"If you guessed "those vile, reprehensible videogames," then you're absolutely correct. The Daily Mail has published a report on Jake Roberts, a 13-year-old British youth who took his own life in February following an argument over a confiscated Wii game. A tragic tale, to be sure, but there's no doubt that the Mail's angle on the story leaves an unpleasant taste in the mouth.

In truth, this is hardly surprising. The Daily Mail has always stooped low to make its point, and the newspaper can barely wait to get into the shameful, dirty business of pointing fingers and furthering its own anti-gaming agenda through the story of a teen ending his own life. Tasteful, right? Right from the first line and throughout most of the article, the Mail

Or, to put it another way, it's another proud day for the mainstream press." insists on linking Jake's death with the dispute over his Wii, wilfully ignoring the possibility that other factors may have influenced Jake's sad decision over a longer period of time."

Story: http://www.gamenewsdirectory.com/news-details/57254-teen-commits-suicide-guess-what-gets-the-blame

This was actually posted on 4chan. From what I've read, he bought a Wii game (I think it was Galaxy), brought it home, found his sister on the TV, they both had an argument, he got sent to his room, committed suicide.

Pretty unstable child in any case.

Horrible news... But the saddest thing is, there is going to be a bunch of insensitive people making fun of this...

Say a lot about the youth these days - typical of the media to bring videogames into this, when it has nothing to do with the real cause of the suicide. I'm sure this happens over CDs, DVDs and similar material possessions all the time (and never makes the news).

@Montana: after owning it for ages, I'm now playing Age of Empires on the DS - its pretty good (and a lot of fun).

Blaming video games for the kid's death is a bit like blaming the noose he used to kill himself. You can ostensibly make a rather short-sighted and honestly rather idiotic argument for that being the case, but you're totally missing the big picture in the process and essentially reducing him and his motivations to a one-dimensional character hell-bent on self-destruction due to a single event or object and nothing else.

Yet another group that should really jsut be shut down for their tasteless news... who reads that trash seriously?

I have no intentions of making fun of the kid. The trouble here is the media and their acuuracy and impartiality in informations.

People read newspappers and watch news bulletins in order to stay informed but lol, the information is manipulated in many ways.

I agree completely.

Really, videogames are a common hobby of teenagers and are an everyday activity for millions of them. So it's pretty foolish to bring videogames into every case of a child committing a crime.

And yeah, Age of Empires is one of the best third party games on the DS. It gets sort of repetitive after a while (I admit, I got a bit bored by the Saladin campaign), but it's just such a well built game with lots of history built into it. Also, the Mongolian campaign is easier than all the other campaigns, and the Japanese one is one of the hardest. And once you get to the English story, you'll be crying over the balls to the wall difficulty.

Enjoy!

Wow, I wonder what made the kid so unstable. Was it family life, or friends, or school? I feel horrible for his family...

(Besides this sentence) I'm not even going to address the "blame videogames" part of this because it's such a stupid and old argument. When will it end?

What disturbs me is that they are blaming the suicide to the game without (probably) knowing the whole stories.

... it's like insulting the dead kid and the people who are moaning his dead.