Thailand bans Grand Theft Auto after teenage gamer goes nuts

Written on 5th August 2008                                                                                                              4 COMMENTS
Robin Wauters, Next web enthusiast & Plugg organizer

New Era Interactive Media, a Thai video game distributor, froze sales of Grand Theft Auto after a teenage gamer confessed to robbing and murdering a taxi driver while trying to recreate a scene from the controversial game. The 18-year-old high school student is currently in custody, charged with robbing and stabbing to death the 54-year-old taxi driver, and faces the death penalty.

“We are sending out requests today to outlets and shops to pull the games off their shelves and we will replace them with other games,” Sakchai Chotikachinda, sales and marketing director of New Era Interactive Media, told Reuters.

Police said the gamer was an obsessive GTA fan who confessed to committing the crime because of the game and showed no sign of mental problems during questioning. He told police he did not mean to kill the driver, but that he stabbed him to death when he fought back, newspapers reported.

Grand Theft Auto has often been criticized for depicting violence including beatings, carjackings, drive-by shootings, drunk driving and prostitution.

According to the Reuters story, a multi-million dollar lawsuit was filed in the U.S. state of Alabama against the designers, marketers and a retailer of Grand Theft Auto in 2005, claiming that months of playing the game led a teenager to kill two police officers and a 911 dispatcher.

Personally, I think these are extremely isolated cases who do not prove that violence in video games incites violence in real life. I wonder if anyone has ever made any connections between recent bombings, beatings, animal abuse etc. and this Tom & Jerry clip. Have you, Jack Thompson?

Sure, there should be some control over the type and degree of violence that’s depicted in video games, but actually linking criminal behavior to the content of the game? That’s just a bridge too far in my humble opinion.

What’s your opinion?

grand theft auto, New Era Interactive Media, thailand, video game, violence

4 Comments »

LetsProve tries to get Thailand out of the Web 1.0 era

Written on 17th January 2008                                                                                                              5 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Every week we publish an interview with a start-up. We ask five questions, hoping the answers will give you inspiration and new views. Well, actually six questions, since we also ask the start-up to who he or she is passing the mic.

This week, we’re interviewing Peerapong Pulpipatnan (Pete). He lives in Thailand and is actually some sort of pioneer there. He told us that there are hardly any Web 2.0 services in his country and that he would like to change that. So he started LetsProve Where. A service that makes it possible for people to give visual updates on where they are. Ok, I must admit, He’s not the first one who comes up with a service like that. Yet, I really like his vision and story, so that’s why I asked him the five start-up questions. You simply cannot ignore the people who try make a difference in their country.

How did you come up with the idea of LetsProve Where?

“I’ve watched many interesting movies such as Final Cut, Deja Vu and Minority Report. In each movie, they have tools to record every persons activity automatically. Everyone has their own travel- and activity log so that you can track basically anyone’s activity.

I was impressed by the idea of recording a persons life so I started thinking about how to do such a thing. Of course it wasn’t possible to record everything, since that would be a violation of privacy terms. I chose to work with the mobile phone, since everybody is always carrying that device around.

I thought it would be great if people were able to record their movements and activity with their mobile phone. Just imagine that you could tell everyone where you’re at by sending a text message or a picture and the system would automatically turn this data into maps with your locations on it. Also, it would update your blog (widget) and Facebook profile (Facebook app).” (more…)

five questions for start-ups, letsprove, mobile, thailand

5 Comments »