Jack Thompson Proposes Video Game Idea

[The Dork Knight]

"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.

[Guest Future Shock]

Attention whore.

[MDK]

This guy is a joke. But I wouldnt mind playing the game just for fun tho >_>

[PkmnTrainerJ]

FUCK JACK THOMPSON!

Erm..yes, I already thought he sucked, but dear God.

[Summers]

Lol. He's funny.

[Kaney]

I'd love for them to make that game, if only to stick the proverbial two fingers up at Jack Thompson and prove that video games do fuck all to a persons psyche, unless they're already suffering psychotic tendencies.

And I'd bust a gut if the Take-Two Chairman donated the 10 grand to Stop Stop Kill

[Clawson]

I proposes a game called "Let's Kill Jake Thompdaughter". Just to avoid legal issues.

[zero]

...

That game sounds fucking awesome!!!

And here's hoping Take-Two's favorite charity is "Kids With Cancer Against Jack Thompson."

[LL!]

I'm going to pitch this game idea to every video game industry out there with only one expectation... that "PAID FOR BY JACK THOMPSON" reads at the beginning of the game in big blood red letters.

[Guest xmovingpicturesx]

Okay, so he wants to make an overly violent video game about how overly violent video games are ruining our society? It seems like he's been playing too much GTA. Prick. I mean, just because 10-20-some-odd people have died because certain idiots are playing certain video games, that doesn't mean that EVERY game developer exec should die. I mean, does Miyamoto need to die? Does the head of Bandai need to die? Remember when the 700 club dude said that we should assassinate someone. Didn't that sound sort of hypocritical? Yeah, it sure fuckin' did. Now, this dude writes a whole story to be put into a game, and he expects the people he's "against" to publish it? It's beginning to seem like the only reason he's against violent games is to get to this point, where he can pitch and idea to a company to get his overly violent game published.

Edited October 11, 2005 by xmovingpicturesx

[Cactus Drags]

Jack Thompson is a p0rick, I thinka looney violated him and his mother when he was young, can't believe he's so blind to think games are the p[roblem. games are jsut the catalyst, you gots to be fucked up int he head in the first placefw.

[Iain76er]

So if this is made and Thompson's theory is correct, how bad will he feel when some kid does kill a ton of people related to the games industry? I fail to see how this idea helps him get any support for his ideas, especially through the graphic detail he goes in to. Has he been watching too many violent movies?

[Guest The Trooper]

Seriously, if they give a game thats much more graphic and realistic than Manhunt to a psycho what could be the chances that the guy instead just goes out and kills some innocent civilians. Would Jack Thompson still blame GTA?

[Summers]

Way to miss his point.

[Eclipse 2K5]

This is one of the dumbest ideas ever. It would probably make 1 of the worst games ever if a game developer or publisher was stupid enough to produce it.

[Benji]

This is one of the dumbest ideas ever. It would probably make 1 of the worst games ever if a game developer or publisher was stupid enough to produce it.

You people do realise it was just him making a (albeit horrendously shit) point?

[Guest Anti-Hero]

Now for my rebuttal... *ahem*

Jack Thompson, FUCK OFF AND DIE!

Sincerely,

Everyone

[Psicosis]

http://www.livejournal.com/users/gamepolitics/107741.html

[Hellfire]

What a giagantic tool. I hope someone takes him up on his offer.

[LL!]

www.penny-arcade.com

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