games Also
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Lets Stop Other Popular WAR Games Also
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Lets Stop Other Popular WAR Games Also
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Lets Stop Other Popular WAR Games Also
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Lets Stop Other Popular WAR Games Also
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Lets Stop Other Popular WAR Games Also
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Lets Stop Other Popular WAR Games Also
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Lets Stop Other Popular WAR Games Also
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Lets Stop Other Popular WAR Games Also
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Lets Stop Other Popular WAR Games Also
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Lets Stop Other Popular WAR Games Also
I would think you'd get a lot more "training" from Laser Tag/Paintball then you would from a video game.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Lets Stop Other Popular WAR Games Also
--George Carlin
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Jack Thompson will be crawling out of the woodwork any minute now to jump all over this...
Mind you, I do miss the entertainment value he used to provide. What insane logic will he use to justify himself with next? =P
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Microsoft Flight Simulator - Trainer for terrorists... Check
Call of Duty - Trainer for killing with guns/grenades... Check
World of Warcraft - Trainer for using magic to kill dragons... Check
SimCity - Trainer for become a corrupt politician that wields the power of mother nature to wreck havoc on the citizens.... Check
Populous - Trainer for being a god... Check
Guess that makes me a terrorist with skills at flying planes while using guns and grenades to kill people while being able to summon tornadoes or cause a nuclear meltdown with a mere though, while also being omnipotent.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
A CHALLENGER APPEARS!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Sure it may be annoying if your one of the billions of people who shops at grocery stores, but think of all the poor innocent children that mass murders like grocery shopping Breivik killed!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Wait a sec, a new study show that violent shooters need to breath! Let's completely destroy the atmosphere to prevent future shootings! Think of all the lives we'll save!
Meanwhile, in the bowels of the RIAA/MPAA headquarters... "A new study shows that violent shooters are killing potential sales, therefor they are stealing from us. Prepare to launch a copyright lawsuit at Breivik! That'll teach him not to steal from us!"
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The religion part.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: The religion part.
All you have to do is look through history to see that every large group ends up with few crazy people. It is just how things work.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: The religion part.
Somehow, I suspect this is exactly the sort of rhetoric Brevik was buying into...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: The religion part.
In the case of the soldier, he clearly was not acting as he should have and is no Christian. Just as an alleged Muslim who kills people in a similar circumstance isn't really following that faith, either. I've met and worked with some nice Muslims before, and while I disagree with their faith, I would never kill them for it. That's just wrong. And it's also wrong to portray as you did anyone who follows the cross as supporting such acts. Generalizations are wrong. Always. So don't make them. Ever.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: The religion part.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: The religion part.
Erm, yes well done for understanding my point. Fox News, Pamela Geller, et al, don't share your tolerance, and these were the kinds of people Breivik is known to have taken his inspiration from. This is hypocrisy, pure and simple.
Sorry if this offends you, but there do seem to be a lot of people convinced that all the Muslims on the planet are out to kill them because of a handful of terrorists, but take great exception when you point out that people of their own faith are just as capable of atrocity.
Oh, and for what it's worth, I was born near one where notorious bombing was carried out by the IRA (self-described Christians) in the UK and grew up about 30 miles from another site. I currently live in a place when on a clear day I can see a Muslim country less than 50 kms away. I've never been afraid of either faith, and treat each equally. If you want to lecture, I'm not the right person to give it to..
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: The religion part.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: The religion part.
I'm sorry, I can't go along with this. If someone tells me their religion is something, I have to take them at their word. I am in no position to be the judge of who is or is not Really A Member. And neither are you.
Besides, if that's the yardstick to decide who's a real Christian, then I think in my many years I have met only two, maybe three, Real Christians.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The religion part.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Gaming doesn't breed killers
He is insane.
Got it?
That's all we need to know.
It's been proven beyond a statistical probability that most murderers are insane, either temporarily or permanently.
It takes insanity to make a murderer, not video games or cornflakes, or anything else they throw up for excuses.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Gaming doesn't breed killers
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Gaming doesn't breed killers
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Gaming doesn't breed killers
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Gaming doesn't breed killers
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Quote the Anonymous Coward....
(Although I cleaned up his language a bit, I thought it was apropos. However, I enjoy the links to Rock Paper Shotgun with the thoughtful commentary.)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Quote the Anonymous Coward....
Also recommended:
D Nye Everything
Games Brief
GameSpite
insert credit
That Guys a Maniac
We Make the Cops Look Dumb
What Games Are
Most of these are more commentary than news and such, but completely worth reading.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The worst part is that people actually take these claims seriously. Also, CoD as a combat trainer? Really? At least try ARMA then, and even then, have these people ever held a firearm? Do they realise that in the real world you do not aim using a mouse and crosshairs? ...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
A better response would be to say, oh look, NBC News made the trayvon martin case into a race issue when it really wasn't. I guess i'm done watching anything on NBC since they clearly lied and made the situation worse than it already was.
In this case, stop reading, or at least giving much weight to articles that reuters releases. Clearly, they are wanting to get more page views by making false and outrageous claims. Even publishing the claims made by another person in quotes doesn't free them from the responsibility to fully inform the public with statistics from scientific studies that show one way or another what the actual facts are. They show one side to provoke a response and generate more traffic.
All of this put another way: DOn't allow yourself to be played. Inform yourself fully from various sources or you are just allowing them to turn you from people into sheeple.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
journalism? really?
Headline:
Mass murderer sustains himself on diet of McDonald's! New study links fast food to terrorism.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
There are over 10 million people out there playing World of Warcraft and not killing people.
Meanwhile there are murders nearly every day in Chicago by non-gamers.
This is just another example of correlation not equaling causation.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Got it? US: Can you go 10 years without being involved in a war or other violent military action?
If more people got as upset about ACTUAL killing as they did about SIMULATED killing, the world would be a much better place.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
That would help indicate that as gaming grows larger, it necessarily contains more people.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Venn Diagrams
Killers and Movie Watchers
Killers and Readers
Killers and Music Listeners
If we want to keep drawing on mistaken causality, we could extend this to other forms of "training":
Killers and Runners (gotta be in good physical shape, right)
Killers and Swimmers
Killers and Philosophers (he wrote a pretty long diatribe, there)
Killers and Political Activists
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Venn Diagrams
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Venn Diagrams
Killers and people sick of Venn diagrams
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Venn Diagrams
Here's one for you, hothmonster.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
They are often unwilling to accept another human is just that flawed.
Someone put 'A Catcher in the Rye' in his hands and THAT made him kill.
Someone said 'insert racial slur here' is the cause of all your problems, and that got him going.
Someone turned him on to Grand Theft Auto, and that is why he was on a hooker punching spree.
If you "raise" your child to be an evil bastard, you can always poopoo the people saying your kids a brat by just blaming the sugar or video games. The lesson you taught your kid was its never his fault no matter what he does.
Personal responsibility is no longer recognized, it has to always be an outside influence. It does not matter what the outside forces are, the final decision to do these things is made by 1 adult. There might be a long tragic history behind their life, but they still decided to do the horrible act. Shifting the blame keeps us from accepting maybe the failure was everyones.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Watch out for me!!!!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
You can tell he spent a whole year playing WOW.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Yep, I could see it happening. Headlines would read, "Man murdered by LARP'er with Nerf Broadsword, said that LARP'ing trained him for combat."
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Victim's Families should sue MPAA and others
They would be suing for contributory murder. Nevermind that it isn't quite directly in the law. We can have the courts make it up as we go. I am sure that Breivik watched movies and listened to music at some point.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Murders a subset of ...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
the headline ran something to the effect of 'Norwegian mass murder played World of Warcraft'... it then went into some detail about the guy and what he did, mentioned something about playing CoD or whatever as 'training'... and happens to mention somewhere in the article, a single sentence 'he also played World of Warcraft' or something like that.
there's NO link between him playing WoW and any of the other things, even in the article, it appears in ONE sentence, and somehow it's the headline?
(this'd be more accurate if i was looking at the article as i type it, but the issue was there.... i even went on a big rant in their comments section about it... not sure if that made it past moderation or not though, their site makes it Really hard to get back and see an article again later and reloading reloads the page in the same state (all comments until yours was posted plus 'thank you for your comment, come back later to see it.)
anyway, yeah, bad reporting.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Gender
http://edugamesresearch.com/blog/2008/07/23/esa-survey-malefemale-gamer-ratio-is-6040-ave rage-age-is-35/
So... If a violent criminal is much more likely to be male, then he's also more likely to be a gamer than the average person picked off the street, simply because male are more likely to be gamers. This doesn't mean gaming causes violent crime. But... it reflects the statistically significant fact that males are more likely to commit violent crime than females.
I note in passing that Anders Breivik is male, it's odd that nobody picked up on that before...? *doe eyes*
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Remember this?
At any rate, I was waiting for one of these articles debunking the connection between violent games and violence to refer back to this. Seems like it is using the same logic in both cases. If you are going to finger point in one, you should be prepared for finger pointing in the other.
Men At Work Musician Found Dead; Ridiculous Copyright Ruling Against Band Blamed | Techdirt
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
"Gamer" implies someone who does it all the time, or primarily for fun.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Alternaties
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
myth uncovered
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
RE:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]