Say the name Jack Thompson, and you’ll elicit a variety of negative reactions from gamers everywhere. If you’re not familiar enough with him to have the same reaction, you will be after this interview.
Jack is a Miami-based lawyer whose favorite thing in the world is censorship. Rather than deal with problems directly, he’d prefer to just smash examples of them while not exactly dealing with the issue at hand. In this case he’s after Take Two Interactive, publishers of the notorious Grand Theft Auto series. You may remember the earlier rant I went on with this subject, but that addressed that game directly.
My issue this time is with a particular lawyer who’s taken it as his responsibility to bring down Take Two. Jack’s problem is with violent video games causing violence in minors, as well as sexual content in video games apparently also contributing to violence in minors…? However, his intent is not to crack down on retailers selling the game to minors, or even to spread a message to parents to pay some damn attention to the game rating on the box because prehaps they’re there for a reason.
Jack is to busy trying to convince me that releasing the game Bully is a fatal move for the company. Let’s forget for a second that going on a rampage about this game is only going to raise public awareness of it for good or bad, and that Rockstar and Take Two couldn’t have paid for this kind of publicity. How is banning the game, convincing them not to publish it, whatever, going to take care of the violent video games that have already been released? In the aforementioned interview, Thompson spend at least 20 minutes rambling on about how horrible this game is/will be for society when, by my count it’s still half a year away.
Shouldn’t he be spending his time and resources on something else aside from worrying about The Sims copyright violations and games that aren’t even close to being released to the public? He discusses his dismay at pr0n sites modifying The Sims in an alleged collaboration with EA, because it contributes to violent behavior in minors and that’s everything he stands against. Wait – how does that contribute?
He is unhappy with modders, Take Two, EA + the pr0n industry, ESPN for running ads for GTA:SA at 6:30 PM, and hell, why not the internet as well? For some reason AO as a rating is drastically different than M in spite of the fact that parents (or grandparents) should not be buying them for kids unless they know damn well what they contain. This is the same as any other age restriction on any other product. Oh, you let you’re 12-year-old drive the car and he crashed it? You’d better sue Toyota because you gave the keys for your Camry to little Billy!
In closing, give this a look. Then tell me this title doesn’t fit.
EDIT: More on moron Jack here.