Boy Strangles Old Lady To Play Online this is what technology does KILL

[BlooD+ 0]

A 13 year old Vietnamese boy was arrested yesterday for allegedly strangling an 81 year old woman to death. According to the local police, Dinh The Dan "confessed that he needed money to play online games and decided to kill and rob the woman".
The woman, Mai Thi Mau lost her life for 100,000 dong (around Rs. 244). After strangling her with a rope, Dan buried her in a pile of sand in front of his house. The saddest part is that is that he won’t even go to prison! Here’s what a local policeman had to say –

"He is too young to be put in prison for the crime he committed, but we will send him to a reeducation camp, which may release him after he shows enough good behavior."

I think it’s about time people look at MMO addiction as a real concern across the globe. Now there are rehabilitation centers for MMO addicts scattered around the globe, but they’re too few in number and to scarce. The real problem lies in admitting or identifying that you’re addicted.

I was addicted to World of Warcraft for two years too, and I lost out on a huge chunk of my social life and it was more detrimental to me than fun in the long run. So the next time you think about picking up an MMO, consider whether you can control how many hours you choose to spend with it; if you can’t, just skip it and stick to something that takes up fewer hours of your day.

Notice from rvalkass:

Anything you copy needs to be put in QUOTE tags. Copied from http://tech.firstpost.com/india/news/games/boy--online/22464/0

[tricky77puzzle 0]

I mainly don't like MMO's because they're boring. It's not that it's detrimental to your health, although that may be true. I just don't like games that you can't really beat.

[minimcmonkey 0]

I dont think the saddest thingis that he wont go to jail, its that he cared som much about playing a game, that he would take someones life, just to keep playing. That just shows, that computers are taking over our lives. Whats next?

[Athleone 0]

Sure, MMOs can cause addiction, however cases like the one mentioned here are very rare indeed. Perhaps for every 5000 people who play an MMO, one would go to this extent to keep playing. I think you guys are just over-reacting about it.

[gjaldon 0]

True, this is just an isolated case. It would seem that these young Vietnamese boy has something wrong with his head. If he were a normal and regularly functioning boy, he wouldn't go to the extent of killing an old lady for money to spend on an online game.And Blood, too much of anything is bad. This is applicable to everything in life, even with MMO's. The point is to control the hours you spend on it and keep a balance of this in your life.

[innosia 1]

True, this is just an isolated case. It would seem that these young Vietnamese boy has something wrong with his head. If he were a normal and regularly functioning boy, he wouldn't go to the extent of killing an old lady for money to spend on an online game.
And Blood, too much of anything is bad. This is applicable to everything in life, even with MMO's. The point is to control the hours you spend on it and keep a balance of this in your life.

poor old lady, may her soul be rised to heaven
MMO is really crazy, i still remember playing MMORPG like 24 hours beside eat about 10 mins, sleep about 4 hours, and keep playing and playing for about several months, that's when I am still study though, now when playing game I feel like 'so unreal and boring' and 'nothing to gain for, as how powerful we are in the game is only a game', please get on the 'real life'
Edited September 26, 2008 by innosia (see edit history)

[joeblogg 0]

this is a one off case. people always focus on the bad things because they stand out. the 99% of MMO players who are nice law abiding people aren't mentioned just the 1% who are bad. there are always going to be bad people in the world and we can't stop it. its not because of MMO's people kill for money to buy drugs which are already banned! so if we banned MMO's then killing would still happen so we can't really do anything. most of the worlds population are good people and thats good huh?

[hertonsils 0]

This is totally saddening but I guess it's just a reflection of the day and age we live in.I know a lot of people that are absolutely obsessed with MMORPGs such as World of Warcrafts and whilst they obviously wouldn't kill someone for it they tend to sacrifice a lot of their social life.

[TheDisturbedOne 1]

He should get his internet taken away! And I thought WoW made people do insane things...

[DeM0nFiRe 0]

I dont think the saddest thingis that he wont go to jail, its that he cared som much about playing a game, that he would take someones life, just to keep playing. That just shows, that computers are taking over our lives. Whats next?

That is ridiculous. Morons like this little kid throw their lives away on computers. Computers have no intelligence and therefore cannot take over anybody's life. There has to be something wrong with you if you focus your entire life around computers, and worse yet if you blame the computer for it. It's similar to blaming guns for killing people, guns can't do crap on their own. Some moron has to actually use the gun. To outlaw guns would be to take away freedoms which shouldn't be denied.

[onscreen 0]

Also its useless to blame game developers for such news. Just like how the kids put the blame on how Grand Theft Auto give influence to them on being involved in criminal acts.The root cause is we the human, where most of them just couldn't make a difference between real life and entertainment. Temptation, crave, curiosity kills the right understanding of gaming industry and gaming culture.When i read about the news a year ago, i feel no surprise on such thing will happen since in Vietnam, the kids and teenagers got addicted to online games since the exposure of MU online in their country. Since then, many other games follow in to localization of online games. Mostly were Free To Play MMO and only a couple of Pay to Play MMO manage to survive in the new market and one of them is World of Warcraft with a reported 12,000 Vietnamese players.

[Echo_of_thunder 1]

Not suprising really. So many of these poor asain countries have kids that love the internet so badly they will do "Anything" just to get onto the net. And once on the net they will also do anything to get more money. They will say something like I have a sick mother or father, or I need money for school. I see things like this daily. Also my Girlfriend is from the philippines and she tells me stories of how kids and even young adults will do these things just to get a dollor or two just to get onto the net. So it really does not suprise me at all that a 13yr would kill just to get money to play a internet game. This also show you how addective some of this games are.

[DeM0nFiRe 0]

Well, the fact is that there is no scientific reasoning behind calling these games addictive. People playing them for so long at a time is not a literal addiction. There is no psychological or physiological dependency involved, so it's not an addiction. As I said, it's just some idiots who spend way too much time on the computer, and they do this of their own free will.

[xenador 0]

there is some grounds for calling it an addiction. Studies show that the feeling generated by these games produces the same effects in the brain that nicotine does. How? my speculation is that humanity at its core has several things considered essential to us, love, justice, happiness(reality or outlook more so), etc... and these things motivate all of our actions. Drugs and addiction are an attempt to escape from the reality that is in front of these people. MMORPG give people the same escape that drugs do. 1. they let you be someone your not 2. it allows you to live outside of reality 3. in game praise is accepted as praise of the person operating the character, so therefore it does have some semblance of love/admiration 3. justice is represented in the games by being able to track down and beat those people who you feel did you an injustice 4. friendships develop (I believe this is one of the more addicting parts of a game) should games be outlawed? no. are people to blame for there addiction to them? yes. can they stop at any time? if the desire is strong enough to...yes. will they? probably not. It would take an education to reality to provoke them to change...that or a social life, but the games tend to prevent that aside from pseudo-sociality. was the boy in the article crazy or outside of his right mind? yes. is this a legal defense against the death penalty? it depends where you are but mental disorder is an acceptable excuse almost anywhere in the US. should he be seeking psychiatric help right now? it would probably help, yes. Is it a tragedy that a human being was killed... of course, the tragedy is not the addiction, because that has yet to kill anyone (or at least online addiction has yet to kill anyone as far as I know), but rather the loss of that woman.

[ledabomber 0]

Yes....YES!!!!! This is the plan I've been looking for! I'll go to Michigan, slaughter my Uncle, and kill my Aunt, claim their money, and I'll be able to buy all the "FREE" NX Cash Cards that I could ever want! Plus I can get Runescape membership too !!!!!!!!!!! LOL. It's sad that you have to kill an old lady. What did she ever do to you? But whats even sadder is that he killed her over money so he could pay for a stupid MMO...... Probably a World of Warcraft addict...... Hasn't anyone ever told him about Prize Rebel?