...And he's got yet Another orgy of stupidity, fresh from the oven!
gc.advancedmn.com/article.php?artid=5883
Quote:
Attorney Proposes Violent Game
October 10, 2005
by: Matt Saunderson
Jack Thompson will give $10,000 to charity if any videogame company makes and releases a game based on a scenario he created.
Miami, Florida Attorney Jack Thompson, a long-time outspoken critic of violent and sexually explicit videogames, has done something totally unexpected. Thompson today actually proposed a violent videogame, and will pay $10,000 to the favorite charity of Paul Eibeler (the Chairman of Take-Two Interactive) if any videogame company will "create, manufacture, distribute, and sell a video game in 2006" based on a scenario he created.Thompson's proposal is titled A Modest Video Game Proposal and has been sent to members of the press and apparantly to Douglas Lowenstein, President of the ESA.
Here's Thompson's proposal (italics are his, not ours):
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." The Golden Rule
This writer has been saying for seven years that violent video games can be "murder simulators" that incite as well as train some obsessive teen players to be violent.
I've been on 60 Minutes and in Reader's Digest this year explaining how an Alabama teen, with no criminal record, shot two policemen and a dispatcher in their heads and fled in a police car--a scenario he rehearsed for hundreds of hours on Take-Two/Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto video games.
I have sat with boys in jail cells, their lives over because of murder convictions, after they, with no history of violence, have killed innocents while in a dreamlike state. Said one cop who investigated such a murder in Grand Rapids, Michigan: "The killing was like an extension of the game."
The video game industry, through its lawyers, its spokesmen, and its head lobbyist, Doug Lowenstein, the president of the Entertainment Software Association, all say it is utter nonsense to suggest that what is dumped into a kid's head hour after hour, day after day, year after year, could possibly have behavioral consequences. Cigarette ads can persuade kids to smoke, but interactive simulators in which these same kids punch, hack, bludgeon, and maim affect not a wit their attitudes and behaviors, notwithstanding the findings of the American Psychological Association, published in August 2005.
The video game industry says Sticks and stones can break my bones, but games can never hurt me. Fine. I have a modest proposal for the video game industry. I'll write a check for $10,000 to the favorite charity of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc's chairman, Paul Eibeler - a man Bernard Goldberg ranks as #43 in his book 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America - if any video game company will create, manufacture, distribute, and sell a video game in 2006 like the following:
Osaki Kim is the father of a high school boy beaten to death with a baseball bat by a 14-year-old gamer. The killer obsessively played a violent video game in which one of the favored ways of killing is with a bat. The opening scene, before the interactive game play begins, is the Los Angeles courtroom in which the killer is sentenced "only" to life in prison after the judge and the jury have heard experts explain the connection between the game and the murder.
Osaki Kim (O.K.) exits the courtroom swearing revenge upon the video game industry whom he is convinced contributed to his son's murder. "Vengeance is mine, I will repay" he says. And boy, is O.K. not kidding.
O.K. is provided in his virtual reality playpen a panoply of weapons: machetes, Uzis, revolvers, shotguns, sniper rifles, Molotov cocktails, you name it. Even baseball bats. Especially baseball bats.
O.K. first hops a plane from LAX to New York to reach the Long Island home of the CEO of the company (Take This) that made the murder simulator on which his son's killer trained. O.K. gets "justice" by taking out this female CEO, whose name is Paula Eibel, along with her husband and kids. "An eye for an eye," says O.K., as he urinates onto the severed brain stems of the Eibel family victims, just as you do on the decapitated cops in the real video game Postal2.
O.K. then works his way, methodically back to LA by car, but on his way makes a stop at the Philadelphia law firm of Blank, Stare and goes floor by floor to wipe out the lawyers who protect Take This in its wrongful death law suits. "So sue me" O.K. spits, with singer Jackson Brown's 1980's hit Lawyers in Love blaring.
With the FBI now after him, O.K. keeps moving westward, shooting up high-tech video arcades called GameWerks. "Game over," O.K. laughs.
Of course, O.K. makes the obligatory runs to virtual versions of brick and mortar retailers Best Buy, Circuit City, Target, and Wal-Mart to steal supplies and bludgeon store managers and cash register clerks. "You should have checked kids' IDs!"
O.K. pushes on to Los Angeles. He must get there by May 10, 2006. That is the beginning of "E3" -- the Electronic Entertainment Expo -- the Super Bowl of the video game industry. O.K. must get to E3 to massacre all the video game industry execs with one final, monstrously delicious rampage.
How about it, video game industry? I've got the check and you've got the tech. It's all a fantasy, right? No harm can come from such a game, right? Go ahead, video game moguls. Target yourselves as you target others. I dare you.
Jack Thompson is a Miami lawyer who has for 18 years been involved in efforts to stop the marketing of adult entertainment to minors.
It is unlikely that Thompson's proposal will actually be turned into a game, as most videogame companies do not simply accept proposals from individuals. We'll keep you updated, however, as it is very likely that there will be some sort of response to Thompson's proposal from members of the videogame industry.
So did anyone else think it'd be totally sweet if someone spent an hour banging this thing out in MSPaint and Flash, just to see him pay $10K from his own pocket?
But seriously, $10,000 is pocket change.
Surely Mr. Thompson, with his intimate knowledge of the video game industry and its inner working, must know that it takes far more than ten thousand dollars to create, develop, release, and market a video game?
I think we're all a little stupider for having read his latest stream of verbal diorrhea.
Do you get bonus points for helping Hillary Clinton become president as a side-quest?
That man needs to lose his ability to communicate. Seriously, it's doing him no good.
*Eagerly awaits VG-Cats take on this*
I dunno. As I read that, I got the feeling that there was something beneath what he was saying. Like there was a message.
Then again, that might just be me.
What if he was being serious but not in the way it sounds. If he got a games developer to make this 'game' idea real, then he has, in effect, proven a point. He would be getting his view across to thousands of people (if they bought it) that videogames inspire violence. $10,000 is, indeed, pocket change if you prove yourself right in a political issue.
Or he could have just snapped. Personally, I think anyone who copies a videogame should be sent to an instituion where they examine the mind and attempt to rebuild that person's sanity because, to be honest, it's always videogames. Never horror films or action films or stunts we see on the telly. Just videogames. But they might make the argument that games inspire violence because we have a hand in the actions and outcome of the game.
...That idea is absurd. Anyone notice the irony that the main character hasn't played games before (or hasn't been said to have), and yet is much more violent than the child who had been playing video games all his life? Just something I noticed there.
CAD have already had their take at this (Language Warning).
*fires up Visual C++*
Ten grand, here I come.
Hate to highlight it, but....
"Jack Thompson will give $10,000 to charity"
Not to the game makers.
Quote:
I've been on 60 Minutes and in Reader's Digest this year explaining how an Alabama teen, with no criminal record, shot two policemen and a dispatcher in their heads and fled in a police car--a scenario he rehearsed for hundreds of hours on Take-Two/Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto video games.
As opposed to the number of crimes committed by people with no previous criminal record who didn't play violent games obsessively? I'd like some comparative statistics, please. An isolated example means nothing whatsoever.
Quote:
Anyone notice the irony that the main character hasn't played games before (or hasn't been said to have), and yet is much more violent than the child who had been playing video games all his life?
Yes, I did, which is why my first thought was that he's partially negating the point he's trying to make. ^_^ I do think it's funny that the main character's initials are "O.K."
He'd do better if he'd acknowledge that something has to be "wrong" with an individual for a video game to affect them in the manner he claims. Millions more play the games than actually do something violent. ;p
www.joystiq.com/entry/1234000743063662/
Jack Thompson has rescinded his charity offer, claiming it was "satire". Which is kinda true, seeing as he was going with his version of Swift's "A Modest Proposal". Of course, I thought his satire was bad.
I'd play that game.
Also I like how he references "Postal 2" which is easily THE sickest game I have ever played (And does infact depict violence against game producers if I remember correctly) Anyone who plays that and even considers it to have ANY baring to reality is not right to begin with. It's taking the urine a little.
Jack Thompson has rescinded his charity offer, claiming it was "satire".
In other news, real satirists Michael "Gabe" Krahulik and Jerry "Tycho" Holkins have donated $10,000 from their own coffers to the Entertainment Software Association Foundation... in Jack Thompson's name.
Ownt.
And the saga CONTINUES
Jack Thompson responds as only he knows how: with litigation.
This is pretty damn entertaining if I do say so myself. It's fun watching someone mentally self-destruct.
That makes me laugh in so many different ways.
Some people say a picture is worth a thousand words, however, this one is worth only two: pure ownage.
Will gabe and Tycho ever stop being hilarious?
this is probably the closest you could get to Punching Jack Thompson in person and it probably cost less too
For that matter, anyone else seen the VG cats correspondence PA linked to?
Heh.
i've been following this on penny arcade and VG cats, and i flippin' love the fact that they gave money in his name.
what kind of person is he to offer money to charity, then to back away and say he was joking?
If it means anything, it seems the Florida Bar Association is considering looking into him, thanks to a ludicrous amount of requests by Penny Arcade's forum members.
Pure genius. I shall say no more.
The interesting gets more interesting...er.
~Neo
Thompson wants to hurt my beloved Penny Arcade, so he must perrish.
...He means well....I think o.0 but boy does he fail...if he does mean well...that is.
~T2K
