Xbox runaway found dead - News, Gadgets & Tech - The Independent Xbox runaway found dead NZ Herald Staff Thursday, 6 November 2008 A Canadian boy who ran away from home after his parents confiscated his Xbox has been found dead in a cornfield. The body of 15-year-old Brandon Crisp was found after weeks of searching areas near his home in Barrie, Ontario. He had left home on his mountain bike on October 13 after arguing with his parents over his online play of hyper-realistic war game Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare on his Xbox 360. Local businesses and Xbox 360 Microsoft put up a C$50,000 reward to help find the runaway. Police received over 1000 tips. A Facebook group numbering 22,000 dedicated to finding Crisp was flooded with condolence messages when police announced the body had been found. After he fled home, snow and cold weather led emergency services to conduct massive ground searches of surrounding areas. The efforts were unsuccessful, with a group of hunters informing police when they found the body in a cornfield adjacent to the search headquarters. Father Steve Crisp told the Globe and Mail newspaper that his son's behaviour had deteriorated since he started playing the game on Xbox Live. He started wagging school and stealing money, Crisp said. "This had become his identity, and I didn't realise how in-depth this was until I took his Xbox away,' he told the newspaper. "That's like cutting his legs off.' Crisp also said that video games taking over kids' lives was "an issue that hits every parent out there." This article originally appeared in the New Zealand Herald - http://www.nzherald.co.nz Xbox runaway found dead - News, Gadgets & Tech - The Independent
You'd be surprised by how many more deaths had been caused by WoW. People literally played that game to death, playing it for days straight without eating or going to the washroom. Quite unfortunate, really... WoW isn't even a good game either...
TBH i dont see how his parents can blame the xbox. any kid out there can have an xbox and not lead a screwed up life, the real people they should be blaming is themselves. i feels sorry for them, but they should have seen the problem long before it became an issue and stepped on it then - not when he saw so addicted that he would value his xbox over his family. Is there any given reason how he died? suicide...?
They can't blame the xbox for that. The kids chooses whether to start and steal or not and if he becomes addicted you should just leave him to it.
I disagree with most of you. I know a few people who have completely because of the xbox. It becomes their life and is almost a part of them. One of my friends got the RRoD a few days ago and cannot live without his xbox, he asked me if he could borrow mine! The kid was said to be well behaived before. If you can't play in moderation a grounding is definately fair. You can't blame the parents for taking away the xbox - they were doing the right thing. The only thing you could blame them for is not restricting (or shortening a bit) playing times in the first place. Or at least when he started to go on it too much. The kid was just overly addicted and went to extreme measures. There was no need, especially over a games console. He could have changed his behaviour.
I disagree with you. Think about this, do you take away a drug attics drugs instantly without any warning? No, you don't. That's the most retarded thing you can possibly do. That drug attic will have lost his life! He'll do everything to get it back and when he can't he'll most likely die. The parents were in the wrong. What they should have done was put time limits on how long he can play the 360 and slowly decrease it. Also, I'm pretty sure this topic will be locked due to having one thread about this locked and another already exhisting.
Here is my answer to what you just said... Yes, the parents should have restricted times. Yes, the parents should have taken away the xbox. An Xbox isn't a drug - would you run away and get killed if you were grounded from it? I suppose the question asked: Should the xbox have been taken away? Has more to do with a persons moralities.
Yes the parents should have restricted times and No the parents shouldn't have taken the Xbox away. They should have slowly gotten him to do other things. They shoul have signed him up for extra class, sport, visit his family or get a part time job. Every single one of those would have been better. Each one of them would have made the kid do something else but he would still play the Xbox and be happy. You see, this is the wrong thing to ask. To the kid, the Xbox was as good as a drug. He couldn't find any other means of entertainment. He loved it. See above.
He wouldn't have wanted to do these exta classes/sports if he was addicted. With a normal child, once the xbox had been taken away, they would instinctivly changed his attitude and done what his parents tell him to do to get what he wanted back. Overall, it's down to the childs - not the parents. I've heard of people doing so before, it normal to do so, running away is an extreme.
Wow, I saw a news article saying he had run away, but I never thought he died. One one hand I feel sad for his death, on the other he's completely stupid and its people like him that give the games industry/lifestyle a bad image.
That really is quite sad. And my parents took my Xbox 360 too so I can relate, but I'm not going to run away because of it. *has thoughts of running away*