Yesterday morning, I had the great misfortune of being stuck in traffic on I Street in South East Washington, DC on my way to cross the 11th St. Bridge into Virginia. My misfortune was nothing, however, compared to that of the soldiers and staffers inside the US Navy Yard, who were at the time being threatened by a lone gunman, armed with a shotgun, picking off people at random and still at large. Trapped in my lane, I had a front row seat to the unfolding scene.
I watched the men in uniform, marching with their ceremonial shot-guns toward their mandated shelter positions, joined by civilian staffers in colorful suits carrying large handbags. Their demeanors did not betray the terror that was going on behind the walls. They seemed to be keeping calm and carrying on.
While I waited, I imagined the lone gunman inside, creeping down dark corridors and around corners, picking off soldiers, and suddenly found myself inside his head and, oddly enough, inside a First-Person POV video game. Then, I had a terrible thought.
If I were a person who played so many video games that my lines between virtual reality and actual reality began to blur, and I wanted to really test my skills as one of these mercenaries, wouldn't breaking into a military base filled with plenty of dark corners and things to hide behind, and formidable targets such a US military soldiers be a pretty perfect way to do it? Not to mention if I already had a vendetta against the place, as well as documented mental illness?
Now, I shook those off, disturbed by my vivid and momentary hypothetical, said a little prayer, and tried not to think about it. I didn't know anything about the shooter or whether or not he played video games. Who was I to make those kind of assumptions?
Then, they figured out who the shooter was, a former US Naval reservist named Aaron Alexis, and we started to learn more about him. In an article from the British publication the Telegraph, a few quotes from a friend of Mr. Alexis's friend, Nutpisit Suthamtewakul, particularly jumped out at me. Suthamtewakul first described Alexis as a "big brother", a buddhist, and a smart guy, but as Suthamtewakul got to know Alexis better, a more ominous aspect began to emerge.
"The darker side to Alexis's character saw him playing violent "zombie" video games in his room, sometimes from 12.30pm until 4.30am.
Mr Suthamtewakul said: "He could be in the game all day and all night. I think games might be what pushed him that way. He always had this fear people would steal his stuff so that's why he would carry his gun all the time. He would carry it when he was helping out in the restaurant which scared my customers."
In an article from RT.com, the contrasts of his personality were highlighted:
"Pretty nice guy, didn't say anything much, you know, just said hello and kept moving,” said Calvin Belton, a neighbor of Alexis’. “He didn't strike me as anything was wrong with him."
However, below the surface of his apparent neighborly congeniality lurked signs that he was suffering from internal demons. His own father once told detectives in Seattle that his son suffered “anger management problems” related to post-traumatic stress initiated by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
In 2004, Seattle police said Alexis was arrested for shooting out the tires of a vehicle in what he later described to police as an anger-fueled “blackout,” AP reported.
The more I read about this man and his past, the more I realize how frighteningly dead-on I was with my morbid day-dream. People described the frightening similarity between Alexis' positioning as a shooter and the simulated perches of virtual snipers, gunning from the fourth floor at unsuspecting targets on the first floor of an atrium. It's just like something out of a movie...or a video game.
Video games are now taking over the entertainment industry. Though I am not a player of video games, I was an employee at a popular video game company and witnessed them amass over $600 million in sales in 24 hours upon the launch of their latest game. Games appeal to users because unlike a watching movie which is a spectator activity, playing a video game allows you to become part of the action.
Video games were originally designed by the military to train and desensitize soldiers in preparation for the killing they would have to do in the field. When you combine this training and desensitization with mental illness and anger management issues, as well as easy access to guns, you get, well...Aaron Alexis in the Navy Yard, dead, along with his 12 innocent victims. Heavy video game play has been cited in the pasts of other killers, including Sandy Hook shooter, Adam Lanza. There was a call for stricter violent video game regulation after the Sandy Hook massacre in this article from the NY Daily News. In fact, Lanza and Alexis used the same rifle in their violent crimes, the AR-15, which has been described as "the rifle for the sport of hunting humans."
First-Person POV Video games are not the only problem in these scenarios. How the killers got access to both their weapons and entrance into their crime-scenes are a whole different story. But, what is to be done about the glorification of violence that comes from First-Person shooter video games, and the blurred lines between entertainment and reality? Considering that people took a day off work in celebration of today's launch of violent auto theft game: Grand Theft Auto, can we ever put the cat back in the bag?
