Russian roulette has only one bullet in its chamber. The cylinder spins, the trigger is pulled, and everyone waits to see whether fate — or failure — will fire first.
The Philippines has begun playing its own version of that game.
This time, however, we keep spinning the barrel and pointing the gun at the wrong perpetrator. Instead of confronting the chain of failures that made the tragedy possible, we have chosen to fixate on one downloadable game.
In the aftermath of the shooting incident at San Jose National High School in Tacloban City on June 22, where two minors were involved and opened fire inside the school premises, killing three students and injuring 20 others, the country immediately searched for the “why.”
Days after reports surfaced that one of the suspects had played GoreBox — a physics-based sandbox game centered on virtual experimentation and destruction — the government’s attention quickly shifted to the game itself.
On June 30, the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC) announced that they have coordinated with Google and Valve to restrict access to GoreBox in the country while authorities investigated its possible role in the incident. The move followed calls to tighten age restrictions and temporarily limit the game’s availability in the country.
Earlier, DILG Secretary Jonvic Remulla went further, urging the permanent ban of violent video games, arguing that they “desensitize young people into the elements of death, elements of violence, and elements of murder.”
“Maraming puwedeng malubhang mangyayari. Now having said that, I believe also that games espousing violence like Gorebox should be permanently banned in the Philippines,” Remulla said during a press conference on June 25.
It looks like a shot at the problem.
But it risks missing the target entirely.
After all, a game can be restricted — but can the deeper failures that enabled this tragedy be blocked just as easily?
Police investigators have since revealed that the attack had allegedly been planned for more than a month, with the two minors reportedly exchanging messages and preparing for the assault long before the shooting.
Violence of this scale was not an impulsive reaction after playing a game — it was deliberate.
Blaming a video game for school violence is like blaming the bullet while ignoring everyone who placed it in the chamber. The game may have appeared in the suspects’ digital history, but that alone does not prove it pulled the trigger.
Even the game’s creator, Felix Filip, has emphasized that GoreBox is intended for adults aged 18 and above, carries warnings about its content, and is meant for “fictional entertainment” — not as a glorification of real-world violence.
Upon further investigation, authorities found themselves looking far beyond the game.
Police are examining reports that the suspects may have experienced prolonged bullying, the ease with which they allegedly obtained firearms, and whether the attack may have been influenced by broader forms of online radicalization.
The firearms themselves tell another story.
The 14-year-old allegedly used the service firearm of his police officer aunt, while the handgun used by the 15-year-old was traced to his grandfather. Those revelations shift the conversation away from what games children play to a far more pressing question: how were minors able to gain access to deadly weapons in the first place?
During a Senate hearing, Police Staff Sergeant Arla Ray Paciencia testified that her nephew had allegedly entered her locked house through a window and forcibly opened a locked locker to retrieve her issued service firearm.
“[My nephew] unlawfully entered my own house… He forcibly damaged my locker. It was locked, and my house was locked as well,” Paciencia said.
The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) also found that the 15-year-old acted with discernment under the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act, indicating that he understood the nature and consequences of his actions.
These findings point to the fact that the child was not simply doing a mindless imitation of violence but he was conscious of his decision.
Further, the investigation has likewise widened beyond firearm access.
Senator Risa Hontiveros, chair of the Senate panel on women, children, family relations, and gender equality, also explored whether one suspect may have been influenced by the US-based extremist online network known as “764.”
The group is believed to operate within a broader online system associated with nihilistic violent extremism (NVE), a form of extremism that glorifies violence, chaos, and self-harm without a coherent political or religious ideology. Rather than recruiting through traditional extremist organizations, these networks allegedly prey on socially isolated and vulnerable minors through gaming communities, social media platforms, and encrypted messaging applications before moving them into private online platforms.
Likewise, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has raised the possibility that the Tacloban shooting may reflect a pattern of NVE. Authorities are now examining whether the suspects were exposed to online communities that normalize and encourage youth to imitate or carry out violent acts for notoriety or chaos.
If proven, then the concern extends far beyond one downloadable game, that beneath it, there is an operating online ecosystem capable of grooming and manipulating children across digital platforms.
That possibility reminds us to look beyond the surface. Deep within the internet’s most visible platforms lie darker networks and communities where the uneducated, and vulnerable can be exploited.
And the deeper the investigation goes, the clearer it becomes: parental responsibility, firearm security, online radicalization, school safety, and online platform safeguards all deserve scrutiny — not just GoreBox.
Around the world, violent video games have repeatedly been blamed after school shootings, yet decades of research have failed to establish a direct causal relationship between playing them and committing mass violence.
That is why the conversation should not end with banning a single application. Prevention requires confronting the deeper failures that made the tragedy possible.
Even Senator Paolo Benigno “Bam” Aguirre Aquino IV, who rejected proposals to ban video games outright, citing studies showing no correlation between video games and incidences of school shootings.
“Magpi-50 years na rin iyong mga video games, pero it’s always a convenient scapegoat sa tuwing may nangyayaring insidente ng karahasan,” Aquino said.
Instead, he pushed for measures that directly address school safety, including the proposed School Safety Act, stronger parental involvement, and greater accountability from gaming platforms.
“Dahil pang-bata iyan, iyong developers mayroong silang responsibility na ma-monitor, ma-check at ma-ban iyong mga predators o iyong mga tao doon na may masasamang balak,” the Senator added.
Thus, the investigation is far from over. Authorities continue to examine other circumstances surrounding the attack. The evidence so far points to a web of failures — not a single downloadable application.
Because school violence does not emerge overnight. It is often the culmination of problems that have been building for months — or even years. It grows where bullying is ignored, where mental health struggles go unnoticed, where children are left unsupervised online, where dangerous communities manipulate vulnerable youth, and where firearms find their way into the hands of the minors.
A video game cannot explain all of that.
This is not to excuse violent content or dismiss the importance of age restrictions in applications or softwares. Children should not have unrestricted access to games intended for adults. Parents, schools, gaming platforms, and the government all share the responsibility of protecting young people from harmful content.
But reducing this tragedy to a single game ignores the far deeper failures that allowed it to happen.
If this has taught us anything, it is that there is no single culprit to aim at.
We keep asking why a child downloaded GoreBox. Perhaps, we should also be asking who else reached that child before the shooting. We should be asking why months of planning went unnoticed, why alleged bullying persisted without intervention, why children could access firearms kept by adults, how online extremist communities target vulnerable youth, and why those warning signs went unnoticed.
Those questions are harder to answer — but they are also the ones that could prevent another life from paying the price.
The Philippines cannot keep spinning the chamber, hoping each new ban will prevent the next incident. Because the real target was never the game alone.
It should be the failures that allowed bullying to persist, firearms to reach children, mental health concerns to be overlooked, NVEs to flourish, and vulnerable youth to fall through the cracks.
If we aim at the easiest, most convenient target every time rather than the right ones, then we gamble with another generation of students.
And sooner or later, another innocent life is left to chance.
Arabella Nicole Aralar is the Associate Editor – Internal of The Angelite for the Publication Year 2026-2027, and writes opinions under the column “Arcanic”
The views and opinions of the editor does not necessarily reflect those of the publication.
