A rather sad and nasty little controversy is brewing over in the States concerning the suicide of a young gamer earlier this month. A report posted on, of all places, the Sofia News Agency website claimed that the 'teenager' took an overdose of pills and antifreeze and then logged onto the videogame forum metalgearsolid.org to inform other users that he was dying.
According to the report:
"The other forum members did not believe him and even made fun of him while he shared with them every gruesome detail of his dying agonies."
The story was later picked up by other agencies, who seemed to add their own embellishments - including the suggestion that the victim switched on his webcam to broadcast his final hours.
Since then, several games sites, including Gaminghorizon and metalgearsolid.org itself, have taken issue with the events as portrayed in the agency story. There was, apparently, no web cam, and fellow forum users attempted to talk the gamer into seeking medical help, even managing to contact him via his IP address. Gamepolitics.com later posted a transcript from what it claims is an AIM chat with an administrator at Metalgearsolid.org who refutes the story as related by the Sofia news agency.
Strangely, almost uniquely perhaps, this controversy has been played out away from the grasp of the major international news sources - instead, trickling through tech news sites, forums and foreign agencies. As a consequence, perhaps, the details remain fuzzy. Is this a story about willful misrepresentation, or technically uncertain journalists picking up vague reports and misinterpreting them?
According to Gaminghorizon, AFP, the international newswire service that picked up on the Bulgarian story, has corrected its take on the events, although news sites that ran with AFP's original version, including CNN and Yahoo have apparently yet to make alterations to their reports.
Ultimately, the lack of major international media coverage has lent this sequence of events an air of unreality, of illegitimacy. A tragedy quietly perpetrated and pulled apart online.
