Anders Behring Breivik told a Norwegian court Thursday
that he used Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 to train for his attack on Oslo
last July that resulted in 77 people dead. That announcement prompted Norwegian
retailers Coop Norway and Platekompaniet to quit selling 51 video game titles
in their stores. The titles dropped included Call of Duty and World of
Warcraft.
Breivik played World of Warcraft
for 16 hours per day during a year-long sabbatical in 2006 because he “felt he
had sacrificed a lot.”
“Because of that, I felt I deserved
to take one year off to do what I wanted,” Breivik said. “Some people like to
play golf, some like to sail, I played WoW. It has nothing to do with 22 July.
It’s not a world you are engulfed by. It’s simply a hobby.”
However, Breivik said he used Call
of Duty as a “military simulator” to familiarize himself with the use of a
holographic sight which is “built up in such a way that you could have given it
to your grandmother and she would have been a super marksman.”
“It’s designed to be used by anyone.
In reality, it requires very little training to use it in an optimal way,”
Breivik said. “But of course it does help if you’ve practiced using a simulator.”
While Breivik did admit to using Call
of Duty to train for combat situations, Megan Roach, a graphic design major at
Utah State University, said it was “ridiculous” that Norwegian retailers would
stop selling the game.
“It’s not the responsibility of the
corporation to regulate these games,” Roach said. “It’s the responsibility of
the individual, or the parents. Video games don’t cause violence, and without
access to video games people with violent tendencies would just read violent
books, or watch violent movies.”
Kerry Jordan, a psychology professor
at USU, said there is clear data that watching violence can lead to an increase
in aggression, regardless of whether the violence is a video game, TV or a
movie. Researchers have been unable to prove that video games cause violence
due to an inability to do research in a real world environment.
“We can’t expose a group of kids to
violent media,” Jordan said. “That would be unethical.”
This inability to test causes “third
variable” or “directional” problems when trying to prove that video games cause
violence.
“It’s a case of causation versus
correlation,” said Jordan. “In [Breivik’s] case, it could be his violent temperament
that led to playing violent games, not necessarily that violent video games
caused his violent temperament.”
However, Jordan said that video
games could be used to learn practical lessons about warfare.
“We know that video games improve
visual perception,” Jordan said, “and could potentially be used to learn the
logistics of war.”
Coop Norway and Platekompaniet have
not announced when or if they will sell Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, or the
rest of the games in the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment