Running Head: IS VIRTUAL REALITY CRIME A TRUE CRIME?

Is Virtual reality crime a true crime?

Dakota Schafer
Davenport University

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As technology has evolved in such a way that it has become an important staple in
society, a lot of people share their entire life through the internet. This document shows what has
been a huge side effect of virtual gaming. Virtual crime has become a lesser known effect of a
huge gaming community. However at the time that this document there were not any actions
taken against the people that committed these crimes.
This paper, "Crime in Virtual Worlds is Impacting Real Life" by Tim Guest, was created
to highlight the crimes that virtual gamers are transferring into the real world. Due to the amount
of gamers and people were playing virtual reality games, this paper helps describe what has
helped create these problems. It helps the general community learn about what is actually going
on in these virtual worlds. The paper is backed up with a ton of evidence and does a good job of
explaining this research. It encompasses a ton of different problems that are under this one
problem. He explains how people are driven to a point of murder. It also shows how people are
making thousands of dollars in a couple of weeks by using a game's glitches. The main point of
this paper is that cyber crime in virtual reality games exist and the government should
acknowledge it and should have measures in place to stop it from happening. The author does a
good job of explaining this point and has used his research to help show all the points that he
wanted to cover. This helps the reader connect to the author by taking about games that the
reader might play. This paper then does tend to cater to those who care about the games that are
created and how people are making money off of glitches.
The author is trying to show how bad a few users are abusing the system. Many users
play the game just for fun, but a few users want to do whatever they can to make real money.
New games like Destiny, which was released last year, helps prevent the monetary values by not
allowing trade. The users that the Author describes happen to be a small amount of a minority

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that have misused the system to a point where they have made thousands of dollars, but have
only been punished with a slap on the wrist by the games publishers.
This is good that gaming publishers have started to stand up but it isn't enough for the
amount of money that they have made off of the games flaws and using other players and
cheating them. The author shows this because of the incredibility from virtual reality crimes.
Like the author proves in the beginning of the paper, users are not punished for their crimes in
virtual reality. The author describes how a user decided to lend his sword in a game and his
friend sold the sword in real life for 300 yen. His friend called the police and they did nothing
about it. That man decided to kill his friend in revenge (P. 466).It is crazy to think how deep
people have attached their emotions to these games. The other problem that also peaked the
reader's interest was showing how much people are making just by doing virtual crimes. He
showed that people are purposely spending money in games to make a profit in the real world.
He explains how it is done by displaying how a man bought an island in the game, but set up
taxes and other minor things, to make a ton of money in the real world. He made upwards of
$100,000 (P. 467).
The author doesn't truly try to gain credibility in his argument. He instead tries to use his
facts and his supporting examples to show that he is telling the truth. However without these
examples, the author does not give the reader to believe what he is saying. Tim Guest is just a
writer that decided that people had to know about this crime. It would make more sense if it were
published in a technology based newspaper or magazine, but it wasn't. It was created in a science
magazine. Sadly this does not help support the authors reasoning to help create a basic
knowledge on this problem. He uses research to help prove his point. This point is to show how
in depth the use of virtual crimes has become in the technology field.

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The author appeals to his general audience quite well. He helps keep the reader intrigued
with a ton of research and stories that help drive his point home. He does do a good job by
explaining what it meant to actually commit these crimes. He does however to keep all of the
readers intrigued because he doesn't truly show how the games and gaming companies are
stopping this problem in the real world. He also did a good job of backing up his research by
explaining what it means and how they actually abused the game they were playing.
Overall the document was very well explained. It showed how users are abusing glitches
in games to make money. It encompasses everything from murder to just plain stealing from the
game creators. People have created entire careers in breaking games and misusing them for
money. The other does use a lot of examples to get his point across. He however did not explain
why he was a credible author to teach about this subject. The only background knowledge that
the reader got was from the "About This Reading" section in the book. After a bit of research on
my part, I did find out that he now had a book about technological ideas. However in the paper
he does not at all show why he was qualified to write this paper. He does however intrigue
readers by using examples that are so big and extra-ordinary.

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Reference Page
Phillips, H., & Bostian, P. (2012). The purposeful argument: A practical guide.
Boston, MA: Wadsworth ;.