I hate Jack Thompson. Anyone who has every played Grand Theft Auto should know of this man. Anyone who believes in free speech and responsibility for your own actions should learn about him. He is a Lawyer from Florida who has built his reputation through a series of book burningesque demonstrations. In 1989 he was responsible for the first decency fines ever levied by the Federal Communications Commission. He even persuaded Time Warner to pull “Cop Killer” from Ice T’s Body count album. Currently he is suing Rockstar Games, Sony, and Wal-Mart for 300 million dollars. He’s saying they all played a roll in training Devin Thompson to go on a carjacking kill spree in June of 2003. Devin Thompson is accused of killing 3 cops.
Jack Thompson is trying to teach America that violent videogames create real violence, as is the case of Devin Thompson. Of course I think to myself if this is such a set formula and videogames have such a dramatic effect on people. How come there aren’t hundreds of cases of cop killings. I Mean Grand Theft Auto sold 50 million copies world wide, and those are just a small percentage of violent videogames out there. So we can safely assume that there are millions of people who have played violent video games. At least a solid million have committed a significant amount of their lives to these games. I’m confused Jack where are all the riots? The trained blood thirsty killers must be very good at hiding.
If we are going to start banning violent video games why not tackle sports too. True games such as cricket and ping pong aren’t too violent. But what about a child who watches wrestling, boxing, hockey, football, rugby, etc, should we make these NC-17 as well because they contain violent acts. Perhaps we shouldn’t even let kids play sports because there is much more real violence there than when Johnny playing videogames in his basement. The kids actually get to make physical contact with each other and cause a few bruises. Just from personal experience the most violent aggressive kids I knew while growing up were Hockey players, not the kids who sat around and played Doom all day.
This man uses scare tactics in order to achieve his goals. Throwing the words columbine around like candy. The man is so far removed from regular kids and so close minded to anyone’s opinion different from his own that no one should give him the time of day. The problem that occurs is the people in control of America are also so far removed from kids they have no idea what causes them to do anything. There is no solid evidence linking videogames to violence, but it makes a damn good scapegoat when you have scared parents afraid someone is going to attempt mass murder at their kids schools.
I also want to point out that Grand Theft Auto and games like it are often called “Murder Simulations” I’m not exactly sure what this entails, but I’m guessing that after hours upon hours of playing these games, the engineers at Rose-Hulman will be able to form a rag-tag band of elite assassins. Of course this is after we graduate from one of the top schools in the country and after we retire from our high paying jobs as engineers. Damn video games are going to turn us bad.
It irks me to no end listening to adults bitch and moan about these videogames, when the most they’ve seen of them is probably the commercials showed during shows like “Sex and the City” and “NYPD Blue”. But wait, public television something anyone can see anytime they want is showing violence and sex! We better shut that down too. We don’t want the children knowing those acts exist. I am damn well going to make sure my children will never have slightest idea about sex or violence until they are able to see rated R movies, because of course 17 is the most appropriate age for anyone to learn of these acts. Not 16, not 14, not 23, or 65. Seventeen, some idiotic number set down by a bunch crazy ass liberals and old confused conservatives. I think we should all go sing and dance with Barney and go watch the teletubbies. Oh shit forgot if I watch teletubbies I may become a homosexual eep!
I am all for stores abiding by the rules of selling video games. If a game is MA treat it like a rated R movie. That’s fine, very reasonable, but for god sakes leaves the game industry alone. They know their games are violent, and yes they spend months tweaking pixels just so blood splatters the right way and bodies fall naturally when blown up with shotguns, but they also put right on the box this game contains violence. That seems like accountability to me. Also about the Hot Coffee Patch for GTA, this was a supposed sex simulator for those of you who haven’t heard of it. The Hot Coffee patch is responsible for the PC version of GTA being recalled. This is what the patch was. Some code written and then commented out on the game, then some hacker who violated the GTA license agreement painstakingly uncovered this code and created a way for owners to play the game with the Hot Coffee simulator functional. Of course anyone who got this patch would also be violating the GTA license agreement, but what the hell do we care about Rockstar’s rights? They are the cold heartless corporation who is poisoning the youth of America.
One last thing to rap this long long rant up. Thompson has referenced a demonstration that will take place 08/03/05 in downtown Manhattan to protest Rockstar’s latest game “Bully”. He is carting two busloads of children from Washington DC to protest the release. Of course it should be noted “Bully” hasn’t been played by anyone except its designers yet, and Rockstar says the game is about a troublesome schoolboy who “stands up to bullies, gets picked on by teachers, plays pranks on malicious kids, wins or loses the girl, and ultimately learns to navigate the obstacles of the fictitious reform school.” That definitely sounds like its going to warp the mind of our nation’s children and convince them to become raving psychopaths. Of course they could probably watch prime time television for the same effect.
P.S. The most disappointing thing about this rant is I know you all agree with me, its times like this I wish I had ignorant old people reading my site.