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A 13 year old has slashed a friend’s throat after a falling out after playing Gears of War 3, the Daily Mail reports….

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A 13 year old has slashed a friend’s throat after a falling out after playing Gears of War 3, the Daily Mail reports.

You only need to read the subtext under some of the pictures to understand the kind of person that originally wrote this article

“The game, which is popular with children, rewards players for slaying their opponents”

Now, I’ll be fair here the policeman that gave a statement doesn’t really blame the game. He points out that the game has a big “18″ slapped across it

“These games are rated 18 and shouldn’t be played by children of this young age – but online gaming may be outside their parents’ knowledge. We need to look again at what we can do to stop this.”

I don’t think he realises that you have to buy the game to play it online…But what’s to blame? Probably how insane the guy was, he apparently thought his victim was the Locust queen:

“Then, in a scene reminiscent of violent video games – the accused sneered at his victim: ‘Don’t die,’ before calmly walking off. The accused, who cannot be named for legal reasons, admitted assault.”

A Microsoft spokesperson said

“We have some of the most robust parental control systems to empower parents to decide how their children play and communicate. We have the greatest sympathy for the victim and his family.”

What do you make out of this? It’s certainly unpleasant  but are games to blame? Recently I’ve been reading a lot of academic studies on the subject; hopefully we can run a big editorial about it in the near future. We recently ran an article about a game that aims to educate people about video game violence.

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