News Jack Thompson proposes violent video game

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/10/13/jack_thompson_game/

 

As immortalised by yesterday's CTRL-ALT-DEL comic

 

Make the game, i'll just download it!

Where this whole debacle started, is the exact place that the first mistake was made.

The GTA 'problem' started at the moment that the Grandmother of a 13 year old child didn't bother to notice the ESRB label on the front of the box. Someone needs to put the grandmother on trial to ask if she knows why movies have a rating system or why certain albums have an advisory sticker on the jewel case. In this situation, as a cashier, are you really going to ask for ID from an aging grandmother?

Over here in the States, there is a major epidemic. Some parents seem to think that they are no longer responsible for their children. It is now the government' fault and that the gov't must fix the problem that the gov't made. Parents are shirking their duties as parents off on the gov't.

Also, saying that the game needs to have an adult rating as opposed to a mature rating, now that's just stupid. That's like saying the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie should have been rated PG-13 or R because Raphael said, "DAMN!"

I could go on all day long about the problems of the States, but i'd probably be told that my anger stems from a government that has failed me. Hah!

 

LOL WTF! That guys lost it

Any person with half a brain knows the deal, games dont kill people...

You have to be pretty messed up in the head to kill somone, its a natural instinct but weve evolved enough to have a complex thought process and think in a rational way.

But if a kid has been beaten up and mentally tortured by his dad for the past 15 years he's hardly going to return the favour by getting him a nice pair of socks for Christmass, chances are it will either ruin his self respect and confidence for life and possibly make him take revenge. If that kid were to kill his parents then go and shoot up a school, who would be to blame?... well in quite a few cases it's a film, game, tv program or a band, so it wasnt the mental and physical torture from his dad, the easy access to weapons or constant brainwashing from the media.

They need to get to the root of problems like this, but there afraid to admit to the real problem, because there all to blame.

I presume there are no murders on record before the release of GTA

Nuke the planet TBH, that will sort everything out for good

 

In the US some states have started taking actions to enforce the sale of innapropriate games to minors.

The problem isnt that we dont see some truth in Thomspons argument. Its that Retailers only see $$$. 80% of people who are old enough to buy the game agree it shoudlnt be sold. The other 20% being idiots and those being younger obviosuly wanting to play it woudlnt agree that they shoudlnt be playing it.

The fact is that Jack Thomson kills any shred of credibility when he comes out with crap like this, or his argument against Sims2. If he would keep his attacks toned down, logical and realistic he would move a lot more people to his cause. The real issue here isnt the gaming industry. Its not the gamers wanting to play violent games. Its not the people who fight having very strict age restrictions.

The REAL issue here is bad parenting. When you decide to have a child, you take on the responsibility of raising that child. That means its YOUR responsibility to make sure they arent exposed to harmful media (NOT the retailer.. but you can only control it from the retail side.) Its YOUR responsibility to make sure that child is fed, clothed, educated. Its YOUR responsibility to make sure the child is nurtured and loved. PHxS brings up some really great points in his argument.

Of course, nothing is ever so simple or straight forward.. so this will continue to be an issue. But I'll always remain firm behind my opinion that its the parents fault and no one else's.

 

Anyone been keeping up with the penny-arcade fiasco envolving this guy, i think it's awesome. I love the way Gabe n Tycho wind him up no end just for fun

EDIT: That's an A1+ news post Wil I have rarely agreed with absoultely everything someone has said before.

 

All sensible folk know that games/video/rock music/today's scapegoat isn't really to blame. they're just easy targets, especially since the majority of the voting public don't understand games: they either think that games are for children, or they're for sad, sicko perverts who like torturing animals for fun.

The problem is that society has become lazy, and no longer wants to think for itself - it just believes whatever bullsh*t the media tells it. In the UK, it's called the Daily Mail Syndrome.

People know that this kind of crap is wrong, that violent games don't breed violent people - they just can't be bothered to do anything about it. That's the most worrying thing, and the thing that scares the living bejeebus out of me - that these people who can't be bothered to think are still responsible for voting in the governments who represent us.

<Scottish accent>We're doomed, Captain Manwairing, dooooomed!</Scottish accent>

 

Ok this is nuts. I can see what this guy is doing by asking for this video game to be made but he just comes off as being a hypocrite when he is willing to give an award for someone making a violent video game that he is against.

Also I live in the US and I have to say its not the video game produces fault that little kids are getting their hands on these games, its not even the fault of the people who sell them, It’s the lazy a$$ parents who don’t pay attention to the ratings on the box when they buy the game for their kids and its just gotten really sad that parents don’t seem to care.

When GTA SA first came out there where 2 separate instances where I was in a game store and the sales clerk refused to sell GTA SA to small kids one was about 12 and the sales man told him he couldn’t sell it to him unless his parent said it was ok and the other looked to be 15-16 and when the sales clerk asked for ID he said he didn’t have one and was again told to get a parent if he wanted to buy it. On the same note I saw a father buy it for his 11-year-old son and when the sales clerk pointed out the content of the game the father didn’t seem to care, I watched him hand the game to his son as they walked out. I just don’t see how anyone stupid enough to not monitor what their kids are doing can justify bitching about any of this. (i.e. old miss blind granny who doesn’t look at the rating or even bother to ask what the game is about) ITS YOUR PROBLEM YOUR STUPID AND LAZY NOT OURS!!

This lawyer seen like a dumb a$$ to me anyway, the way he is spinning it BF2 should make me want to join the army and Spiderman is going to make me jump off buildings.

 

Many a time have i been in Wal-Mart and i've watched the clerks turn the kid down for trying to buy an uber-violent game that he wasn't rated to buy. Heck, i'm 20 years old, have a huge beard and hair down to my shoulder and even /I/ get carded before buying cirtain games.

Granted, there are always acceptions to every rule. If i kid is deperate to get their hands on a game, they're going to do it. At that point, it falls off the parent, unless they buy it for the kid, and the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of the little munchkin that's buying a game. However, we don't need some tightassed lawer going after the gaming industry just become some little snot managed to con grandma into buying him a game he shouldn't have had in the first place.

My only relief is that fewer people will take this bugger seriously after this "challenge", specially if someone does make and market his game, and stamp his name squarely on the cover. Poetic justice, so to speak--The man who's "fighting" violent games has his name stamped all over a violent game of his own design. Wonder if that means he's a mass murder?

 

Damn right.

I use to work in the electronics department at Wally World, and everytime a parent would ask for the game either with a younger child or by themselves, and while some would shrug it off, alot of parents didn't know what they were getting into with the game until I pointed it out. Many kids left the department glaring at me

I find parents care less and less about it, it really pisses me off that we take flak for the lazy *******s. I'm not ashamed to admit that violent games have influenced my slightly, but at the same time I know right from wrong. I think the problem stems from children getting a hold of these games before they really develop that sense. Personally, when I do have kids I'm gonna play every game with them, because I know its my resonsibility to teach them right from wrong.

Maybe the parents of the accused should be punished just as harshly for it. Although I have half a mind to go after the kids who 'claim' that the game made them do it with a bat myself. Oops. I guess a game made me do it.

Maybe I should burn down the Wal Mart I used to work at after playing Jack's game. Or the EB Games I frequent....

 

Nope, its true that kids can't buy GTA or other "18" rated games but I am constantly seeing their parents buying them for their kids seemingly oblivious of the rating and content of such a game.

It would seem a large part of the problem lies with parents...

 

Absoultely, so should the government re-educate parents by producing a strong campaign of official guidelines. I mean, everyone knows about the movie ratings and tend to take them seriously here so why not games?

A lot of kids find peer pressure to play it, like GTA so parents buy it. Should the government act against that?

 

Yeah, if everyone seems to think they affect the minds this much SURELY they'd do something about the sales of them.
Its pathetic tbh, if 18 cert films drove 15yr olds to murder people they wouldn't try and stop showing murder on films, so why games. grr.

 

Nice article btw. lol I would love to play that game, funny thing is that the story ressembles to a modified version of "Postal" .

 

If everybody just did what the games told us to do the world would problably be a better place. For one we would know that every nazi in the world and then some would be dead, due to the excessive, but still fun milking of WW2 shooters. Also pretty much every terrorist would have been hunted down, shot, teabagged, then shot again. After that, all those zelda kids would kill all the bugs and goons in the world, and we wouldn't have those problems any more either. And after that, all the crimes would be solved by all those people that play those mystery clicker games.

And then we could stop thinking like a twelve year old and look at the real world and notice that people aren't joining gangs b/c it looks cool on a game, and they aren't going on fanatical killing sprees either. Another note would be that every gamer would be ripped as hell, considering no game character isn't physically fit, and all teenage girls would have DDs as well. This guy needs to address real issues concerning teens; Personal health and mental health education.

 

I just don't get it. Is it a PR stunt? HAS he just gone off the deep end? Is his next move to go on some suicide bombing mission and leave the blame on the latest in digital violence in his suicide note? One too many hits on the (world) peace pipe?

Stupidity makes the world go 'round

Honestly, the only times video games make me violent is having to wait for the "Rated M for mature. Content may change with online play" (or whatever) box to get the hell off my screen. I mean, who cares if it gets LESS violent from online play? If it's M-rated for violence and language, I don't see how a loud-keyboarded racist fragging away is going to make it any worse as far as content goes (though their racist chat talk gets a bit more offensive, admittedly).

Let's all kill him in a way never done in a video game That way nobody can blame the video games and will have to conclude that it was solely from idioticness on his part.

In all fairness though, it should be enforced to not sell M-rated games to minors. Not all places do around here. That said, if you're unhinged enough to let digital violence trigger something, there should be some sort of metal plate in your head that sets off the alarms as you're walking out of the store.

My slighly-over-two-cents. (And I thought this would be a short post. Oh well)

 

Classic!
Good point though too imo.
That would be sig'd if i had room

 

Over here no one really pays attention to rating on games, my brother who is 12 adn everyone says he looks 8 or 9, someone even mistook him for 7 years old, he could barley see over the counter when he bought BF42 rated M15+ WTF?!?
I started playing Carmageddon when the second one came out and saw it in the shops, now this game you get cash and more time for running over screaming pedestrians, and crash into other cars. You even get bonus points for mushing them into a wall. Do I have any phycotic killing spree car driving down pedestrian rampages? No I dont, I dont even continue a fight, he hits me. and I pin him and walk off. Not even a punch thrown.
Some of my m8s play about 40+ hours of games a week, m,ostly FPS and they are so placid you cant even provoke them to hit you, (I've tried)
Anyway I rekon games are not the cause of violence, I mean there might be the odd person who is affected, but He/She would have been affected by a movie if not the Game, Games probably keep people off crack for they actually have something to do.
Well i've been rambling for too long now, ta ta

 

I may be wrong here, but I don't think anyone who has actually perpetrated a killing spree has ever admitted that they did it because they played video games.
The link was made by the media: "He played video games, and he killed some people. Hey! The two must be linked!"

As I see it, there are two problems here:
1) We now live in a "blame culture", where nobody seems to want to take responsibility for their own actions;
2) Nobody wants to think for themselves, they'd rather let the media do it for them.

An example:
How many people boycotted GTA because of the sex scenes?
Lots.
How many of those people knew that it was only accessible via an illicit patch?
Probably none.
How many people realised that the popularity of the patch was increased by the media frenzy?
Probably none.


This debate will go on forever, in one form or another, until people learn to think for themselves. Baaaaaaaa!

 

I play a lot of games and the ones i play are usualy violent fps and almost all violent games for that mater, i have played this type of games since is was about.... hell i dont remenber when but it was a long time ago, since sega mega drive or genesis, and now i am a normal person, i dont get into fights and i hate wars, and i usualy pin or lock the person that is trying to hit me into submision and i do not try to hurt anyone, i love weapons but i do not kill anyone or anything, if there were things that modified my perpective of the world these would be movies like T1 and T2, rambo and other very bloddy films i dont remember their name, and the news casts on the TV.
Were i come from peole are very influenced by "novelas" or "soap operas" and become infidel and sometimes try to kill people to get her/his husbend/wife.

And another thing priests here sometimes are acused of being pedofiles, does this mean that church creates pedofiles?

If people like "Jack Thompson" won every time we could lose cool films that are violent, news casts because they show violent stuff, video games of every kind, cars for kiling people , guns, we would have to nuke every fanatic religions like those guys who blow them selfs up, and in doing this we must kill our selfs for being violent .


The world would become a place full of ediots, tv will only show kid programs like barny and teletubies every day and non violent sports events were people must be fully dressed, no swiming, or tenis, or volleyball.... , no nudism on tv, all cinemas would close or show kid movies, only games that depict sports without nudism can be played, and other puzle based games. no magazines nor news papers and the ones that exist are censured for violent and sexual context.

Here in Madeira (Portugal) they sell AO games to 10 year old kids
my cousin plays GTA SA since it first came out, he plays unreal tournement and other violent games since he was 7 years old, he is now 13 years old and is not a psico killer, he is more normal than an average Portuguese kid and he is very bright, he finishes sudoku in very high dificulty in 5 minuits.
Violent kids normaly do not play games, and i play games to "cool down" my mood after a day of s**t.

sorry for this long reply.