Norway Terrorist ‘Trained’ with Modern Warfare 2

It almost seems inevitable that with a tragedy caused by a lone individual, video games become one of the first things sought out for blaming. In the case of Anders Behring Breivik, the man responsible for killing more than 70 people in an act of terrorism, it was he himself who gave the media something to work with. With his extreme narcissism, Breivik published a 1,500 page manifesto that goes into great detail about his beliefs and methods of planning his plot.

In it, he mentions using Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 as a combat simulator, and went on to explain that it’s a good alternative to actual training with real weapons. But for those who have trained with real guns, the claim that a game could act as a good simulator for what Breivik sought out to do is total nonsense. No matter how realistic a first-person shooter is, there’s absolutely no substitute to using a real gun and understanding the actual mechanics of it all. Further, of all the military first-person titles out there, Modern Warfare doesn’t even come close to being one of the most realistic (that title would quicker belong to ARMA or Operation Flashpoint).

In the grand scheme of this 1,500 manifesto, Modern Warfare 2 as a game isn’t mentioned too often at all, though Breivik does refer to ‘modern warfare’ in general throughout. It’s clear that Breivik lives in his own world and is inherently manipulative, and another game, World of Warcraft, does well to explain the why and how.

Few people would consider World of Warcraft to be a truly violent game, and not surprisingly, that’s not Brievik’s claim. Instead, he considers the game to be perfect for opening up free time to plot your twisted plans. There could not be a better quote to explain this than this one, from the aforementioned manifesto:

“Say you play WoW (World of Warcraft) or another MMO and have developed an addiction for it. Say that are going to play hardcore for the rest of the year and it is no point trying to convince you otherwise. Inform them that you will be busy doing that in the future etc. Tell them that you are ashamed of it and you don’t want to talk any more about it. Make them swear to not tell anyone! (you just effectively prevented any more questions from that person AND made the individual assist you in protecting your cover from everyone else)“

For what it’s worth, it doesn’t seem that the mass media is outright blaming gaming for the cause of this tragedy, but there are many who have reinvigorated their efforts to either ban violent games, or have them edited to be less violent. Australia’s Minister of Home Affairs, Brendan O’Connor, had this to say:

“I think it really points to, of course, a person who – clearly there is something wrong with this person to sort of cause such devastation in Norway. But I’m not sure that the argument goes that as a result of watching a game you turn into that type of person. I think there is something clearly intrinsically wrong with him.“

Up to this point, there has never been a research report published that states that video games can lead people to cause such violence, and in a recent review headed by Mr. O’Connor, the matter was deemed inconclusive. It was mentioned that with the research done so far, video games are said to influence people in the same way that movies and music can. There is however a stronger short-term effect with gaming, but that of course doesn’t relate itself to a madman who has been planning a terrorist attack for many years.

For those interested in reading through a large debunking article on this matter, a great one has been published at ABC.au.