I was considering whether or not to even mention this as an individual blog post, especially as Dan had all ready spoken to the painful awfulness of the story, and given the original story in the Sydney Morning Herald and a follow up attempted beat up of the subject by 7 News had almost been dismissed by the media at large, but what the hell. These types of stories are red rags to me. I must attack.

In short, the NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione decided to rant about murder simulator games when discussing several recent assaults involving adolescents that resulted in two fatalities.

The fatalities are terrible, entirely avoidable tragedies. One a stabbing death of a 22 year old and one a punch during a street fight at Kings Cross that resulted in head trauma and death. Did either of these crimes or any of the other violent crimes Scipione discussed have anything at all to do with video games? Where they motivated, inspired or the result of a disagreement related to video games? No, no, no and no.

Was alcohol a factor in some of these violent assaults? It’s not mentioned, but as we’re talking about assaults late at night on city streets against strangers, not to mention popular locales like Kings Cross, I think it’s likely.

But rather than discussing planned police activities to curb these types of crimes and recommendations to young people moving around inner Sydney late in the evening Scipione goes on an incredibly ill advised scapegoat hunt and sets his sights on video games and violent movies. And even more painfully stupid, the premier has his full support in laying all the blame for this violence at some random scapegoats feet, in this case dangerously addictive violent games that reward murder, rape and drug use with high scores.

"How can it not affect you if you're a young adolescent growing up in an era where to be violent is almost praiseworthy, where you engage in virtual crime on a daily basis," he told Sydney's Daily Telegraph.

"You get rewarded for killing people, raping women, stealing money from prostitutes, driving cars crashing and killing people."

If you face isn’t all ready in your hands by this point Scipione was only too happy to make Seduction of the Innocent styled comments to channel 7 as well. The below video has to be, and this is saying something, the most ill informed, facetious and incredibly stupid rant by a major public figure I've ever seen, this tops the 'internet is a series of tubes' by a mile.

Here's the video: http://au.news.yahoo.com/video/national/watch/30192070/

Scipione is described as a one of Australia’s top cops. If this is the case I’m terrified for the standard of police recruitment in Australia. His comments sound more like the ramblings of a belligerent uncle at a family barbeque. It’s a ridiculously uninformed and irresponsible gaffe for the most senior police role holder in NSW. I don’t imagine his position will be reviewed, forbid the thought of a public servant being held accountable for the stupid things they say. But it paints a bleak picture of the police service if this the attitude of their leader towards violent crimes and criminal adolescents.

He comments that we know these games are addictive, we suspect they’re inspiring criminal activities and we should look closely at the ways they’re corrupting young people’s minds and ‘desensitising’ them to violence.

Never mind that the youths playing games are at home playing games instead of out roaming the streets with knives.

Never mind that the youths involved in violent crimes and youth crimes are almost always wards of the state or what social services call 'at risk' children with mental health or substance abuse issues.

Never mind that the actual rate of violent crime in Australia continues to drop.

Never mind that all the evidence and all the research says there's no connection between crime orientated games and crime orientated behaviour.

He even lashes out at that famous computer game that rewards points for raping women. Yes, that game public champions against violent video games bring up in conversation again and again and again to justify draconian game laws, the game that DOES NOT EXIST.

The Channel 7 clip, in addition to pausing every two minutes to mention that there’s no causal link between game violence and any of the violent behaviour they describe, takes a few seconds to traumatise the widow of a policeman killed by a car thief.

The entire piece is baseless and exploitative in the extreme. Not to mention erroneous.

What I'm particularly disturbed about is the insistence that the addictive nature of games is the danger. The violent criminal games they describe, or try to, are not the games associated with addiction. The 'addictive games' are Word of Warcraft, online Poker, or whatever game has South Korean teenagers playing till they pass out this month (something which has verifiably been overstated in the asian media as well). The supposed tide of super violent addictive rape games. just. doesn't. exist.

In other news here’s an article about a clinical psychologist in the US (read here) whose job it is to identify new forms of addiction that can be officially registered as mental health disorders. His findings so far are, despite visiting freaking China and Korea to meet with youths receiving intensive treatment for ‘Internet addiction’, are that it mostly seems like a teenage phase some kids go through. He even discusses his own son going through a game phase where he played too much, then he grew out of it and now he's an honours student. So far he hasn’t met an individual that meets the criteria for addiction related to games or internet use. He’s met a few people who might have suffered a temporary compulsion, but has not yet seen a documented case of actual addiction. He believes it’s likely the condition exists, but there’s no verifiable cases as yet.

So no, commisioner game addiction is not a real thing at this point either.