I think peeing on people's faces is wrong. That's why I don't play Postal 2. Have no problem with running people over though.

Nah, seriously now - I think one shouldn't be too insensitive nor overly sensitive. The right approach to black humor is IMHO adding abstraction and I think both Postal 2 and Carmageddon have enough of it. I'd only be really concerned if someone took a recent event and openly made fun of its victims.

Btw, a friend of mine once created a game based on the real story of a German psychopath from the early 20th century. I was okay with that because I don't think anyone identifies himself with the story anymore and additionally he made it highly abstract by adding quite pythonesque humor.

Unless the other person enjoys it of course... and no children are nearby. ^^

That is my stance on gaming. I can play these sorts of games. It's just that in the wrong hands, someone might be inspired by the stuff that goes on in them.

That's why i get worried about these things when it appears to happen in real life.

Thing is, someone who decides, from playing a game, to go on a killing spree is someone who was clearly extremely unstable in the first place. Someone unstable enough to do so probably would've snapped in some other way if they never played games. You can definitely argue about the desensitization of violence from games and movies, but the only people who are really driven crazy and such from games are people who are highly unstable anyway. (And of course there's a certain degree of responsibility involved, too. Don't let your 6-year-old play Manhunt and such).

The problem here isn't with the game, though. It's with that wrong set of hands. If he didn't have the opportunity to be 'inspired' by this game, he'll get some other idea. The existance of the intent to hurt or kill is a very separate issue from how it's done.

Yup! How can this be wrong?

See, this is why we need gaming forums. When marketers won't do their job and tell you the real selling points of a game, we need each other to learn about hidden gems like this.

Now then, let's see how much Postal 2 costs...

Well there is worse. Like the Saw movies. Which i have seen.

It just sickens me that people would actually hurt people like that. Intentionally running over people. I guess i was trying to find some sort of rational justification for someone doing it. Carmageddon stands out, but there may be other things that could have influenced the guy.

Or as Gazionks said, the guy was unstable and was going to do it no matter what. Or maybe he was drink driving? You can do that in Gta 4.

It would depend on which philosophy, religion, culture or similar that you relate to. Why is it so hard for people to understand that Morals isn't a defined general and universal code all over the world? Morals is just what a bunch of people use to define what they see as right or wrong. Another bunch of people can define Morals a lot different.

I believe your concerns are misplaced. As Gazoinks implied, I believe the issue is with the individual, not the trigger.

You worry that a game might lead someone to copy it IRL, yet bear in mind that games might also STOP people from doing it IRL too. As an example, I support people playing games with sex and/or rape. It's not that I support rape, but that I think it's FAR more preferable that a rape only occur on someone's computer, and not with an actual person. Computer games are just a form of imagination IMHO, and I think there's nothing wrong with imagining anything, no matter what it may be. So long as you confine your raping, killing and torturing to your keyboard and don't hurt real people, things are okay.

Lets not get silly here - there is a colossal world of difference between actions in games and actions in reality. The average person has no problem what so ever with telling the real world from the fake and wont' go on a mad spree of killing because they "saw it in a film/played it in a game/read it in a book/heard about it in history class".

The very few cases that we get of people being triggered or influenced by outside stimulus to cause havoc are normally people who will be set of by anything. Part of their mental make up is either by birth or by upbringing damaged to an extent that they can "snap". This cause can be almost anything so its very hard to impossible to "protect" by removing the causes as the cause can be anything.

Personal opinion - we really have no way of knowing what will "set a person off." One person's fun could be another person's torture. The tendency to say "people are all basically the same" is, in my opinion, a disservice. Every situation is unique.

Even before there was a Carmageddon, if I was driving and someone was in the road or near it, I'd always ask my passenger - How many points? and act like I was going to drive into them.

Would I enjoy a game wherein I could run people over? Sure. Would I ever consider it in real life? Nope. People that do "horrendous" things have much more serious things going on than whether or not they play a game. If they're coherent enough to know right from wrong and still do wrong anyway, they may seek to find a scape goat. If they're not in touch with reality, then trying to find out "why" is never going to get us anywhere.

Can I ask, are you old enough that you've been driving for a while? Do you live in a small community? As a professional driver who has driven in heavy vehicle and pedestrian traffic including NYC, I can assure you, you don't need a video game to have the desire to run people down.

People constantly cutting you off, walking into your path while you're speeding along, not checking at all as they walk into the street, people moseying along, people hanging out in the street, walking along blind curves... the tension builds up. I've seen countless people do staggeringly stupid things on the street, to the point where you sometimes think they WANT to get hit, and sometimes even DESERVE to get hit. These feelings are all entirely possible without a video game, or the rock and the roll, or that Mary Jawhana plant. Sometimes real life can lead people to do crazy things all by itself.

Yeah, a road gridlock is frustrating, i can definitely see the funny side of things with driving. And yes, real life can drive people to the extreme (pardon the pun).

Connecting a game to an event because they are connected is not morally wrong. It's just sense. If you thought "I'd really like to hurt people with my car for real", that would be morally wrong. But still, until you'd actually make a serious threat or actually perpetrate the act, it would be irrelevant in the eyes of the law, and for some people that is the real moral boundary.