Gamertell

Not much can make the heart race like doing something you know you’re not supposed to be doing. Perhaps that is why so many games rely on big-time crimes to provide adrenalin-boosting activities - stealing cars, massive property damage and murder.

Although videogames do allow people to partake in ethically questionable activities without actually hurting anyone or anything, not all illegal activities would make good games.

In the spirit of Grand Theft Auto, here are a few theoretical games with illegal activities for names that would simply never sell (which should make at least a few parents happy)…

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The headline may be straight out of 1993, but this story is anything but funny. According to the Denver Post, 16 year old Heather Trujillo and her boyfriend Lamar Roberts were babysitting Heather’s 7 year old sister Zoe when they became drunk and decided to perform Mortal Kombat moves on the young girl. Zoe died of “blunt force trauma” to the central nervous system after repeated punches and kicks. According to arrest affidavits, the killing blow was apparently a back kick that Zoe didn’t get up from, so the teens tried to revive her, to no avail.

Trujillo and Roberts were charged with child abuse resulting in death (a class II felony) and are being held on $100, 000 bond.

There are more sordid details in the news post, including the fact that Zoe had begged the teens to stop, but that Roberts was “too drunk” to listen, and that they cracked an egg in her mouth to see if she was “messing around with them”. All in all, this is one of the saddest (and most disgusting) news stories to come out this year. The story hints at a long history of abuse and neglect among the family, which will surely be overlooked by anti-game politicians eager to benefit from the tragedy.

Read [Denver Post] Via [Kotaku]

In the old days a pirate was a seafaring thief who committed his crime at sea and at times on the shore, the first known acts of piracy took place in the 13th century B.C., but today modern day pirates sail the digital seas on the internet and siphoning the revenues of hardworking corporations through counterfeit products.

The hunt for modern day pirates live on and with the rise in demand for certain videogames and gaming consoles, these pirates ready their vessels for the opportunity to offer their counterfeit consoles and games to those consumers desperate enough to purchase the product as a substitute for the real deal.

More recently, a modern day pirate was caught in Canada selling counterfeit Xbox 360 and modified PlayStation 2 consoles as well as the games for the systems, according to a City of Richmond, BC news release.

According to the release, store owner and operator Chi Hong “Terry” Wong appeared in court on November 5, 2007 to answer the charges made against him on December 14, 2006 when the RCMP Economic and Computer Crime Unit received a search warrant to investigate Wong’s store Toy Revenge Hobbies and Entertainment Ltd., where the unit seized numerous modified gaming consoles, the equipment used for modifying the consoles and numerous counterfeit games.

The crack down on video game piracy in Canada actually started two years ago by the Entertainment Software Association of Canada who hired private investigators to search for businesses engaging in piracy and according to Danielle Parr, executive director of the Entertainment Software Association of Canada, in an interview with the local Canadian news source The Province, video-game counterfeiting is growing despite DVD and CD piracy being the more popular form of piracy.

“There has to be sufficient deterrent, as opposed to just the cost of doing business,” Parr told The Province. “There really is an impact locally in our ability to invest in the industry.”

Wong pleaded guilty to the 26 counts of fraud. According to the Richmond BC release the charges against Wong’s company were stayed but sentenced WOng to pay a $25,000 fine with forfeiture of all counterfeiting related items sized by the police during their search.

Read [The Province] News Release [Richmond, British Columbia, Canada] Site [ESA Canada]

Five teens arrested and charged for the virtual theft of furniture from various residence in Habbo Hotel, a popular virtual networking hang out website for youngsters.

Many people reading this article may not see why Amsterdam police officers and creators of Habbo Hotel are taking this problem way too seriously. The crime committed is that the teen and the virtual furniture and items are paid for with real world money. The arrest of one of the online thief makes this the first ever online law enforcement action.

The thief, a Dutch 17-year-old who has yet to be named, is accused of computer fraud and stealing more than £2,800 (approximately $1,400 in US dollars) of furniture and other from the virtual homes of other members on Habbo Hotel and moving them into their own virtual rooms. The 17-year-old is not alone in this virtual criminal activity, having received help from four 15-year-olds who were traced and called by the Web site’s owners and taken for questioning by the Dutch police.

“We are trying to bring charges of theft. It is a little difficult and new. There has not yet been a judgment in a case like this,” said a spokesman. “The furniture may not be physical objects but because it represents a certain value we think theft is involved.”

Habbo Hotel, which was launched seven years ago by Finnish Internet company Sulake, claims the website has 80 million registered users in 31 countries. The site allows users to create their own characters and decorate their personal hotel rooms using credits which they pay for with real money.

Officials from Sulake believe that the six teens have gained access to other members rooms by tricking the members into giving up their personal login and password information.

“The accused lured victims into handing over their Habbo passwords by creating fake Habbo websites,” explained a Sulake representative. “In Habbo, as in many other virtual worlds, scamming for other people’s personal information such as user names has been problematic for quite a while. We have had much of this scamming going on in many countries but this is the first case where the police have taken legal action.”

This case has already raised concerns over internet security and teenagers having the ability to spend money online.

“We got involved because of an increasing number of sites which are pretending to be Habbo,” the Sulake representative added. “People might then try and log in and get their details stolen.”

Because the trickery wasn’t big enough to warrant full attention by Sulake, users are asked by Sulake to protect themselves by never giving out their passwords, beware of phishing scams and for added security type in the URL by hand to access their accounts instead of using the auto-login function on their PC.

Read [Reuters] Also Read [The Telegraph] Site [Habbo Hotel]

Tuusula, Finland was in shock following a fatal school shooting that killed six students and two faculty personnel, and wounded 10 others at Jokela High School in a small Finland town. Flags in Finland were flying at half-staff Thursday, November 8, 2007, and a moment of silence was observed for the eight people killed during a student’s rampage before the shooter, Pekka-Eric Auvinen, turned the gun on himself. Auvinen didn’t die on the scene, he actually died at a local hospital in the town from his self-inflicted wounds.

Auvinen, an 18-year-old student at the school, was the small town’s first known school shooting. During the probe police had found a suicide note bidding his family good bye. The motive was unclear and officials believed he picked his victims at random.

During the investigation, police reported that they found 69 shells and more than 320 unused bullets at the scene. All of the victims had multiple gunshot wounds to the upper body and head.

Because Auvinen happens to be a big fan of first-person shooters including Battlefield 2 which he played a few minutes before his rampage. I’m pretty sure gamers can expect to hear about this fact and the incident added to the arguments of anti-videogame propaganda and blame game circulating through the media in the upcoming days.

Auvinen was not shy about his intentions, in fact he posted tons of videos on YouTube about his hatred towards the bureaucracy of religion and anything else he found wrong with society, but most of his videos as well as his account on YouTube have been deleted since the shooting. His latest videos Most of his videos chronicled his angst against everything that is wrong in the world and his days leading up to the shooting.

Wearing a black t-shirt that read: Humanity is Over-rated, the student who calls himself Sturmgeist89 on YouTube and NaturalSelector89 on the Battlefield 2 stat boards, had been plotting this event since he turned 18 and was legally allowed to purchase a gun. He wanted media attention but he wanted the public to be clear that his movies and games had nothing to do with his decision.

“…Don’t blame the movies I see, the music I hear, the games I play or the books I read. No, they had nothing to do with this. This is my war: one man war against humanity, governments and weak-minded masses of the world! No mercy for the scum of the earth!”

Of course his list of games, movies and music will be blamed anyways. Auvinen’s online profile alone is enough for anti-gaming activitsts to use as fault to the violence situation of course so it wouldn’t matter if I listed what the teen’s profile reads or not. So, here it is. Note the profile says “computer games” with no specific game listed.

• Existentialism, Freedom, Truth, Misantrophy, Social / Personality Psychology, Evolution Science, Political Incorrectness, Women, BDSM, Guns (I love you Catherine), Shooting, Computer Games, Sarcasm, Irony, Mass / Serial Killers, Macabre Art, Black Comedy, Absurdism;
• Movies and Shows: The Matrix, A View To A Kill, Falling Down, Natural Born Killers, Reservoir Dogs, Last Man Standing, Full Metal Jacket, Dr. Butcher MD (aka Zombie Holocaust), Saw 1-3, Lord Of War, The Deer Hunter, True Romance, The Untouchables, 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later, Idiocracy, They Live, Apocalypse Now, End Of Days, The Shining, The Dead Zone, Dr. Strangelove, House MD (TV), Monty Python, TV Documentaries Relating To History
• Music: KMFDM, Rammstein, Eisbrecher, Nine Inch Nails, Grendel, Impaled Nazarene, Macabre, Deathstars, The Prodigy, Combichrist, Godsmack, Slayer, Children Of Bodom, Alice Cooper, Sturmgeist, Suicide Commando, Hatebreed, Suffocation, Terrorizer
• Books: Fahrenheit 451 (Bradbury), 1984 (Orwell), Brave New World (Huxley), The Republic (Plato), all works of Nietzsche

This incident sounds very much like that of Virginia Tech, except VA Tech shooter Sueng-Hui Cho never played games except Sonic as a child. Looking through Auvinen’s list of videos, he has a tribute to CodeName 47, the name of the character in Hitman which I’m sure will be looked over with a fine tooth comb in the fight against violent games as well.

Read [CNN News] Watch [CNN Video]