ZeroIntelligence.net

As reported in Fort Bend Now, a student at the Houston-area Clements High School has been arrested and banned from graduation because he used the layout of his school in creating a map for a 3D first-person shooter video game. As if that wasn’t enough lunacy, a search of his house resulting in finding a hammer in his bedroom - he apparently had it in there so he could fix his bed. The hammer was confiscated as a potential weapon. The student has been determined a “terroristic threat.”

As an important side note, I should point out that terroristic threatening is not associated with terrorism. The term was in use long before domestic terrorism was brought to the forefront of national attention with the attacks of September 11, 2001. A friend of mine in Atlanta that has occasionally worked as a bartender clued me into this particular legal term some years ago. A terroristic threat can be as simple as saying, “Stop it or I’ll punch you in the nose.” Interestingly enough, a terroristic threat is in some jurisdictions a more serious crime than battery. Thus, if you really feel you must punch someone in the nose, you’re commiting one less crime, and a less serious one, if you don’t first tell your intended target.

While I’m writing about my friends, I have another friend in Birmingham that does 3D modeling as part of a career in artwork. He was commissioned to make a 3D model of a real hydroelectric dam as part of a game that let children explore the environment on and around the dam. He used the Unreal game engine and it’s likely that’s what this unfortunate student was using, as that’s arguably the top 3D modeling engine for gaming around.

Generating environments for 3D games is hard work. Shortcuts like using existing buildings, guaranteed to have realistic layouts, is an incredibly common part of getting such a project complete. I recall that when the Xbox 360 came out, one of the game publishers (I’m not remembering which one) was including in promotional materials a description of how they scoured the city for great textures they could photograph and use in the game, like doors and walls with rust, grafitti, and general wear-and-tear. The resulting games were more realistic because of it.

Basically, this kid is being punished for taking a common shortcut aiding in realism when doing intelligent software design work of the sort he could otherwise be highly paid to do shortly after his (now suspended) graduation. Or even now, had he delivered his designs via Second Life instead of via a video game.

That he’s Chinese (bringing up immediate thoughts of the Virginia Tech massacre - after all, Chinese and Koreans all look the same to the paranoid) and that school board elections are only days away undoubtedly add to the furor.