ABSTRACT

On October 13, 2008, Brandon Crisp, a 15-year-old boy from the rural community of Barrie, Ontario, ran away from home following a dispute with his parents, who had confiscated his Xbox 360 due to the inordinate amount of time he had been spending playing Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare-to the extent of falling grades and skipping school. Steve Crisp, Brandon’s father, who had himself run away from home as a teenager, initially called his bluff and even helped pack his son’s knapsack, thinking “he would come home the next day with his tail tucked between his legs” (Boyle 2008). When Brandon did not in fact return home the next day, his parents reported him missing to local police authorities, who began an intensive area search using heat-sensitive cameras and a canine unit on October 18, which two weeks later broadened into a national missing person’s case.