ECA president Hal Halpin's take on Texas student's expulsion |
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Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) president Hal Halpin has given his own two cents on the matter concerning Paul Hwang, the Chinese student from Clements High School in Fort Bend who was expelled for playing on a Counter-Strike map that resembled his high school.In a statement to GamePolitics, Halpin said that "Paul Hwang's only crime was bad timing. He had the misfortune of uploading his mod during a period of time in which the nation was, perhaps unduly, made sensitive about the supposed link between violence and video games."
Here's the rest of the statement:
It seemed to me that the law enforcement authorities acted with prudence and that the school board should do similarly. This will likely be the first of many such instances where older generations who don't understand a medium, fear it, and as a result there will be reactionary decisions made. It's incumbent upon gamers to persevere and to prove the rule and not the exception. Only together, and over time, can we accomplish such a lofty goal.
A lot of people have pointed to the recent Virginia Tech shooting incident as one of the reasons for the seemingly hasty expulsion. However, some reports also say that Hwang's Counter-Strike map had already been uploaded prior to the Virginia Tech shooting. So, is it timing or something else? Leave a comment below and let us know what you think.
Via GamePolitics
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Comments [refresh]
Every day I read about one more innocent thing getting us thrown in jail, or fired, or expelled.
Yes lets expel the oriental kid for playing a video game, because it really is going to make him go on a killing rampage.
It's also gonna teach him how to shoot like Jack Bauer and shoot with two guns at the same time like he was in a John Woo movie.
It's also gonna provide him with 2 glocks and 10 clips of ammo... oh wait no thats the local K-Mart with the help of Mastercard.
Stupid.
this one dude changed the entire country. I really don't care if theres a crazy guy that went on a shooting rampage, it doesnt mean there are many more to come. It's obvious that the guy was out of his mind, a social outcast, i duno!
WITCH-HUNT.
]That's all it is. parents don't want to accept that they screwed up or that their kid is a total nutcase so they blame it on the Games. Just remember, Guns don't kill people, people kill people. They just need to pull their heads out and realize it.
You know who that Chinese kid is? Me. Me and several other people I know. When I was in High School, I thought of how cool it would be to do lazer tag or paintball within the school using the natural layout of the halls and buildings.
Sometimes I would sit in class and daydream about being a counter-terrorist agent fighting to save hostages or something similar. I pictured what I could use for cover and what special locations within the school I could use to get into the building (windows, ventilation, etc).
If I had been playing CS in highschool and been capable of making maps, I probably would have made one of my high school. Heck, I may have even considered doing one in Unreal Tournament. It's not like the guy was pretending that he was shooting teachers and students. For me, I'd be pretending that it's terrorsts that have taken the school under lockdown and I'm rescuing them or something to that effect.
Anyway, if I was expelled from high school for that I'd sue the district.
- Guerrilla Games was just a 3rd party company when they released Killzone 1 in Nov. 2004. That’s why Guerrilla made KZ1 all by itself (Guerrilla didn’t access to all those super-amazing Sony’s 1st party PS2 library and data).
- KZ1’s release date was originally early 2005. Since Bungie (a subsidiary of MS) decided to release Halo 2 in Nov. 2004, Guerrilla had to release KZ1 in Nov. too (because KZ1 was originally made to counter Halo 2’s release). That’s why KZ1 was a rushed (by about 5 months), unfinished, unoptimized, and unpolished game.
- Halo 2’s release date: Nov. 9. 2004; got 9.4 average review score from 185 different publications
- KZ1’s release date: Nov. 2. 2004; got 7.9 average review score from 112 different publications; therefore, KZ1 was not a bad game; it was just a decent game but miserably failed to be as good as Halo 2. Actually, for an unfinished game, KZ1 was quite good (7.9/10).
- Killzone 2 and Halo 3 both are expected to be out in Sep. 2007; again, KZ2’s biggest purpose is to counter Halo 3’s launch.
- Guerrilla Games (a subsidiary of Sony) has 130 employees (programmers and graphic designers only). Sony has spent $40 million so far (until Mar. of this year) on KZ2. Sony confirmed that the total budget for KZ2 will surpass $50 million (this is totally crazy, spending 5 to 10 times more budget to make only one game?).
- Epic has only 90 developers. Gears of War needed only $9 million to make (just for your reference, usually one good game only needs less than $5 million to make).
- Phil Harrison (the CEO of worldwide studio) said that KZ2’s final (retail) version will surpass both people’s expectations and the famous and infamous CG trailer. A person in his position can’t lie, so let’s just believe what he says, huh?
- In 2004, Guerrilla hired about 50 programmers and designers only from AAA-level companies around the world; these new employees are the brains behind KZ2 now.
- All Sony’s internal developers and Sony’s very close AAA-3rd party companies share all kinds of technologies which are used for making PS3 games (OpenGL 2 based). These world class developers are those companies which make games like: MotorStorm, MotorStorm 2 (confirmed), Metal Gear Solid 4, Warhawk, Ratchet & Clank, Virtua Fighter 5, Resistance 2 (tentatively confirmed), Ninja Gaiden Sigma, Jak and Daxter, White Knight Story, Monster Kingdom (Folks Soul), Tekken 6, Afrika, PS3 Home, Heavenly Sword, Gran Turismo 5, Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy versus XIII, Lair, Heavy Rain, Uncharted-Drake's Fortune, Killzone 2, God of War 3 (confirmed), Getaway, Eight Days, and Dead or Alive 5.
- Dead or Alive 5 is PS3 exclusive; confirmed by CVG.com on Apr. 30 (go and read the article unless you are blind; just for your reference, DoA 5 and Ninja Gaiden Sigma are made by the same Japanese company).
- Based on the above facts, KZ2 can’t be anything but the best shooter ever.
Killzone 2’s actual gameplay footage (pre-alpha build) was shown to journalists at this year’s GDC expo behind closed doors. These journalists who watched the actual footage said...
* KZ2 is graphically and technologically extremely advanced.
* It was like watching Next-gen Black and Half Life 3 combined together. Everything which was hit by bullets and missiles were realistically destroyed and penetrated.
* KZ2 has extremely impressive lighting and shadow effects including the mind-blowing sky and river water.
* The environments (both indoor and outdoor) are extremely detailed.
* The characters were meticulously detailed.
* The sound effects were blowing away the audience.
* The short KZ2 footage was started in an outdoor environment. There were vehicular units like futuristic choppers and tanks. The soldiers moved into some cathedral-like building soon after. Many Helghast units encountered with our soldiers in a room. Some even said that it was like watching Hollywood blockbuster action movies.
But what does that have to do with that kid getting expelled?
This is really bad all around.
First off, nutball of VT wasn't a 'hardcore gamer' and video games can't be blamed for his actions. People just throw out video games because the 2 boys in Columbine played games a lot.
Secondly, this texas kid did this on his own pc not a school pc from what I've read and played it at home. School has no right to expel on what he does at home unless he is making 'threats' of some fashion to people at his school or that will take place on school grounds. Of which, I didn't read any info of him doing.
Thirdly, I hope his parents sue the school board hard because those incompetent morons really deserve it for this one. I made a Wolfenstein 3D conversion of my high school and we even played it AT high school without any negativaty.
That's all....