Sniper deaths fuel video-game violence debate
By Marc Saltzman
Gannett News Service
The release of a sharp-shooting video game has again put a spotlight on a billion-dollar industry and it's alleged lax stance on violence and gore.
While officials in the Washington, D.C., area hunt a sniper who is shooting people at random, Internet buzz is drawing parallels to the content of Konami's "Silent Scope 3" for Sony's PlayStation 2. The game puts the player in the shoes of a government-hired sniper who is commissioned to kill.
The mission: Eliminate leaders of a malevolent organization, but be penalized for shooting innocent bystanders.
In Washington, all those killed have been bystanders.
"It doesn't matter if it's shooting bad guys or good guys. These kinds of games are disgusting and shouldn't be available to kids," said Jacqueline Weaver, a New York City mother of two, in a Yahoo! chat room on parenting.
"Silent Scope 3," which is based on a coin-operated arcade game introduced in 1999, is rated "mature" by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (esrb.org), which means that retailers aren't supposed to sell this title to players younger than 17. A less-sophisticated version, "Silent Scope," is available for the portable Game Boy Advance player. It's rated for teens 13 and older.
Ratings and warnings haven't quelled the decade-old debate about whether there is a correlation between playing violent video games and acting out aggressively, though the video-game industry maintains there's no substantive link.
Sniper modes aren't uncommon in game titles. "The Terminator: Dawn of Fate," from Infogrames, "Timesplitter 2" from Eidos, and Sierra's "No One Lives Forever 2" all let players assume the role of a sniper.
"While there may be many self-proclaimed 'experts' on media violence who claim video games cause aggressive behavior, this claim is at odds with the facts," said Douglas Lowenstein, president of the Interactive Digital Software Association. "Reports from the surgeon general of the United States, the Washington state Department of Health, the government of Australia (and) the Children's Software Revue, an independent critic of computer games for children, all repudiate claims that violent media and/or video games do not lead to aggressive behavior."
God-mode confusion
A link between video games and a tarot death card found not far from where the sniper critically wounded a 13-year-old suburban Maryland student has upped the gamer buzz on sites such as GameSpot (gamespot.com).
The words, "Dear Policeman, I am God," were reportedly scrawled on the card. Scrambling to discover their relevance, gamers and their critics suggested on the Internet that the sniper could be a video-game player because phrases referring to "God" can be found in several 3-D shooters.
"First-person action games on the PC often include a hidden feature called 'God Mode,' which makes the player invincible; this mode is toggled by entering a cheat code into the keyboard," said Geoff Keighley, editor-in-chief of GameSlice (gameslice.com), a video-game industry Web site. "In the fantasy action game 'Drakan,' you actually type in the words 'IAMGOD' into your keyboard to become invulnerable."
Konami's North American operations, which confirmed it has received a number of calls about "Silent Scope 3" from reporters, was awaiting comment from its Japanese parent at press time.
