Jack Thompson
Jack Thompson is a ridiculous man. For those who don’t know, he is a lawyer who has built his career on fighting “obscenity” in media. Since 1999 his efforts have been mostly focused on violent videogames, which he claims are training simulations for murderers. He is noted for his over the top rhetoric in interviews and his own writings. He has, on three separate occasions, compared the head of the ESA to Goebbels, Hitler, and Saddam Hussein. He has also called the bestselling PC game of all time, The Sims, a training ground for paedophiles.
While I would normally not devote my time to thinking about such a dim-witted hatemonger, for fear of lending him a false legitimacy; something he did recently infuriated me. Jack Thompson designed a videogame. Not just any videogame, a brutally violent videogame. His rationale was this: the videogame industry does not care about the violence in games because that violence does not cause people to attack videogame executives. (Mr. Thompson believes that playing a game where you attack a police officer will cause you to attack police officers in real life.) I encourage you to read the description of his game, which he believed no one in the industry would create because it “targets” the industry. Oh, and to top it all off? He said he’d donate $10,000 to charity if someone made the game.*
Predictably, several people did make his game. Just as predictably, he backed out of his committment to donate to charity. Some good did come out of this whole incident. For one, Penny Arcade has stepped up and donated the $10,000 that Jack Thompson wouldn’t. Jack Thompson definitely crossed the line this time; and he may yet pay for it. Already NIMF “has issued an open letter to Thompson condemning his use of biased and vitriolic tactics and asking him to refrain from implying that the Institute supports him and his work in any way.”** With any luck, this will spell the end of an ambulance-chasing career that’s been carried way too far.
* - Not just any charity… the charity of Paul Eibeler’s choosing. Paul is the chairman of Take-Two Interactive, the makers of Grand Theft Auto and Manhunt, two of Mr. Thompson’s favorite straw men.
** - Wikipedia
Edit: Jack Thompson is now under investigation by the Florida Bar association.
January 20th, 2006 at 8:59 am
I used to share your opinions, mostly because I’d followed all of the information that the “popular sources” quoted.
I listened to Mr. Thompson speak, and there is a recording online somewhere of a 90 minute interview he did with some gamer podcasters, and a lot of what he says and stands for can be distilled into this:
The ratings system needs to be changed.
This is something even Gabe and Tycho over at Penny Arcade agree with.
I think it’s important to look past the hype and look at the work the man is doing.
Games like Grand Theft Auto, and any FPS for that matter, are in fact murder simulator/trainers. You can’t get around that fact, nor can you deny that such games in the hands of the young and impressionable do real harm.
I would never go as far as to blame such tragedies as Columbine on a video game, but be fair, the ability to channel murderous rage in wanton faction through digital media certainly couldn’t have helped.
I suggest you listen to the interview: http://www.chatterboxgameshow.com/jack.htm and see if you still have such an antagonistic opinion against a man you have never met nor spoken to yourself.
;)
January 20th, 2006 at 10:30 am
I do believe that some of what JT says is reasonable. A stopped clock is accurate twice a day, right? The problem is the way he goes about it. He makes claims that anyone who’s played the games in question would find outlandish. I understand that he does this precisely because it makes people (the media, including blogs) talk about him. If he didn’t use outrageous falsehoods to spread his cause he probably wouldn’t get a whole lot of media coverage.
You said:
“Games like Grand Theft Auto, and any FPS for that matter, are in fact murder simulator/trainers.” I disagree. The act of playing GTA or Doom or even America’s Army does not teach me how to kill. I have played a lot of first-person shooters, and I don’t even know how to shoot a gun. Furthermore, I have never felt “murderous rage” while playing a game. (Excepting perhaps Pokemon, but that was for an entirely different reason.)
I do think that games are inherently powerful teaching tools, but I do not know of any game that teaches how to kill. The lessons being taught by these games are ones of dominance, territory control, and cooperation (amongst others).