As a twenty something gamer who just had his first child I need to say, some of us ARE responsible human beings. Don't get me wrong I am still putting in 30+ hours a week on the gaming it's just now I prioritise my time.

I work late hours so I am up all night anyway, trying to wind down so playing games while the baby and wife sleeps is my main gaming time. But even in the dead of night, if the baby wakes up and needs anything the game goes off and all attention is focused on her. Babies need a lot of love and stimulation at this point in their life, so feeding them with your elbow while playing COD simply won't do. Gaming and most everything else in your life has to take a back seat to the baby. If you can't do that, don't have kids.

It seemed this guy had it backwards, he wasn't ready to care for another human being. Gaming was the most important thing in his life and the poor kid paid. However intentional the death was, there was no denying the father's frustration and intent to hurt the kid to vent said frustration.

Yes, kids can be a pain in the ass at times, sure they might wake up screaming with nothing wrong and it's definetly intimidating being this young and with a kid (our's was not planned but definetly very loved) but you know what else? It's a fucking baby and doesn't know any better. You are the adult, you are responsible for the kids well being, you failed to provide even the merest speck of love or consideration for your child, you should be jailed and sterilised you selfish prick.

That is all.

Jesus, that's just... sick. This idiot clearly wasn't planning to be a father, he must have had a bad case of poor protection. But that doesn't matter at all. If you have a baby, you're responsible for it. If the baby bothers you, you suck it up, calm down and deal with the situation properly. Because he's a freaking baby! He doesn't know he's bothering you, he's not doing it on purpose, you dumbass!

This irresponsible idiot should not be allowed to get near another human ever again. The worst part of this story is clearly the baby's death, but as someone mentioned before, I'm sure some jackass will blame this on games, even though if the father would have been watching TV or playing cards the result would have been the same. I don't know who infuriates me more, the irresponsible imbecile who doesn't care for his child or the stupid "journalist" who tries to blame an object for what a person did.

This is every father's nightmare, and exactly why I'm scared of becoming a parent. I love children but to the life of me I cannot stand babies. I will love any child I produce or adopt, but I'm scared I may become frusterated at my child's crying and inadvertentally hurt him or her, when all I wanted to was to calm my child down. I'm not an agressive man but I'm just as prone to doing stupid things as the next guy..

No parent should ever have to bury their child. Ever.

Pussy ass country against beheadings, this sub-human not only does not deserve life, but he deserves a gruesome death.

pointless vandalism:

antipunt:

pointless vandalism:

The majority of my dates come from that site. My advise? Get a better profile. Depending on your age, weight, pictures, description etc. 1 date in 2 years...sounds like an issue with your profile, and not the people viewing you.

I'm in the same boat. I have no idea how you guys are hitting dates, it's amazing. I'm using OKCupid because I heard it's better, but it's ridiculous, the (normal) girls are SOOO selective, you'd be lucky to get a reply back, because they get flooded with hundreds of messages a week...

The thing is an absolute fail for me so far. Replies are scarce, and the ones I do get don't go anywhere (they disappear after a couple, or aren't interested in meeting me to begin with; just getting attention/killing time). And then one girl said she would go out (even gave me her number), but flaked out on me last minute. I don't even consider myself unattractive, dafaq? Is it because I'm only part-time employed?.. Mebbe my profile isn't spicy enuff

-so freaking frustrating- this online dating thing..

OKCupid is trash. Don't use it. I get messages all the time with POF. Get some nice picture of yourself. If you are ultra fat, well...black is slimming lol. Don't make your profile overly long. Do you like wine? Do you cook? Do you hike mountains? Do you make your own jerky? Make your profile stand out. If your entire self description is " I think im cool i like having fun shoot me a message" you will get nowhere. Also every message you send, spend at least 15 minutes reading their profile and connecting to them as a person. Every message I write talks about points they made in their profile. Don't be overly affectionate/complimentary. Ask 3-5 questions about things they spoke about. Always end messages with your real name. Rest is luck...I pull 4-5 dates a month and plenty of intimate evenings with it.

Thanks for the help dude. Will implement, need all the help I can get!

Scumbag Steve really hit the skids

I dunno about FL, but 15 months ago when my daughter was born my wife and I had to watch some videos about shaking babies and the 'purple crying' period before we could take our little one home. Sure, she gets in the way sometimes. She ejected the disc for ME3 twice while I was in the middle of it... but didn't get shaken.

It really is a sad story. The poor child who can't really help but cry being so young and the foolish, foolish father who put something else ahead of his child. I wonder if he's yet realized what he's done. That would be endless torment for me.

DVS BSTrD:
Don't ban videogames!
BAN FLORIDA!

I am for this.

Redlin5:

Please deposit all vitriol and existential worry for the human species as a whole in the comments below.

You know your community too well.

Still... No game has ever gotten me so involved that I would shake a kid to death to keep going.

The fact that he was playing a game is utterly irrelevant.

They threw it in so people like you would equate the two as if they had any relevance.

And I don't mean that in any rude way, I realize "people like you" might sound aggressive >_>.

Insert something more friendly...I'm tired so my vocab is shot.

Basically, the media includes that he was gaming to fuel stereotypes. It wouldn't matter if he was gaming, watching a movie, adult movies, listening to music, or reading a book. That's all irrelevant.

Had he been eating a potato, then shook this kid to death, nobody would say "I've never been so involved with a potato that I'd shake a kid to death."

A) Because that's silly.
B) Because everyone knows Potatoes are amazing.

(PS. Don't shake anyone, baby or otherwise, if you can help it. If you can't help it, buy some milk and fruit and channel your energy into drink making).

This guy look like some big guy who grossly a baby's durability and his own strength. He wasn't the sharpest tool in the woodshed to begin with as he just gives me that vibe. You don't shake babies, but again this guy probably doesnt know what he was getting into when he had a child in the first place. Some people get way over their heads, and may be werent ever cut out for parenthood.

Videogames ultimately aren't to blame. (Unless there's a game out there where you shake babies I don't know about that inspired him.) Poor parenting is, but I'm sure anyone with common sense could figure that much out.I doubt this guy was meaning to have it go this far, but his life is probably never going be the same. As much as I think boy this guy dumb, I can feel slightly sorry(non-zero levels.) for him as his life going his own personal hell for the forseeable future. Ultimately this his own failure, so a horrible way to learn basic life lessons.

This guy either did or didn't watch Video Games Awesome - Baby Mama.

Therumancer:

gunner1905:

Therumancer:
To be honest with overpopulation I've been a big fan of mandatory, reversible sterlization on all people in the USA or anyone living here, and requiring people to get permission from the goverment to have kids, which would be granted only after being able to prove the abillity to support them, and an appropriate amount of parenting knowlege before the birth.

I know this is off topic, but people like you who wants that kinds of laws should really do some reading about population and productivity. I agree that overpopulation is a problem if productivity of the people is not increased, through technology or education, but your idea of decreasing the younger population is dumb because old people are living longer, less young productive people are born (no matter what you think of someone, they produces something through participation in the economy), over time it increases the number of people that needs to be supported (old people) over the number of productive people (young people). See the Europe (especially GB) and Japan for real life examples.
Also do you really want someone else violating your body without your consent.

OT: The guy's dumb.

I see it as being nessicary, simply because if the population does not decrease drastically we're all dead. It's easy to make arguements about why we shouldn't do something extreme like this, but in the final equasion we're running out of resources, it's not a matter of production and producing enough stuff, but that things like wood, oil, metal and similar materials are being depleted faster than the planet can recover, and in the effort to sustain the current usage we're crippling the planet's abillity to replentish them at all through things like strip mining.

You are correct, what I propose would absolutly suck for a while, and would cause a number of problems that would have to be dealt with, quite probably with extreme brutality, in ways that would be offensive to current morality. It is however the right move in the long run. At least for a generation or four we need a massive decrease in the global population and then to stabilize it at that level.

As far as not wanting the goverment (or anyone else) modifying your body like that? In my opinion that's tough cookies. People knew that we needed ZPG (Zero Population Growth) generations ago and instead the population continued to expand. Like it or not, people have generally proven to be incapable of holding back their reproductive urges, so thus society as a whole needs to step in if the problem is going to be dealt with.

A lot of what I say is VERY nasty, and to many (on this subject and others) I seem like the devil. The thing is that it's all about the big picture, not simply the immediate effects over the next few years or even decades, but about what needs to be done when you look at things in terms of hundreds or thousands of years.

Sure it sucks to see a small young generation, and a huge old generation, and then to have to realize your going to have to basically leave those old people un-supported or dispose of them for a generation or two until society adapts to the much lower birth rate, but that's a comparitively small price to pay in the overall scheme of things, if we wind up depleting the world's resources we're going to wind up destroying ourselves. I could go into it point by point, but really it's not the time or place. It's something that has come up for discussion in the past.

In general this, and a lot of my personal politics and idealogy comes down to reality sucking, and trying to pretend that it doesn't just makes things worse.

you want OUR goverment handle a social issue?!*looks at the drug war,prohibition,mcarthyism and shrugs*yeah nothing wrong can come of this....

Earnest Cavalli:
snip

Ever here of innocent until proven otherwise in a court of law? Say something like "In which he shook his three-week-old infant son, leading to the child's death," of a man who has not yet even started a trial and you lose any ounce of credibility you had.

It's shit like this that fucks the system. You see something reported on the news and BAM the guy's guilty. You hear someone say something and BAM you know all the facts. You read one article and BAM you believe it.

The number of times police and (more specifically) the media makes mistakes, you'd think people would learn. Ever read the retractions section of a newspaper? No. Because you don't care about facts. Just sensationalism.

Makes me sick.

Therumancer:
Hmmm, well I'll be somewhat honest in saying that this could be born of ignorance. Given that the guy is 20 and his girl is probably equally young, did the guy really understand that a baby could be killed by shaking? That does seem to be a common cause of accidental infanticide. I think some people do not get how fragile babies are, and that does lead to accidents.

This does not make it right, because a parent should learn these things, but it's a bit differant than the guy callously murdering his offspring over a video game, which I do not think is what happened here.

To be honest with overpopulation I've been a big fan of mandatory, reversible sterlization on all people in the USA or anyone living here, and requiring people to get permission from the goverment to have kids, which would be granted only after being able to prove the abillity to support them, and an appropriate amount of parenting knowlege before the birth.

While that could be abused, I think such abuses are a small price to pay for less people overall, and less incidents like the one we're reading about, not to mention helping to deal with all the ghetto children and associated contreversies in all directions. Rather than paying some lady to support children she couldn't afford, just don't let her have kids to begin with... that solves a lot of problems as callous as it might sound.

The basic point here is that this is a screwed up situation, but just watch, nothing much is going to change because of it. This guy may or may not have his entire life ruined for what is probably an accident, and the same thing will continue to happen for a variety of reasons in other cases because the conditions that enable it won't be addressed.

Feeling a bit nihilistic and antisocial today? That's cute and all, but it doesn't change facts; the U.S. isn't overpopulated. Step outside of a major city and actually look at a map. You see all that empty space? Yeah.

Christ. Ideas like that make me wonder how we as a species survived this long.

There are many cases where parents kill their kids for stupid reasons. This being a gaming news site only report those linked to gaming. This is nothing new or avoidable really.
Sure its a pity a person had to die, but people like him shouldn't have kids in the first place.

Grey Day for Elcia:

Earnest Cavalli:
snip

Ever here of innocent until proven otherwise in a court of law? Say something like "In which he shook his three-week-old infant son, leading to the child's death," of a man who has not yet even started a trial and you lose any ounce of credibility you had.

It's shit like this that fucks the system. You see something reported on the news and BAM the guy's guilty. You hear someone say something and BAM you know all the facts. You read one article and BAM you believe it.

The number of times police and (more specifically) the media makes mistakes, you'd think people would learn. Ever read the retractions section of a newspaper? No. Because you don't care about facts. Just sensationalism.

Makes me sick.

If it makes you sick then why are you here? You sound a smart enough person, you most likely already know that news are specifically presented in ways to get people's attention and get them to do things like this. And for pity sake it's a internet forum, what do you expect: 5 pages of "oh I'll just sit here and wait till the trial's over"? It's like going to a *insert your least favorite musician here* concert and then complaining that the music sucks, you know what's going to happen when you clicked that link, you know exactly how it's going to make you feel, but regardless here you are QQing about it.

My advice to you is to avoid things that you KNOW will "make you sick." It's obviously not doing you any good and I can guarantee you that it's not going to stop anytime soon, so it's best if you just clicked on links that you would like better.

What can one say besides R.I.P for the poor infant... and I hope the killer to be punished with the strictest possible penalty.

Sober Thal:
What a sick individual. Kids shouldn't have kids. Shaking an infant to stop them from crying is just horrible.

Am I a jerk for really wanting to know what game he was playing?

Hey, sweeping statement; we're not all shit parents who kill our children like this prick.

I think he was paying something on-line, but regardless, it isn't the games, it's his shitty parenting skills and lack of patience.
Of course a 3-week old is going to cry a lot it's hungry, wants cuddles and your attention over a game, something this guy clearly failed to provide and now he has to live with this for the rest of his life. Whether he feels remorse etc. who knows.

All I know is he's a cunt.

Am I a bad person for thinking with the kind of genetic pedigree this poor child had he might be better off dead? 'Cause to those that say "cull the stupids" this is kinda the last stage in that plan.

Yeah, I think I'm a bad person, but fucking hell, A) playing Xbox until 4 am is... ugh! and B) Shaking the damn baby!?! I may be bad, but compared to those kinds of mother fuckers I'm a damn Paragon of humanity.

Therefor Humanity is doomed

I have a question that I feel is extremely Important.

If this guy that shook a baby to death was, I duno... baking when the incessant crying drove him crazy, instead of gaming. Would the title of this article be "Weeping Infant Killed For Disturbing Dad's Baking"?

I doubt it. So why, pray tell is the father's pre-baby-shakig-activity relevant?

I think this entire story is an excuse to demonize gaming.

Come on Escapist, you're better than this (Aren't you?) Don't give additional coverage to schlock like this.

Tiamattt:

Grey Day for Elcia:

Earnest Cavalli:
snip

Ever here of innocent until proven otherwise in a court of law? Say something like "In which he shook his three-week-old infant son, leading to the child's death," of a man who has not yet even started a trial and you lose any ounce of credibility you had.

It's shit like this that fucks the system. You see something reported on the news and BAM the guy's guilty. You hear someone say something and BAM you know all the facts. You read one article and BAM you believe it.

The number of times police and (more specifically) the media makes mistakes, you'd think people would learn. Ever read the retractions section of a newspaper? No. Because you don't care about facts. Just sensationalism.

Makes me sick.

If it makes you sick then why are you here? You sound a smart enough person, you most likely already know that news are specifically presented in ways to get people's attention and get them to do things like this. And for pity sake it's a internet forum, what do you expect: 5 pages of "oh I'll just sit here and wait till the trial's over"? It's like going to a *insert your least favorite musician here* concert and then complaining that the music sucks, you know what's going to happen when you clicked that link, you know exactly how it's going to make you feel, but regardless here you are QQing about it.

My advice to you is to avoid things that you KNOW will "make you sick." It's obviously not doing you any good and I can guarantee you that it's not going to stop anytime soon, so it's best if you just clicked on links that you would like better.

It's called criticism. I point out the errors and they learn. You can leave any time you don't like something, if that's your thing. Me? I prefer to actually do something about it and possibly improve the experience.

But hey, sticking your head in the sand and saying lalalalalala works for some people.

The first phrase says everything "20 year old...".

You shouldn't have kids at that age,period.Kids are for when your over 35 at least in my honest opinion(at least that's what my plan is).I'm 24 and I'm gaming quite a lot.

If you have a baby at such an young age,then maybe you should prioritize better(more baby time than gaming).

[/quote]It's called criticism. I point out the errors and they learn. You can leave any time you don't like something, if that's your thing. Me? I prefer to actually do something about it and possibly improve the experience.

But hey, sticking your head in the sand and saying lalalalalala works for some people.[/quote]

You can call it criticism if you like, seems more like making yourself feel bad to try to change something you know for a fact will stay exactly the same. But hey maybe that works for some people.

But since that kind of time wasting isn't my thing, I guess I'll leave you alone to continue your "criticism."

As tragic as this is, what does this have to do with video games other than he is one of MILLIONS of people who play them?

Hollywood Reporter doesn't do coverage of every time there is a murder in a cinema theatre of video-rental store, why do sites about video-games cover every tragic story most tangentially related to video games, this only unreasonably associates video games with criminality.

I'm not saying this isn't news worthy, I'm asking The Escapist why this is also not news worthy:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/feb/21/man-shot-latvian-cinema-popcorn

Ooh! Death in a cinema!

Everyone knows that for videogames more than any other media the censors are out to demonise it and actively censor it in ways that we'd never consider for other media forms.

Castrate him and throw that scum in gaol and let the other inmates sort him out.

He looks like a real winner.

Yeah.

Natural selection at it's finest.

What Non-Escapists won't take into account when they hear about this:
-The guy is only twenty years old.
-His job is stocking produce, a minimum-wage job.

What Non-Escapists will notice:
-The guy plays video games and was upset because the baby interrupted that.

Let the confusion between causation and correlation be renewed!

This is a very depressing thing and the worst part is that I can see this as happening. I'm just wondering whether he was generally this messed up or whether the lack of sleep turned an ordinary guy into the kind who would snap like that. To be fair his sleep pattern was messed anyway so I'd say he was a mess to begin with. Shouldn't have had a kid.

(Facepalms) Jesus Christ man! Priorities! Also, you're twenty, why do you have children?!?! Gaaah... now I want to bang my head against something... Whoever said "sometimes I think you need a licence to be a parent" wasn't kidding...

Jodah:
I was going to say I don't want to live on this planet anymore but no...

...What they said.

totally heterosexual:
Humanity why?

Did you even READ the article? You people specifically were lauded in it.

Fuck i'm growing more and more tired of such topics and the way some react to it, but i guess i'll just throw my opinion in the bowl of meaningless garbage as well.
And because someone suggested to me, when I'm writing pages of text as a comment, i should send an index along with it, here it is:

1. Why this is a bad article for the Escapist
2. Another perspective of the man's situation
3. A suggestion how we as a society should deal with it and why some reactions are more than inappropriate
4. A silly alternative

1.
First things first, good job "Escapist", another trolling topic/ misleading headline, because as we might know from the whole stupid "violence and gaming" discussion, that this is (very likely, I'm somewhat conclusive myself considering the scarce evidence) a problem in interrelation with society as a whole, rather than gaming. If this is what you want to get at, ok, but you could line it out better.

2.
As it's already illustrated, in a very macabre and sarcastic way, but whatevs

Abandon4093:
As this chart clearly demonstrates.
*snip*
Before the advent of video games, no babies were ever shaken because of emotionally disturbed and frustrated parents.

just as violence, bad family-relations and also resulting killings always existed, and if this father hadn't had gaming, he very likely would've had another hobby as a compensation for his messed up live. And that's (most of the time, not considering psychotics or neurotics, because they completely fall out of our rationality, but i'm working on this subject) the reason for shit like this, fucked up lifes! He was probably cared to less or even to much about by his own parents, very likely has a lack in social education and probably lost the perspective or reason of live, resulting in loosing any resemblance and sympathy for others, falling in a minimalistic, closed pattern as described by the "Orlando Sentinel reports" (considering I don't really know him, those are only hypothesis, a bit dramatised, I won't explain & support this further now, it simply would take to long). It might even be more "simple" as described by

C-Mag:
I know a lot of people are thinking that this man is some kind of crazy psychopath right now, but he isn't.
*snip*

Therefore I think the topic is misleading. This isn't taking the responsibility from the father, who should be sentenced, it also leaves some to "games", considering they're a part of our society by now, but also leaves some responsibility to ALL OF US.

3.
And that's what leads to the other point, our social system and some comments. At some point, this man's life got fucked up, he couldn't deal with it properly and its result is him killing an infant and he should be sentenced for this, as said, but his sentence should lead to his rehabilitation, or even better, we should implement ways to prevent this, taking our self- responsibility and our responsibility towards each other more serious, reconsider some parts of society, and not rely on short term solutions like example punishment or execution, as suggested by some, which only maintain and support such flawed systems. Personally I'm shocked from some of those suggestions, cause it shows that the suggesting person is not a bit better, if not even worse than the offending father.

4.
When I had to run through several tests (and pay shitloads of money) before gaining the right to take care for a restricted animal, I thought this should be a requirement for every person about to take responsibility of another being, also parents, but no, that would be to easy and also constrain their freedom...