That's the line pressed by law enforcement in Grand Junction, Colo., where Martin-Urban's killing spree took place. Although the specific games with which this young man was supposedly obsessed are not named, Grand Theft Auto - probably because of its cop-killing history - is strongly implied.

"It could be that he was simply acting out a part in a video game. Maybe he had interjected himself into a game in his mind," Grand Junction police Sgt. Tony Clayton said. It's the first quote used in a story published by the Denver Post.

Look, we have an editorial agenda here at Kotaku, and it's video games, and you as readers and commenters are also forceful video game advocates. We both have seen enough of this that I wonder if our eye-rolling is every bit as tendentious as a cop using armchair psychology to explain a senseless murder.

But at some point, I think mainstream reporters and writers have got to ask the extra question of the police, and that is simply, "Do you have real evidence that this person was deliberately impersonating video game killings, or is that just a guess?" We get to this point because random murders scare the shit out of the public, and police feel compelled to find some larger reason so that people can, I dunno, take proactive steps to protect themselves. But blaming video games, I think, sows more panic, because they're widespread, they're legal for sale, and they're not going away any time soon.

Rather than just descend into flamebait over the usual violent-video-game nonsense, I'd like to move this to maybe a more productive argument. And that is to ask the mainstream media to stop swallowing unsubstantiated b.s. whole. Nancy Lofholm's article (and I know her, and like her a lot, and she's forgotten more about reporting than I've ever learned, so this is sort of weird) is a very good narrative without the video game angle, which she didn't invent from whole cloth, she just took it at face value. But cops pull things out of their asses all the time - look at the "street value" of a major drug bust. Blaming video games has gone so far beyond cliché that it really needs to start facing the strong skepticism for which reporters are known.

The problem is that some things, some really frightening things, are just unknowable and unpreventable, and the police's only job in that case is to respond to the scene, restore order, and write it up. But a police officer saying that straight up is a lot more unacceptable to the public than if he pins it on something intangible out in pop culture. Which should say something about who's really to blame here.

Video Games Maybe to Blame in Senseless Shootings [Denver Post]

Talking to CVG, Matthews said the Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate expansion packs, made by TimeGate Studios, may have brought some new people to the brand — "and killed off a few."

Says Matthews:

"[TimeGate] took the story in a direction that we didn't intend. We look at Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate as an alternate universe, a 'what could have been', and because of that it doesn't necessarily diminish the story that we were trying to tell. F.E.A.R. was about Alma, F.E.A.R. 2 is about Alma, and we wanted to continue the story the way we originally intended."

Less-than-fawning reviews of those expansions, plus some mehs for the console ports of original F.E.A.R., might have the brand in a slump, Matthews suggests in chucking Day 1 Studios under the bus. Day 1 built the 360 and PS3 versions of F.E.A.R., which didn't do as well as the PC version. Matthews vows that 360 and PS3 versions of F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin will be closer to their PC counterpart (also due in 2009) than was the case with the original.

Ports and Expansions "Killed Off a Few" F.E.A.R. Fans [CVG]

Jack Thompson must have Fox News on speed dial, because every time a student shoots someone it seems like he's there, head hanging low, like a vulture, dishing out his special brand of truisms.

Seeing that Jack went out of his way to email me this morning to point out that he was "right" about the shooting being spurred by Counter-Strike, I thought it was probably worth another round of Dissecting Jack's Lies.

Hit a jump for his confusing quotes and how accurate they were:

1: We find from brain scan studies out of Harvard that if you get started playing, for example, violent video games you can more likely copy-cat the behaviors in the games.
Verdict: False
Evidence: While the study of adolescents by Harvard and Indiana university researchers found that video games can spur "emotional arousal" and lower self-control it never made that final leap. In fact David S. Bickham, a research scientist at the Center on Media and Child Health at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, told the Washington Post that the study, while interesting, wasn't conclusive.

2: The disturbing thing that keeps popping up in many of these as in Va Tech, Columbine, Paducah, where I represented the six parents of the three girls shot and killed, is that you can rehearse these types of massacres on simulators which are called video games. And you can therefore made more proficient in doing this.
Verdict: False
Evidence: Va Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho only had a passing interest in gaming years before the shooter. A lawyer tried to draw a connection between the game Doom and Columbine shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, but that was tossed out by a federal judge. Paducah shooter Michael Carneal also played Doom, but that was found to not be connected to the shooting. Video game as murder simulator and training tool just doesn't hold any water.

3. The worst school shooting in history until Va Tech, was by Robert Steinhauser in Erfurt, Germany who trained on Counter-Strike Half Life. That's the game that Cho at Va Tech trained on in High School.
Verdict: Not exactly true
Evidence: While it is true that Steinhauser and Cho both played Counter-Strike at some point in their lives, with more than a million copies sold, that could probably be said of a lot of college students. Saying that Cho "trained on" the game is a bit of a stretch.

4. And um the effect, the affects the psychological affect of the shooter, plus his attire is suggestive of a couple of the games in which the "hero" wears this type of attire.
Verdict: Likely false
Evidence: The description by those present don't make it sound like he had a flat affect. One person said "It looked like a theatrical thing the way he walked onto the stage." Others described his behavior leading up to the shooting as erratic. Not surprising of a man who had recently been dumped by his girlfriend and had stopped taking his medication, possibly anti-depressants. Simply wearing black doesn't mean he was dressing up like the "hero" from Counter-Strike.

5: I lost my train of thought. I wrote a book...
Verdict: True
Evidence: Jack did indeed write a book, and I think he lost his train of thought about two decades ago.