Even though no such analogy was made

Jul 28, 2009 20:41 GMT  ·  By

Video games are getting more and more mainstream, but with such a thing comes a huge pressure from various media outlets and from their representatives, which are very biased in the whole matter of video games that are inducing violent behavior in teens.

One of the most recent and discriminative acts against video games, specifically Grand Theft Auto, was that of an 18-year-old delinquent named Nathan Harley, who slammed two Maryland kids with the door of his car. Although he has already been prosecuted and sentenced to jail for 7 years, a Washington DC radio station called WTOP-FM has revealed that his behavior was influenced by the Grand Theft Auto IV game.

“In the popular game "Grand Theft Auto," players drive virtual cars and intentionally hit pedestrians by smacking them with open car doors. It's called "door checking," and prosecutors say 18-year-old Nathan Hartley decided to try it with a real car last summer,” the station revealed.

But such a thing isn't true, at least according to the prosecutor of the case, John Mark McDonald, who was asked by PS3Attitude just what had happened during the trial of the young man. He said that the strategy was brought up by the defendant, who tried to lower the jail sentence to a juvenile detention one, but wasn't even mentioned during the whole lawsuit.

“The suggestion came through the Defendant. I have never seen Grand Theft Auto, and had never heard of ‘door-checking' until this case. It was a defense he set forth in attempting to waive his case back to the juvenile court. The State did not introduce the game into the prosecution of this case. It added nothing. My comments on the game were to rebut his reasoning for doing what he did. I did not suggest that the game was to blame for his conduct, and would not. The blame lies entirely with Nathan Hartley.”

While the Washington DC radio station should really do more research before putting out false information, it's nice to see lawyers like McDonald who aren't accusing video games without concrete proof, unlike other individuals, and aren't happily jumping on the violent video game bandwagon.