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Beyond
Manhunt
(featured in MCV
Magazine)
By Brian Miller
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‘And shall we just carelessly allow children to hear .. tales which may be devised by casual persons, and to receive into their minds ideas for the most part the very opposite of those which we should wish them to have when they are grown up?' Plato, 374 BC.
The parents of the recently murdered schoolboy, Stefan Pakeerah, are claiming that the makers of violent 18-rated game Manhunt are responsible for the death of their son. The boy was murdered by his 17-year old killer and friend, Warren Leblanc, using methods similar to those featuring in the computer game Manhunt, which involves the player taking on a role of convicted murderer who is then forced to kill others in order to survive. Weapons used in the game include claw hammers, guns, baseball bats and knives.
Stefan Pakeerah died from horrific and fatal injuries sustained from a claw hammer. The boy had been hit so hard that his head had been fractured in several places with deep cuts to his head and neck, he had multiple stab wounds from knife plunges so deep they had caused serious injuries to his kidney and liver. Evidence has shown that his killer was obsessed with playing Manhunt, being a reclusive child left to his own devices since an early age after his mother was killed.
Dixons, Woolworths and Game took the unusual step earlier this week of removing the product from its shelves. For those stores still selling the game, like HMV, the game has apparently sold out and re-entered the Top Twenty Charts. Calls have again been made to ban this game as being the root of the death. It was already banned six months ago in New Zealand by censorship officials. ELSPA, one the key industry bodies representing the games industry, firmly rejects any links between Manhunt and the tragic events. As it said in an official statement, "the game in question is classified by the British Board of Film Classification and therefore should not be in the possession of a juvenile…We would add that simply being in someone's possession does not and should not lead to the conclusion that a game is responsible for these tragic events." The police have also currently said they have not connected the game with the murder, the motive being robbery.
With an ever-increasing number of games featuring violence as the major theme, fears have often been expressed that this may result in the player becoming more aggressive and potentially being incited to commit acts of violence or even murder. There are many examples of such games, for which a cry has oft gone out for their ban. Hooligans - Storm over Europe (rated 18), is a game that was released in 2003 and gives players the chance to be a football hooligan in Europe. The game depicts gruesome scenes of soccer thugs fighting one another in pubs and terraces armed with broken bottles, knives and other weapons. Grand Theft Auto, set in Miami, has a main character who roams the streets killing for pleasure. The more people killed, the greater the points. They are many other examples, too long to list here.
Can any of this lead to the user replicating the acts of violence depicted in these games? Research is beginning to give us a picture of what these effects might be. Middlesex University has carried out research and concluded that violent computer games may be directly responsible for aggressive behaviour. The University carried out its research on the behavior of 204 pupils aged between 12 and 14 at a London school. They discovered that the longer children played violent computer games, the more aggressive their behaviour became. They concluded that ‘there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that there is a link between playing games and aggression.'
But surely the same can be said about film, books, or boxing on telly, or as one individual remarked, following the fifteen deaths caused by Robert Steinhäuser when he stormed his former school in Erfurt in Germany armed with guns after becoming obsessed with the game Counterstrike, should we ban bread because 90% of killers have eaten bread before their crime? As we all know, most juveniles who commit crimes of this nature will have suffered a difficult childhood, possibly having been abused themselves, losing one or both parents through death or divorce, or having mental illness of some sort. The matter must surely be more complicated than just focusing on what the child had been playing on his games console 48 hours before his victim's death.
So could the makers of computer games be held legally liable for acts such as that committed by Pakeerah's juvenile killer? It could be argued that both the developer, when creating the game, and the publisher when publishing and distributing the game, have a legal duty of care under the law of tort and doctrine of negligence. It is arguable that those parties should have foreseen that playing a violent game repeatedly might cause a player to go and carry out in real life what had been experienced on the screen. But a victim harmed would have to prove that the developers and/or publishers' negligence was the cause of the injury, although it is not necessary for it to be the sole or dominant cause. This may be hard to prove, but in light of an increasing body of evidence to suggest that there is a causal link between use of a computer game and increased levels of aggression, this is a potential risk that should not be totally ignored. One might also argue that there is a distinction between books/films and games: in the former, the reader/viewer is generally passive, but in a game, there is a truly interactive experience.
Although no one has yet succeeded in a court of law in establishing a link between aggression and playing violent computer games in real life, there have been a number of dramatic events in recent years resulting in legal proceedings being issued against publishers and developers of computer games. In 1997 in West Paducah, Kentucky, the parents of three girls shot at Heath High School filed a $130m lawsuit against 25 media companies including Time Warner, Nintendo, Sega of America Inc., Atari Corporation, Nintendo of America, Sega of America Inc. and Sony Computer Entertainment. The lawsuit was for negligence based on their not warning consumers that content they made available could incite copycat violence. The basis of the claim was that, as the gunman, high school freshman Michael Carneal, played violent computer and video games, visited Internet pornography sites and watched violent movies, he was influenced sufficiently by them to commit murder. In April 2000, a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit based on finding that the video game makers could not have foreseen what Carneal would do, having played their games. The judge's opinion was based heavily on a similar case that arose over a decade ago in which the Sixth US Circuit Court of Appeal held that the makers of the Dungeons and Dragons popular role playing game were not liable for a teenager's suicide. The West Paducah shooting was among the first in a string of school shootings nationwide that also included Jones Burrow, Arkansaw, Stringfield, Oregon and Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.
More recently, earlier this year, US lawyers brought actions against the Edinburgh-based developer Rockstar Games, who produced the game Grand Theft Auto, following claims by teenage boys in Tennessee that they were acting out the game when they shot at vehicles. A man was killed and a woman wounded after being shot in their cars near the Tennessee town of Newport. It is understood that the parents of murdered teenager, Stefan Pakeerah, have also prepared writs against Rockstar in relation to Manhunt. Of further interest, is that a copy of the game was also found in Stefan's games collection.
Case law has been unable so far to establish a link between aggression and computer games and has resulted in a number of US cases being dismissed. Whether things will change in the future will remain to be seen. It is hard to believe they will, for the reasons given above, and no doubt to the relief of the games industry. Whether there should be any change to the content of games is, of course, a different matter. But at the end of the day, games developers and publishers are just responding to market forces. If we, as consumer, didn't have a hunger, either ourselves or through our children, to buy these games, then there would be no market for them. Recent sales of this game, following the "bad" press, indicate otherwise. It could be said that children will always be attracted to such things, not always being in a position to judge right from wrong. Which means we, as parents, need to take more responsibility in controlling what games our children play. It is, of course, very difficult to control this entirely, children always being adept at borrowing from their friends or playing at their friends' houses, hiding away the games and so on.
Most of us know we would never kill or maim, no matter how many games we may play of a violent nature, movies we may watch or circumstances in which we find ourselves in. But there is always that tiny percentage who will. To blame games for that is probably a little short-sighted.
This article does not purport to be comprehensive or give specific legal advice. Before any action is taken on matters covered, you should obtain professional advice. For further information or advice please contact Brian Miller at bmiller@davenportlyons.com.
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