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Some of the most widely publicized incidents involving death or violence and video games are the Columbine High School shootings and the more recent suicide of Shawn Woolley. In the case of the Columbine tragedy, many lawmakers and media outlets began to blame video games and television as the cause of the two accomplices" behavior. It was found that both played games that had violence in them, and in the lawmakers" thinking this was as strong as proof that video games had caused the violence. They had always wanted to pin the blame on video games somehow and this was their chance. After several outspoken senators and governors had cast down violent games and blamed them for the tragedy without any research in the matter, even some lawsuits were filed against the gaming industry. However, because of the lack of evidence, every case was thrown out in court. Many professionals also think that Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris had deep psychological problems probably caused by the way they were treated in real life, not by video games.
The other more recent tragedy was that of Shawn Woolley, a 21-year-old man who was "addicted" to a game called Everquest. Everquest is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG). This is currently a popular genre in video games that actually has less violence than the majority of games out there. However, the whole point of the game is to role-play a character in another world, and this is what has caused a large uprising against the game in this case. Shawn Woolley's mother, Elizabeth Woolley is the leader in this crusade against the game, claiming that her son was addicted to the game and that it was the eventual cause of his suicide. What many news outlets didn't report is the fact that Shawn was also diagnosed with depression and schizoid personality disorder. It seems much more likely that these disorders where the cause for his suicide, as they already made him mentally unstable.
