Virginia tech massacre game

Storm Murphy started the run with two buckets and later added a 3-pointer. The lead expanded to 23 over the first five minutes of the second half and the Hokies cruised, going up by as many as Cornell came in averaging Cornell freshman Guy Ragland Jr.

He finished with 11 points as did Kobe Dickson. Virginia Tech shuts down Cornell in win. December 9, GMT. Related coverage. But whether Seung-Hui Cho, the student who opened fire Monday, was an avid player of video games and whether he was a fan of "Counter-Strike" in particular remains, even now, uncertain at best.

Meanwhile, in the aftermath of the school shootings and the finger-pointing that followed, game players and industry advocates say they're outraged that the brutal acts of a deeply disturbed and depressed loner with a history of mental illness would be blamed so quickly on video and computer games. They say this is perhaps the most flagrant case of anti-game crusaders using a tragedy to promote their own personal causes.

These massacre chasers — they're worse than ambulance chasers — they're waiting for these things to happen so they can jump on their soapbox," said Jason Della Rocca, executive director of the International Game Developers Association.

When he's talking about himself and his crusade against violent games, he calls himself an "educator. Certainly Thompson has made a name for himself. After all, he knows a thing or two about publicity. He's spent no small bit of time in front of a camera. On those rare occasions when a student opens fire on a school campus, Thompson is frequently the first and the loudest to declare games responsible.

He's blamed them for shootings beyond school grounds as well. In an attempt to hold game developers and publishers responsible for these spasms of violence, Thompson has launched several unsuccessful lawsuits. But in the hours after the Virginia Tech massacre, Thompson wasn't the only one rushing to make a connection between the shootings and video games.

Police were still struggling to piece together the nightmare that had unfolded on campus that morning when Dr. You take that and mix it with a psychopath, a sociopath or someone suffering from mental illness and add in a dose of rage, the suggestibility is too high. And we're going to have to start dealing with that.

Meanwhile, by Tuesday, The Washington Post had posted a story on its Web site stating that several youths who knew Cho said that in high school he'd been a fan of violent video games, especially "Counter-Strike.

But a short time later, the newspaper removed that paragraph from the story without explanation. Meanwhile, authorities released a search warrant listing the items found in Cho's dorm room.

Not a single video game, console or gaming gadget was on the list, though a computer was confiscated. And in an interview with Chris Matthews of "Hardball," Cho's university suite-mate said he had never seen Cho play video games.

When a kid who has never killed anyone in his life goes on a rampage and looks like the Terminator, he's a video gamer," he told MSNBC. And in a letter sent to Bill Gates Wednesday, he wrote: "Mr. Gates, your company is potentially legally liable for the harm done at Virginia Tech.

Your game, a killing simulator, according to the news that used to be in the Post, trained him to enjoy killing and how to kill. Microsoft did not create "Counter Strike" but did publish a version of it for the Xbox. The company's representatives declined to comment on Thompson's letter. While Thompson concedes that there are many elements that must have driven Cho to commit such a brutal act, he insists that without video games Cho wouldn't have had the skills to do what he did.

It can't be done. It just doesn't happen. Kids these days Dr. She believes that it didn't require much skill for Cho to shoot as many people as he did. After all, eye witness accounts indicate many of the victims were shot at point-blank range.

And for all of Thompson's claims that violent video games are the cause of school shootings, Sternheimer points out that before this week's Virginia Tech massacre, the most deadly school shooting in history took place at the University of Texas in Austin… in Not even "Pong" had been invented at that time.

Meanwhile, Sternheimer says the rush to blame video games in these situations is disingenuous for yet another reason.

Although it remains unclear whether Cho played games, it seems nobody will be surprised if it turns out he did. After all, what year-old man living in America hasn't played video games?