Taiwanese Gamer Witnesses Murder in Internet Cafe, Keeps Playing Games in Bloodstained Clothes

I’ve written a lot recently about murders revolving around video games in China (i.e. this, this, this, and this), but the latest gruesome story comes from Taiwan, and it involves gamers being not so much horrifyingly violent as horrifyingly indifferent.

On April 3, an 18-year-old walked into an internet cafe in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, and stabbed a man several years older than him to death with a watermelon knife. The crime was caught on the internet cafe’s surveillance camera, and nearly as concerning as the murder itself is the fact that none of the many bystanders in the internet cafe (you can see some of them in the image above, milling around immediately after the murder had been committed) attempted to stop it from happening. Even more extreme, one female gamer (that’s her in the top right in the image below) ignored the crime completely and continued to play games even through the crime happened so close to her that blood had splattered onto her clothes, according to eyewitnesses.

It’s hard to imagine what game could be so engrossing that you don’t want to quit even when blood is quite literally flying around you, and the Shenzhen Satellite TV station’s news report on the incident doesn’t report that or interview the girl directly.

(Shenzhen Satellite TV)