Sensationalized 'Top Gun' report blames pro gaming for death of Brandon Crisp

he Fifth Estate, a Canadian investigative reporting program that's been on the air for over three decades, recently ran a piece looking into the untimely death of gaming enthusiast Brandon Crisp, who ran away from his Ontario home last October after his parents took away his Xbox 360, and was found dead three weeks later due to injuries sustained from falling out of a tree. Within the first few minutes of the short documentary, titled "Top Gun," The Fifth Estate's angle on the piece becomes clear: Some entity or cultural force is to blame for Crisp's death, and it's going to find out what it is.

It settles at first on Crisp's infatuation with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, which is strengthened by his active participation on the MLG-owned clan-ranking site GameBattles.com. From there, it delves into the foul underworld of competitive gaming, showing how attaching cash rewards to intense, lengthy sessions with mature video games is creating an irresistibly attractive lifestyle for those who fall beneath such titles' age restrictions. All the while, it depicts the unimaginable violence present in said games, and explain the detrimental effects it has on the lives of otherwise normal youths.

We lay this outline of the 40-minute documentary before you so that you don't actually have to watch it, as the sensationalism it contains and factual liberties it takes will likely raise the gaming community's collective hackles to unprecedented levels.

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/03/08/se...-for-death-of/