Well, maybe I could see it as a war crime if your CO gave you a copy of Call of Duty and told you to play it, and regard it as the entirety of your training, disregarding all other laws and orders.

But of course that's not the case.

Duke Nukem Forever is definitely a violation of internation human rights treaties.

Arrow in the knee jokes in December are a war crime

heinekenftw: Should I mention that time I slaughtered everyone in Cheydenhall because I was bored while playing Oblivion?

It was more satisfying in Morrowind, since if you killed vital NPCs, a message would pop up...

"With this character's death, the thread of prophecy is severed.
Restore a saved game to restore the weave of fate,
or persist in the doomed world you have created."

That's when you know the world was screwed. So just destroy EVERYONE.

heinekenftw: 308,000 kills on mine.

I just tried to look up mine, and apparently battle.net doesn't have a statistics section.

Sure, you could consider it a war crime, I guess. While you're at it, how about paying compensation for every time a player is shot or killed in game.

A Dark Evil Omen: So, having read the article:
ICRC: "Training people to commit war crimes is not okay, no matter what."
Sensationalist dickwad: "What if they were using virtual training?"
ICRC: "Irrelevant, it's the training that's the problem, not the medium."
SD: "SO YOU'RE SAYING YOU WANT TO MAKE VIOLENT VIDEO GAMES A WAR CRIME?!"
ICRC: "What the fark are you talking about? No, that is not what I said, idiot."
SD: "THEY WANT TO MAKE VIDEO GAMES WAR CRIMES!1"

Precisely.

Lock James Earl Jones up for destroying Aalderan. Or George Lucas.

saintstryfe: Look up your character in the Armory, click Achievements against the left side, then the Statistics tab, and then kills along the left.

Hah. I knew it was there somewhere! Less than 300k... More than I expected for a healer honestly.

Firethorn: I'm reminded of these sorts of graphs:

Can I see what happened to those statistics after 2004?

See, while I don't think video games lead to violent crime, I don't think they're that much of a deterrent on it either. Typically, in criminal statistics the largest factor tends to be demographics. Since violent crime is generally committed by 18-24 males, the decline of statistics are, more or less, typically a function of there being less of them around. The years from 96-04 are declinations in crime across the board not because of video games, but because Generation-X had grown up and the Millenials were too young. I'm willing to suspect that after 2005 crime rates began to steadily rise again because the children of the boomers, the next demographic bulge, the Millenials, born 82-99 with a peak years of 87-92, are entering their "crime committing" years and all predictive indicators suggest a crime statistics spike.

I could be wrong, however. As a fallback theory, I think the internet has something to do with it too. A lot of crime results simply from boredom/idleness. Internet keeps people busy and occupied like never before.

I guess I'm doubly screwed for liking to shoot people in the back of the head from a sniper's nest then...