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Thyroid

Boy Runs Away, Dad Blames Xbox, Microsoft does the stupid thing

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So there's this kid up here in Canada that's been making the news lately: because he skipped school to play Call of Duty 4, 15-year old Brandon was grounded and his Xbox taken from him. Nothing wrong with that.

But what Brandon Crisp decides to do in retaliation is run away.

There's been no trace of him since, with the exception of his bike being found along train tracks.

The parents are rightly worried, and are concerned he might have met someone online who tricked him, lured him and then harmed him. As a result, they've put-up a reward for his (safe?) return: USD $19500. What Microsoft does is they add another $25000 to the reward money.

My question: has it not occurred to them that someone could exploit this, pretend they've lost their child and get a free $25000 from Microsoft later on? I'm sure they're doing this to cover their asses so they don't get sued but it's still a very stupid thing to do.

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omfg my err cat.... has...ummm run away? yes. .cat, he's gone. He was watching me play fable II, or like sleeping near me anyway, and now he's just gone ... err fuck i need to find him. It;s all your fault Peter Molyneux!

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25000 dollars just for some good publicity? That's nothing.

Microsoft make themselves look like they care and people buy Xbox 360s because they think they do.

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I think it's more the other way around, that Microsoft is covering their ass ahead of time, sort of like what twmac just said.

I think this news is really funny for some reason, like I want to tell the parents that's what happens when they get between a boy and his video games.

But that's the evil bastard in me, and it will be a really sad story where I'll feel bad for everyone involved if we find out this kid is hurt or in trouble.

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I can almost garuntee that the kid was being bullied at school, or something else was going on. CoD4 was the excuse for playing truant, but there's always a deeper reason, especially with a reaction like this.

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25000 dollars just for some good publicity? That's nothing.

Microsoft make themselves look like they care and people buy Xbox 360s because they think they do.

People probably won't buy $25,000 worth of Xbox 360s because they see this news story.

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I'm wondering if we'll find out who specifically decided to namedrop the Xbox 360 and Call of Duty 4. Not just Call of Duty even, number 4. Is it that taboo to just be vague and say a kid was grounded from playing his video games?

Did the media get the exact information or did the Dad want to let it be known that Call of Duty 4 is where you meet predator's online?

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CoD4 was name-dropped, everything else was just like, "Oh he got addicted to his Xbox, we took it from him, so he ran away."

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Well, this has turned-out badly. Brandon Crisp has turned-up dead, found by deer hunters. The suspected cause is hypothermia (or freezing to death), but there's an autopsy scheduled for today.

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Wait, what ? Can anybody explain the parent's train of thought ?

There isn't. They're shocked, saddened and grieved by his death. To be honest it's great they're using their publicity to start a charity.

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OK, I have to admit my comment was pretty heartless but I'd still stick to it since I still think this story gets even more surreal as it develops* ... but since my comment brings nothing to the table, there was no reason for me to post it in the first place and I shouldn't have.:tdown: for me.

Anyway, to clarify my feelings : it simply feels outlandish to me that, upon finding their son's corpse and even before his funeral, a couple would think of starting a charity and evoke such strange reason for it. I'd think that, seeing the condition of the death, this would be a time of self-introspection.

*so much, in fact, that I can't make any emotional connection with the parents. My fault, I guess.

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Me too. They're doing a good thing.

My question: has it not occurred to them that someone could exploit this, pretend they've lost their child and get a free $25000 from Microsoft later on? I'm sure they're doing this to cover their asses so they don't get sued but it's still a very stupid thing to do.

In theory. Making a plan like that work wouldn't exactly be easy for anyone though: finding someone to look after your kid while appearing on national TV, having the acting chops to pull that off, having the strength to withstand constant press attention under pressure, making sure noone spots your kid, coming up with plausible and investigatable story for disappearance and safe return, then keeping your kid quiet about it in perpetuity afterward. All of that while constantly having the police and the press poking around. It's not like noone has done anything like that before, but there aren't many people who could pull it off and I doubt anyone will try for the sake of $25K (Attention is a more likely motive).

It may annoy fans when games companies do things like offer rewards when people have already started slinging mud, and we may just see games companies bending over to anti-games journalism, but that isn't what happened here. The press (at least, that linked in this thread) reported it in a very reasonable way from the start, and by doing what they did, MS put themselves above reproach while the sad facts of this story played out. Likewise for Sony with the LBP recall; many fans saw it as unnecessary, but it took any wind right out of the sails of critics and they ended up with Muslim groups on their side instead of speaking out against them.

The parents weren't going to be thinking very rationally since their son had gone missing. Meeting a predator online was probably one of the more subtle fears they had during all of this, and unfortunately one of their worst was realised. There's no anti-games agenda there, just a very sad story about a kid dying.

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