In a Jan. 12 ruling, Judge James Burge of Lorain County, Ohio found 17-year-old Daniel Petric guilty of murdering his mother and wounding his father with a family pistol. No, not over money or a girlfriend – he turned on his parents because they took away his copy of Halo 3 for the Xbox 360.
People familiar with Halo’s Master Chief, or video games in general, may shrug Petric off as a psychopath; opponents of violent games may see the games’ corrupting power at work on the fragile mind of a teenage boy. Both sides continue to debate the value and price of video games on the growing psyche, but what do we really know, empirically, that could explain Petric’s gruesome act?
Burge, in a personally charged postmortem, offered one possibility: that the “same physiological responses occur that occur in the ingestion of some drugs” and that because of the “delusional” nature of the game environment, “Daniel Petric had no idea, at the time he hatched this plot, that if he killed his parents, they would be dead forever.”
Before validating or rejecting this idea, let’s look at a bit of Petric’s history. A year prior to the shooting, he acquired a severe Staph infection following a snowboarding accident. Because the slightest injury could leave him paralyzed, according to his lawyer, Petric remained at home to watch television and play video games, at which time he took fondly to the Halo series, playing them for hours at a time.
How often Petric snowboarded is unknown, but one can safely suggest that a person who enjoys that all-body rush desires high amounts of stimulation – the kind perhaps provided by violent video games like Halo, which also offer a constant stream of action. With Master Chief replacing the mountain slopes in Petric’s identity, his natural outlet for release may have transformed into a virtual battlefield – and if Peng et al. (2008) speaks true that “in the long term, repeated playing of violent games reinforces aggression-related schemata, and aggressive behavioral scripts,” it is possible that removing the outlet – as Petric’s parents did – could result in murderous intent.
It’s worth noting, however, that a meta-analysis of recent literature on violent video games by Ferguson (2007) affirms that the “current body of evidence fails to support the video game violence-aggression causal link, but suggests that the catharsis hypothesis (that video games may reduce aggression) should be better examined in future studies.” Even more, research indicates that violent video games can increase visuospatial cognition. Such a finding seems sensible: imagine a hunter who must develop that cognition in order to conquer his prey and the parallel with most violent software (or at least shooting games) should become clear.
So let’s explore a different angle: serious Staph infections, involving the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus, can cause a range of health issues. Petric’s spinal damage could have resulted in Meningitis, a cause of cognitive deficit, Sepsis, which can create agitation and confusion in the brain, among other defects. Petric may never have believed his parents would ‘respawn’ as they do in Halo, but health impairments could certainly damage his ability to inhibit aggression, which may have been further facilitated by playing the game.
Obviously, cases like Petric’s require an idiosyncratic consideration, but still they open potent questions: How does the brain successfully suspend a person’s disbelief in the presence of a fictional environment, and what can impair that function? Does the immersion of gaming in any way match the influence of narcotics, as Burge suggests? Can children benefit from violent games with proper family restrictions in place?
Maybe Burge made his comments about games in error. Maybe Petric was simply disturbed and affected in a way millions of other gamers will never experience. Maybe the parents in this case are merely at fault for hiding the game next to a handgun and failing to intervene on their son’s obsession earlier. But whatever fog surrounds this case, one point is clear: people can no longer take video games for granted; so long as they exist, their real power must be understood.
