EDITORIAL — Deadly games

As police conducted a background check and interviewed the two teenage boys who went on a shooting rampage last Monday in their high school in Tacloban, the probers noted two things.

One was the lack of remorse on the part of the two shooters. Another was the fondness of at least one of them for a 3D sandbox game, GoreBox, which promotes extreme violence on AI-controlled humanoids using guns and explosives.

Noting this detail in the ongoing probe, the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center ordered yesterday the temporary blocking of access to GoreBox, which glorifies, as the name implies, blood and gore.

The tragedy in Tacloban has heightened the debate on minors’ online access. Apart from tending to encourage violence, online gaming platforms are reportedly being used by international extremist groups to lure minors to networks that exploit children for a wide range of malicious purposes, including online sex, self-harm and violence.

Google Play describes GoreBox as “a chaotic, physics-driven sandbox game where creativity meets unrestrained destruction.”

“Unleash your wildest ideas in an environment that puts ultimate power in your hands,” Google Play declares in its pitch for GoreBox. “Step into a world where the Reality Crusher lets you spawn, manipulate, and obliterate anything you desire. Engage in brutal combat with an extensive arsenal of weapons and explosives, and witness the raw effects of realistic ragdoll physics and an intense gore system that brings dismemberment to life…”

Parents, do you want your children to enjoy such a game and access the app?

Several countries have brushed aside warnings from civil libertarians and proceeded to curb minors’ online access, with 16 a favored cut-off age for the restriction.

Obviously, the lethal violence that erupted at the San Jose National High School cannot be reduced simply to a case of online gaming overdose. Many other factors, including easy access to guns, come into play in producing teenagers who give full rein to their homicidal tendencies.

But probers are starting to veer away from the theory – encouraged by the shooters themselves – that they were victims of bullying in their school. Instead, probers are looking more into the influence of extremist networks and violent gaming platforms on the two shooters.

As the world has seen in other countries particularly the United States, such crimes may encourage copycat attacks. Every effort must be made to prevent this from happening in the country.

Schools must promote learning. This cannot happen in an environment where students, teachers and school administrators and personnel feel their life under threat. All sectors must work to restore schools as safe spaces for learning.