The trial of Anders Behring Breivik’s is currently underway, and already there has been talk of video games and their influence on Brehvik’s behaviour, which is troubling to say the least. Almost as troubling as this picture of his World of Warcraft character — how he managed to play with that user interface I’ll never know…
World of Warcraft has already been discussed in the court, where the above image was shown. According to The Daily Telegraph, Breivik broke into a “broad smile” when a screenshot of his World of Warcraft character was projected into the court.
The game was brought up by the Prosecution, in an attempt to characterize Brehvik as an anti-social, troubled man struggling with a series of failures in his life.
It’s difficult to know precisely how to feel when a video game makes news in this way. On the one hand it’s clear that Brehvik is completely insane, and his consumption of video games is barely relevant in this case. But in the context of the prosecution’s attempt to characterise Brehvik as an anti-social loner living in isolation, is it fair to discuss the fact that Anders Brehvik practically played World of Warcraft full time for a year? Possibly…
So far no-one has directly attempted to blame the Oslo Massacre on video games, which is a good thing. But the trial is still in progress, and I’m sure the topic will come up again at some point.
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