beyond into a distant realm of 2028, where he fights zombies attempting to take over the planet. THE PLAYER BECOMES THE SHOOTER The common thread running through all of these games is that that player becomes the shooter, from whose vantage point behind the gun the player sees the world. The player points his weapon at his enemies and learns to pull the trigger with ever greater efficiency. Often he uses an automatic rifle with numerous rounds of ammo in every cartridge case. The enemies are always dehumanized Nazis, Vietcong, zombies and the shooter perfects the techniques of pointing accurately, squeezing the trigger smoothly, and moving on to the next victim. To be sure, thousands of young people in this world, most of them male, have played these games for hours on end, and few have gone on killing crusades. Yet only a few, I suggest, have sequestered themselves in windowless rooms in basements and, cutting themselves off from most human contact, have played these games for such unending marathon sessions as Lanza seems to have done. It is likely then, given how utterly he was secluded from the outer world, that the imagery of these games had become deeply imbedded in his memory and his psyche. In addition to this probability, we know through his acquaintances that Lanza was especially fond of using an automatic rifle for honing in on his prey.... DESENSITIZED TO ACTUAL PAIN Is it accurate to say that Lanza had become a computer come addies cinema

Other