I. Introduction
The enjoyment gained through playing games compels both adults and children to partake in them, adding to the perception of both groups that games are an indispensable activity in their lives. Previous studies have shown that adults derive as much fun during a game as a child, which is supported by findings that game playing at any age stimulates a reduction of stress and tension as well as providing entertainment (Nair, 2017). Due to expeditious development of computer technology, PC games rapidly became a common feature in many people’s lives. Further progression facilitated even more widespread access and increased encouragement to play games was provided to a universal audience. According to the ESA (Entertainment Software Association) 59% of Americans play PC games and the average age of players is 31 (Gallagher and Michael, 2011). ATUS (The American Time Use Survey) stated that people in the 15-19 age group play on average 0.85 hours a day per week, but only spend 0.12 hours reading and 0.67 on outdoor recreation (Ward, 2018). Researchers have noted that when the sales of PC games increase, the amount of time that children devote to computers increases forthwith (Stinebrickner and Stinebrickner, 2007). Another study conducted by the Kaiser foundation, reported that children between the ages of 8-18 spend 1.5 hours a day playing on their PC (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2010).
The actual birth of PC games becoming a favored entertainment tool could be argued in the early 1940s, when a simulated version of picking up the matchstick emerged (McCaffrey, 2020). However, according to many authorities it was Higginbotham with his creation of “Tennis for Two” game at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1958 that the era began (Higinbotham, 1958). Following on in succession “spacewar” was invented by a group of graduated MIT students in 1961 (Dillon, 2011), before the launch of ATARI by Bushnell and Dabney in 1972 (Ford, 2012). This latter creation instigated the huge popularization of PC games leading to the debuting of coin-operated arcade games (Baer, 2005). The endorsement from the public of such PC games inspired further innovation in the form of the first FPS (First Person Shooter) titled Wolfenstein 3D being released in 1992, and in only 18 months it sold over 100,000 copies (Antoniades, 2009). Promptly in 1993 a second FPS game named DOOM was produced (Leukart, 2013). In the ensuing two years around 10 million people were playing DOOM and its popularity rose above the level of Windows 95 use (Kushner, 2004). According to the statistics mentioned it is estimated that the PC games market value is worth nearly 78.61 billion US dollars. As shown in
Figure 1, the expected market value will rise further by 2020 to over 90 billion US dollars, indicating the population of players will reach 2.5 billion globally (Games, 2016).
As a consequence of the progress in internet technology, PC games have largely been replaced by online games, yet computer games still continue to be as popular an interest as they were previously. Online games are deemed to be a much more interactive and exciting form of entertainment by many with the added advantage that they can be played by more than one person over an internet connection (Chen et. al., 2004). To play an online game entails no technical provision other than an internet connection; hence the estimated number of players reached 113 million in 2005, generating 3.2 billion US dollars (Johns, 2006).
Figure 2 illustrates the global PC online game market expansion and the figures for 2018 growth to 32.6 billion U.S. dollars. So, it can be deduced that there are around 55.2 million online gamers in the U.S. at present which is expected to grow by 3% in 2020 (Freedman, 2018).
The continuation of this chapter is organized as follows: Section II presents the link between pc games and crime. Blue Whale Challenge is presented in Section III. Section III is divided into 6 subsections, spread of game, game of death, cases of game, the killer, potential victims, and prevention techniques. Finally, conclusions and future recommendations are given in Section IV.
II. PC Games and Crime
As the clamor for new PC games surged, companies embarked on the large-scale production of a wide range of new styles of games with the aim of meeting the varied players requirements. As shown in
Figure 3 and
Figure 4, stream website data was used by Gough to analysis the number of PC games released per year and as certain the categories (Lin et. al., 2018).
The content of the various games produced differ, however a large proportion of them incorporate a core theme of violence and crime. Mortal Combat and Call of Duty are two such examples (Markey et. al., 2015). In consideration of the regular villainy and brutality typified in most games, most people ratiocinate that players will be led into criminal and violent activities in their everyday life (Anderson et. al., 2010). The first recorded crime committed by a consistent player of violent games was a school shooting in Alaska (Jaccarino, 2013). The severity and horror of the event provoked a significant fear of aggressive games, and in 2012 Senator Jay Rockerfeller of West Virginia being convinced of the detrimental effect of the games on young people, contributed huge funds to the National Academy of Sciences in order to undertake an investigation into the impact of such games on players. Swiftly after, the sale of violent and resemblant games was declared illegal in California by the US Supreme Court in the same year (Ferguson, 2012, Herrera, 2016).
In the field of researchers, there are contrasting opinions. Ferguson stated that, there is no verifiable connection between PC games and violent crimes (Ferguson, 2013). On the other hand, Karlinsky argues that there is a strong link between PC games and violent crimes (Karlinksy, 2012).
In conclusion to the assortment of studies that have been carried out, no evidence exists of a link between violent crime and PC games. In contrast, corroboration that playing PC games has been acknowledged as a cause of increased aggressiveness.
In 1998 Grossman’s research observed a large increase in the number of people regularly playing violent games, yet despite the rapidly rising number of players, the total number of violent crimes was declining (Grossman, 1998). Further reviews of studies, for instance one by Clayborn using ESA data, revealed the highest rate of violent crime reported in any one year in the US was in 1980, when with a population of 226,545,805; violent crime perpetrators amounted to 10.2% of the community. At this time, the PC game had not yet been invented. However, when inhabitant numbers reached 312,780,968 in 2012, with an estimated 25,400,000 of them playing PC games, figures had decreased to 4.7% of citizens commuting violent offenses. In accordance with these findings, Clayborn deduced that there was no link between violent crime and games (Clayborn and Garrison, 2015).
In 2013 Stacey conducted an investigation into sales of PC game genre, from his analysis it was determined that 85% of games sold involved violence. Despite this ascertainment of the public’s involvement with aggressive recreation, violent crime had continued to lessen. On the other hand, crime rates had been noted to escalate during an upsurge of strategy or simulation game sales (Stacey, 2016).
Researchers using VGChartz data to analysis the 30 best-selling PC games reiterated the outcome of comparable studies by confirming no connection had been established between violent games and violent crime in reality (Cunningham, 2016, Dahl and DellaVigna, 2009).
According to the American Psychological Association and various researchers reports, observations have been noted of players of violent games exhibiting an increase in aggressive behavior, although it was also detected that the number of players committing offenses or behaving violently in society had significantly decreased (McCaffree and Proctor 2018, Casey, 2015).
In conclusion to the range of studies undertaken so far, it has been determined that violent computer games rather than increasing the crime rate have in fact been reported to diminish the level of criminal activity. In contrast varying results were obtained from analysis after online games became prevalent (Chen et. al., 2004, October).
According to a limited number of studies in published literature, the rate of online gaming has gradually increased since 2012 and this increase has promptly affected crime rates. A study in Taiwan revealed online games effected an increase in crime rates, although violent crime rates have not risen in an equal manner (Chen, 2005).
III. Blue Whale Challenge
As mentioned earlier, the effect of PC or online gaming had been previously considered to be a factor in the reduction of violent crimes. However, evaluations of crime conditions abruptly altered when the blue whale challenge game entered the games world. After playing the game and completing the challenge a substantial proportion of its players committed violent acts and/or took their own lives (Mahadevaiah and Nayak 2018).
There are many games incite players to violence or death, in today’s literature. For example, Mariam, Momo, Blue Baby and Blue Whale Challenge. Approximately these games show similar features to each other.
• Mariam: is a game that originated in Saudi Arabia. This game sends few tasks as a question and try to learn players personal data, such credit card password, social media password, home address etc. The game owner uses this information to threat and stole money (Kömürcü, 2018a).
• Momo: the starting point of this game is unknown, but it has been determined that it is played in Spanish-speaking countries. This game finds its players with social media and send them violent images. Through these pictures, it aims to threaten its players and steal their personal information. As a result of these threats, the game owner steal users many. Some young players in Argentina, unable to withstand these threats, committed suicide and ended their lives (Kömürcü, 2018b).
• Blue Baby: the starting point of this game is unknown. This game gives few tasks to users. The purpose of these tasks is to prepare player for suicide. At the end of these tasks, the players end their lives by committing suicide (Atlan, 2020).
• Blue Whale Challenge: the game is the first of the games that drag players with death. As mentioned below, spread of this game is much more than the other deadly games and the dead rate is huge than the others (Nair, 2017).
A close inspection of the Blue Whale game discloses the following insight into what the game entails and the origin of it. Allegedly it first appeared in Russia and was developed by a Russian called Philipp Budeikin although it has since been known to surface in other countries. The name is believed to be taken from the largest living creature the Blue Whale, which due to environmental changes of the modern world have been known to purposely kill themselves (Nair, 2017). Based on the self-destruction feature, the game instructs the player to complete usually harmful challenges before ultimately instructing them to commit suicide. The producer of the game insists that players of Blue Whale already have psychological problems and are biological waste, therefore his aim is to rid society of these unwanted people (Geldenhuys, 2017).
A. Spread of the Game
The game is accessed online and needs no other installation package but an internet connection, therefore allowing fast dissemination. It first emerged on VK.com (Vkontakte) a Russian social media site, but subsequently spread to further media networking sites frequently used in everyday life, such as Facebook and Instagram (Yılmaz and Candan, 2018).
Figure 5 shows the spread rate of the game worldwide (Ozturkcan, 2019). The colorful places shows that the death cases of all around the world. Light blue means, there is not much death in that place, but dark blue explains that there is much death cases. The grey places means that there is not any death cases yet. So, according to the colors in the map, the dark blue country which is Russia, is the most dangerous country and country with the highest number of death cases. Light blue colors, which is part of USA, Argentina, and Portugal, are the less dangerous country than Russia. Rest of the world, which is grey color, have no death cases yet. In the light of this colorful map, it is easy to say the game has spread half of the world and become more dangerous.
In the first instance social media users are contacted by a “Curator Account”. Often this so-called curator has hacked the account of the user ahead of approaching them, gaining access to all their personal information, then without warning the stolen account of a social media user will directly link up to the Blue Whale Challenge. Following the setting up of online communication between the administer of the game and the social media users, the game of death begins (Khattar et. al., 2018, Baghel, 2018). Any reluctant account holder who refuses to play the game is typically threatened with harm to either themselves or to their family or perhaps pressurized with personal information that was stolen from their account (Rathore et. al., 2019). In the climate of constant networking of players and encouragement of others to partake in the game, it has begun to expand universally.
B. Potential Victims
Although there is no age range in death games played on social media but generally, targets are under the age of 20. A more important determination than the age range is that the players have psychological problems. So, game owner tries to find player who has psychological problems, according to their posts on social media. After find a user, the game owner sends few tasks to get personal information. Game owner uses this information to threat player and steal money or kill user (Malhotra and Jindal, 2021).
According to research, the initiation of the Blue Whale Challenge commences with players being approached by means of a private message from the curator of the game, and it is believed these players are often singled out, frequently people experiencing symptoms of depression or having psychological problems. Players once involved in the game then encourage other like-minded players that they meet online to take part (Khattar at. al., 2018). Whether it is peer pressure, threats or even curiosity of the challenge, it seems widespread networking enables the discovery of potential players wherever they are in the world.
C. A Game of Death
As in mentioned above, there are many dangerous and deathly games in social media. Even if any social media user does not want to play this kind of game, this kind of game still find user and force him/her to play. Almost all of the kind of these games are dangerous but the most dangerous one is Blue Whale Challenge because at the end of game player kills himself /herself.
The game is a role-playing game, fluctuating between the real world and the virtual world, but the tasks given to players have real and lasting effects (Kumar et. al., 2017). In total 50 tests requiring evidence of completion will be given by the curator commencing with 9 initial tasks that may appear inoffensive to most people. Nevertheless, those introductory tasks deliberately aim to disrupt the psychology of a person and to exploit any vulnerabilities. Next, with a focus on intensifying the control over a player, a further 15 tasks of self-harm actions will be demanded before finally the player is compelled to carry out the remaining 26 tasks, comprising of depraved activities that are in preparation for the eventual instruction to commit suicide (Hyrynsalmi et. al., 2017). The conclusion of the game is accomplished by the player heeding the curator one final time, and involves the implementation of the most sinister request, generally consisting of the horrifying directive of “Jump off a high building/Take your life.” All the tasks assigned by Curators are shown in
Appendix A.
D. Cases of Game Playing
Some of the tasks given in the game are horrifying and perverse, and because of this game a great number of people have needlessly ended their own lives (Mullin, 2017).
Table 1 illustrates the results of statistical research concerning the death rate.
The illustration in
Table 1 shows the game caused many deaths in Russia, which is where the game originated. After Russia, India is the most affected with at least 10 cases noted (Pathak, 2017).
The most notorious serial killers of our time with a joint victim count of 356 confirmed cases between them are Harold Shipman and Luis Garavito (Benecke, 2005, Smith, 2004, Latta, 2015). The former a local General practitioner murdered 218 people by overdosing them over a period of 23 years (1975-1998). The latter slaughtered 138 people during a much shorter time span of 7 years (1992-1999) (Abe, 2017). An inspection of the acknowledged mortality rate in connection with the Blue Whale game, reveals that in the last 4 years since its estimated appearance until now, 173 known victims exist (Shakir and Sharma, 2018). Which accordingly places the game as being the biggest killer ever in a single year, in addition to being responsible for the second highest total number of deaths. Moreover, the game is still accessible on the internet leading to the possibility of further fatalities.
E. The Killer
As previously mentioned, the creator of the Blue Whale game was Philipp Budeikin. Two years ago, he and his associates that were acting as curators were arrested and imprisoned and they continue to be detained currently. Despite this development, it appears the game is still in existence and people even now are continuing to play via social media accounts. As shown in
Figure 6/
7/
8, the surfacing of tasks and photos on the internet are ongoing.
When the posts were examined, according to time difference between first and last posts, around 85% of people continued posting about Blue Whale for less than a hour on VK. For Instagram, the range of time differs between first and last posts but is approximately 0-22.5 hours. For Twitter, the range can reach up to 2,000 hours (Mukhra et. al., 2019).
Even with the inventors and curators removed the continuance of the game is still happening on several social media sites. The key issue is to identify by what means the game is still attainable, as well as preventing the ensuing fatalities it initiates. Answers to these queries are critical, and proposals for consideration regarding the best tactics to shield prospective players are essential.
F. Prevention
In order for the cessation of peoples’ entanglement in the Blue Whale game and the deaths associated with it to be affected, a comprehensive solution needs to be found. Despite the high level of condemnation from various agents and efforts to terminate its accessibility, research indicates that currently numerous people are still playing, and deaths are still occurring.
Putting a block on the game is an inviable solution as the game emerges on the internet under several aliases, such as Wake Me Up at 4:20, A Silent House and A Sea of Whales. Furthermore, difficulty of elimination is resultant on the fact that it is not downloaded as an IOS or Android application but surfaces as a pop-up in a private message or link via social media accounts (Khasawneh, 2020).
Internationally, numerous social media organizations have developed and endeavored to utilize procedures in order to thwart communication between Blue Whale and potential players although they have been deemed insufficient. One such example is Tumblr, which in May 2016 having detected significant network activity in relation to Blue Whale, attempted a counteraction strategy that came in the form of issuing warning messages to users before revealing search results, in addition to providing free of charge local phone numbers offering psychological support. A similar concept is used on YouTube when a search for “Blue Whale” is implemented. However, Instagram proposes a slight variation in that it presents a help window offering three options; Getting Help, Viewing Results, and Cancel when any hashtag associated with Blue Whale is searched (Ardınç, 2019).
Unfortunately, these techniques mentioned are largely flawed and inadequate, therefore enhanced solutions are a vital requirement therefore, some improvements to boost the sufficiency of available warnings and deterrents are suggested.
• The initial window offering assistance/help to a user who makes searches concerning the Blue Whale Challenge, will presently only appear if the precise words using the English language are used in a search. On the other hand, if a translation of the same words in another language are typed, a site will be directly accessed. Accordingly, applying word analysis on the language used in a search should be obligatory on all social media sites.
• Beyond word analysis, every social media site must use approved and verified computer vision techniques and image analysis methods.
In literature, a wide range of computer vision techniques and image analysis are comprehensively detailed, with rationalization of usage in several areas such as, industry, agriculture, medical and robotics (Kodagali and Balaji, 2012). The same techniques are significantly capable of being used within the scope of crime and forensic fields, which greatly benefit from photo analysis of crime scenes. Regrettably, social media websites do not exploit this expertise (Wang et. al., 2016).
Figure 9 illustrates the proposed system outline for testing and analysis of posted photos in any social media sites. The system outline is divided into 2 parts, Forensic analysis, and Prevention Methods.
The primary stage in forensic analysis is to use computer vision techniques on a given photo.
Figure 10 and
Figure 11 represents a detailed explanation about forensic analysis with flowcharts and sample of python source code. However, python programing language is not necessary to use this kind process. Any programing language can easily analyze and do these steps.
For most step encompasses the restoration of a photo to a suitable appearance, correcting any deficient resolution, contrast or focus qualities (Urschler et. al., 2012). On a clear photo both content and comparison analysis will be undertaken on the image and conclusions formed. Content analysis comprises of the capacity to evaluate patterned injuries such as blood splatter, whereas comparison analysis can detect any similarities between a photo already in a database and a newly scrutinized one (Hanji, and Rajpurohit, 2013). In the event of these processes becoming utilized in social media, and the outcome suggesting suspicious actions, such as indications of harm, blood or violence, the activation of a prevention method could be prompted.
Figure 12 shown one particular method that is a plausible prevention avenue to close down posts from Blue Whale, is to monitor the source of bloody or maniacal photos or posts. A first-time user/searcher would receive a notification offering help and the offensive material posted automatically added to a database. Whilst a subsequent disreputable post would set off a series of measures to frustrate participation in such subject matter and to safeguard a user. Firstly, the notification that the photo option is blocked would be forwarded, followed by alerts to all contacts of a user, furthermore data would be sent to the nearest police station and psychology clinic. The account would then be placed on a blacklist.
To enable the mentioned analysis, the system should work on 3 parameters, namely size, shape, and color. Color is the most important parameter, as without it only black and white remain, which complicates the recognition of details like blood. Size is the measurement that determines produce surface area and shape is the visual quality parameter (Mahendran et. al., 2012).
In addition to photo analysis, a further application of emotional word detection analysis would be extremely beneficial to social media sites to determine which users are suffering from psychological problems and distinguish any potential victims of Blue Whale among them.
In addition to photo analysis, a further application of emotional word detection analysis would be extremely beneficial to social media sites to determine which users are suffering from psychological problems and distinguish any potential victims of Blue Whale among them.
Figure 13 shows the proposed system outline for emotional word detection analysis. In this analysis, the prevention method is comparable to the photo prevention method, although some differences exist.
Forensic analysis shown in
Figure 14 and
Figure 15 with flowchart and python source code. In
Figure 14 and
Figure 15, the system checks the database to comprehend which language is being used. Difficulties may arise when abbreviated language is involved and one example is the common habit to omit vowels in some words while messaging on social media. On these occasions if the language remains unidentifiable, communication from the system to the user will be sent, insisting on corrections. Realization of an identifiable language will then begin the procedure of forensic analysis on text and messages.
Forensic text analysis is divided into 4 separate processes. Firstly, Tokenization divides text into separate sentences, before splitting them into single words, ensuing simplified analysis. Preprocessing and Noise Elimination then removes any redundant or noisy data, such as symbols or numbers. Finally, Text Normalization identifies any used Hashtags and Emoticons (Amato et. al., 2019).
The owners of these deathly games were arrested. Although there are no more deaths at the end of these games, there is still a possibility to be played. Even if not played, such deadly games can be updated more dangerously, and any social media user may encounter it. Despite this terrible idea and data that mentioned above, there is still no prevention technique on any social media yet.
To use this kind of prevention technique or any kind of techniques have some bad affects, such as.
However, could faster use of social media be more important than human life?
IV. Conclusion
Games are an activity that hold a special fascination for a wide range of people. Rapid advancement in technology and the internet established a huge following of PC game players, which is still in force today. Caused by the expansion of game popularity, cheaper and easier accessibility to more exciting versions of games surfaced in the form of online games. With many of them consisting of violent or aggressive scenarios, attachment and influence has steadily crept into the lives of a number of individuals in modern society. Despite research, revealing that playing violent games actually decreases violent crime in the community, as it is believed any incited aggression is used up in playing the games; contradictory conclusions have been reached in regard to the Blue Whale game. This game is a harmful role-playing game and has so far claimed the lives of 173 young people since it started 4 years ago, and although the inventor and his associates have been imprisoned, the game is still active, and people are still playing putting further lives are at risk.
This chapter aims to draw attention to violent games available to the public, and the effect and influence of violent online games can have on people has been explained. In addition to analyzation of the Blue Whale Challenge game. Forensic prevention methods have been proposed in order to attempt to discontinue the spread of the game, which in turn would end the fatalities caused by it.
V. Future Recommendations
In current published literature, no evidence of forensic analysis systems with the capability of carrying out voice or video investigation procedures exist, despite a requirement for this. Accomplishment of such systems would greatly enhance the prevention of crime and harmful behavior such as Blue Whale Challenges on the internet. On the other hand, some artificial intelligence techniques are used in forensic analysis. May be, social media uses artificial intelligence to analyze photo and text. With artificial intelligence techniques, it is easy to analyze emotions in the text or photo which user posts on his or her wall. As a result of the emotions analyzed, it may be easier to identify users without playing the game.
Furthermore, up to the present time, Blue Whale is unavailable on Android/IOS and they must continue to maintain this situation using regularly updated methods in order to avoid it becoming within reach of a mass audience. In view of the enormous tragedy Blue Whale has already caused every social media site has a responsibility to consider all new proposals.
These are the tasks which curators send player through social media
- 1.
Carve with a razor ”f57” on your hand, send a photo to the curator.
- 2.
Wake up at 4.20 a.m. and watch psychedelic and scary videos that curator sends you.
- 3.
Cut your arm with a razor along your veins, but not too deep, only 3 cuts, send a photo to the curator.
- 4.
Draw a whale on a sheet of paper, send a photo to curator.
- 5.
If you are ready to “become a whale”, carve “YES” on your leg. If not, cut yourself many times (punish yourself).
- 6.
Task with a cipher.
- 7.
Carve “f40” on your hand, send a photo to curator.
- 8.
Type “#i_am_whale” in your VKontakte status.
- 9.
You have to overcome your fear.
- 10.
Wake up at 4:20 a.m. and go to a roof (the higher the better).
- 11.
Carve a whale on your hand with a razor, send a photo to curator.
- 12.
Watch psychedelic and horror videos all day.
- 13.
Listen to music that “they” (curators) send you.
- 14.
Cut your lip.
- 15.
Poke your hand with a needle many times.
- 16.
Do something painful to yourself, make yourself sick.
- 17.
Go to the highest roof you can find, stand on the edge for some time.
- 18.
Go to a bridge, stand on the edge.
- 19.
Climb up a crane or at least try to do it.
- 20.
The curator checks if you are trustworthy.
- 21.
Have a talk “with a whale” (with another player like you or with a curator) in Skype.
- 22.
Go to a roof and sit on the edge with your legs dangling.
- 23.
Another task with a cipher.
- 24.
Secret task.
- 25.
Have a meeting with a “whale”.
- 26.
The curator tells you the date of your death and you have to accept it.
- 27.
Wake up at 4:20 a.m. and go to rails (visit any railroad that you can find).
- 28.
Don’t talk to anyone all day.
- 29.
Make a vow that “you’re a whale”.
- 30–49.
Every day you wake up at 4:20 a.m., watch horror videos, listen to music that “they” send you, make 1 cut on your body per day, talk ”to a whale”.
- 50.
Jump off a high building. Take your life.
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