French police avert school shooting, 13-year-old boy apprehended

He's gonna blame it on Modern Warfare 2

No, worse. They're blaming it on WOW.

I mean, World of Warcraft? Really?

Next story will be a kid involved in a deadly gang shootout... and police found a copy of LUMINES LIVE on his cellphone!

Oh yeah, the WoW shotgun levels. Heard of those...

Well, if they blame it on WoW, it is partially correct. He received poor marks in school and if he was staying up until 1:00am-2:00am playing World of Warcraft, its not THAT surprising why he got poor marks.

I'm not sure about you but if I spend my entire evening playing video games, doing no studying and no homework and then go to school with little to no sleep, I'm not exactly planning for success in school. When your dead tired, you won't retain as much knowledge from any activity. When you dont study, you won't learn as much. When you don't do homework, you won't learn as much. All three added up to bad marks? You don't say? perhaps if the kid stopped playing World of Warcraft and did those, he'd do better in school?

But wait, don't articles even articles listed on Joystiq show studies that Wow is as addictive as Heroine? Young kids are known for their self control, restrait and good judgement so surely this kid could stop if he tried? /sarcasim.

This time, video games are somewhat very slightly related. The real cause of the school shooting attempt was poor marks. The poor marks were made by all night gaming sessions/addiction to wow distrubting this kids ability/chance/opportunities to study. So its a chicken before the egg scenario. Did wow create the bad marks or would the kid have gotten bad marks even if Wow didn't exist? IE from watching tv too much, dirt-biking too much, reading books too much or playing tag with neighbourhood kids too much and was already prone to commiting acts of violence.

I'd also ponder did the child get the idea from watching media coverage of previous school shootings so did the Media themselves help encourage this kid to commit a school shooting rampage?

Exactly. I would say there's a stronger connection between media coverage and school shootings than there is between them and video games.

What strikes me as odd is how happy society is to accept some stereotypes, but if you replace them with a similar thing, they'd go crazy. If you could draw a (tenuous, about as strong as the video game one, and based on as much evidence) connection between hanging out with black people and school shootings, people would absolutely lose their minds.

In reality, the roots of these problems are much more realistic (doesn't get along well with others, poor parental involvement, depression) but much less sexy or blame-game-of-the-minute. Unfortunately, a lot of people seem to be too stupid to be able to comprehend that terrible things can happen for little to no reason and they need something to blame for these misguided children.

I blame his damn parents. Why did they let him play games that he was too stupid to understand. It's not the game it's the fuckhead playing the game!

This just in: kid who playes piano attempts to kill teacher!

Oh I guess none of us should play a musical instrument then.

@Wes

there was no cause for this shooting other than the kids kookoo hes 13 im 90% sure a bad mark in anything wont effect the rest of his life asfor the fact that he stayed up till one in the morning playing video games the point is moot do you know what he did from 4pm - 9pm

i go to uni 5 days aweek for 5hours of class a day and work to 12 hour shifts on weekends im lucky if i got to bed before 3AM and i spend most of the time from midnight to 3 sometimes earlier playing a video game of some sort

and still get good marks

sure like you said could be different for him but the blame still rests on his shoulders and anyone who thinks they need to kill someone because of there bad marks(which by any motivation must mean he thinks will ruin his life) and take the initiative to go any murder someone(which actually will ruin his life) Deserves the kick in the arse hes no doubtedly gonna get

VIDEO GAMES DO NOT CAUSE KIDS TO KILL PEOPLE! this is the same 80's/90's bullshit about arcade shooters. this kid obviously had shitty parents, nothing to do with video games except the fact he played excessive amounts of WOW. if video games made kids want to kill people, then every airport in the country would have been shot up by now from kids playing modern warfare 2

Very well thought out comment there, Wes. Thank you for sharing your point of view! And I'll have to agree with you too, Daytripper; what was the story with the parents here? All in all, it is a tragic story, but very great to hear the greater problem was averted!

The correlation between excessive playing and poor grades is a fair one. But the attempt to connect video games with violence is also obvious. I know people whose parents didnt discipline them enough, or tell them NO enough, and that is the problem here. I cannot blame the game because the parents could simply quit paying the subscription fee, now if he was doing something else like playing chess nobody whould have said anything. Don't blame the games, this kid was unbalanced.

@tyler
The article didn't have to mention parents, if you connect the dots the lead back to the parents. If his parents had been hardasses when he was growing up things would have been different. More than likely they were huge pussies and let their son boss them around instead if vice versa.

That is the problem with parents today, they are too busy trying to be their kids BFF instead of a parent. I'm not advocating a beat the shit out of them attitude, however a kid has to be punished in a way that they understand not to fuck up. A stern talking to Piper won't set him strait.

Here's how it works. Killing people in Video Games makes kids violent. Also, video game killing is akin to killing in real life. Because killing in video games is the same as killing in real life, having a shotgun in a video game is the same as having a shotgun in real life. This kid played a game with a shotgun in it, and because video games are of the devil, the gun manifested itself in the real world. The game gave the kid the will and means to kill his teachers.

That's the way it works, right? 'Cus as we all know, video games are to blame. Not parents, not psychological problems, video games.

woah Drew calm down, you sound like a overly sarcastic douche bag.

Video games prob did help "feed" his problem, but this should have been diagnosed by the parents, you just don't go crazy over a WoW session. Second, his parents gave him access to a loaded shotgun, that itself puts them at blame. How irresponsible

Yep, of the 30 million WoW subscribers, 1 in 10 go on a killing spree.

That's right. 3 MILLION people are loading their rifles as we speak.

Sorry if my sarcasm was over the top. I was just trying to show the same sort of convoluted, retarded logic that I often see on biased media shows.

But, ummm, it seems we do agree on a conclusion at least, regardless of our arguments to get there.

Have a nice day, Prof3ta.

Oh, nvm.

I got upvoted, so HA!

Niener niener niener!
:-P

@PR0F3TA
How in the fuck does WoW 'feed' a viscous desire to kill all teachers that gave you bad grades? You just sound like a douche bag.

http://www.dedroidify.com/blogimages/No-Darth_Vader.jpg

Le francaisbsobt craaaaazeey

So am i, evidently.

Bah ipod typing fail

Le francais sont craaaaazeey*

@Drew:
He thought school was an epic instance and he was beefed up for the loot run. I bet he was planning to yell "LEEERROOOY JEEEENNNNKKKIIINNNSSS" as he ran into the school.

Let's hope he gets the pshycological help he needs, the kid is the victim here.

This may sound spiteful, but that kid should be rehomed, his parents obviously aren't up to scratch.

Also, why the predijuced headline from the times? It's like saying
"football fan responsible for murder" 2 completely unrelated things linked together = shoddy journalism.eg the Jan Moir articke about Steven gately's death

The Times is a British newspaper, although it is owned by Murdoch however it is a pretty neutral paper compared to some of his others.

Boy I knew that was coming. The mainstream media is liberal, especially in France. Where have you been?

I trust the Times for everything political, but whenever a game-related story comes up it's like i'm hearing the words directly out of a neocon's ass.

Breakfast strikes again! DAMN YOU BREAKFAST! *Shoots gun into air screaming*

He also eats apples... Apple Eater 'planned school massacre'.

PANCAKE ENTHUSIAST DROWNS BABIES.

Stick guns and stones...

His parents are probably wondering how their beloved, wonderful, completely innocent child could do such a thing, considering he looked absolutely harmless and was the nicest guy on the block that all the kids wanted to play with.

You know, if someone went on a killing spree at school with a broadsword, I'd probably just be impressed.

I'm a terrible person.

i'd actually be impressed too, at least at first. it takes balls to use a melee weapon in a sitch like that.

of course, after that initial thought, my next thought would be "run like freakin hell and call 911".

Don't forget the bit when thrall kills everyome on his list of people who bullied him in high school.

Also, republic of ireland were robbed last night :(

I hope you learn from this kid's mistake and do some serious levelling beforehand.