It's already a matter of record that Anders Behring Breivik wrote about using Call of Duty to hone his marksmanship before he shot 69 people to death last year. But yesterday he testified in a Norwegian court about the roles that the first-person-shooter series and World of Warcraft played in his life leading up to the attack.
According to a report in The Guardian, Breivik said he used COD to practice "target acquisition" and trained with a holographic weapon sight—probably one like this—like those used in military organizations all over the world:
"If you are familiar with a holographic sight, it's built up in such a way that you could have given it to your grandmother and she would have been a super marksman. It's designed to be used by anyone. In reality it requires very little training to use it in an optimal way. But of course it does help if you've practised using a simulator."
The confessed mass murderer also talked about WoW, defending the MMO against claims that it had anything to do with the skills he used to plan last summer's attacks:
"Some people like to play golf, some like to sail, I played WoW. It had nothing to do with 22 July. It's not a world you are engulfed by. It's simply a hobby."
" WoW is only a fantasy game, which is not violent at all. It's just fantasy. It's a strategy game. You co-operate with a lot of others to overcome challenges. That's why you do it…"
In his remarks to the court, Breivik said that the year living at home with his mother playing WoW allowed him to work on his 1500-plus page manifesto and that Blizzard's hit MMO provided a smokescreen for the "suicide action" he was planning:
I played on the idea that: 'Ooh, I've become addicted to games.' That was my primary cover."
Family members of some of Breivik's victims—many of whom were children—were in the courtroom. When the prosecution asked the killer how he thought they might be feeling, he replied by saying, "They are probably reacting in a natural way, with disgust and horror."
(image courtesy of AP)
[Thanks, tipster James]
Anders Breivik 'trained' for shooting attacks by playing Call of Duty [The Guardian]