Game Policy Punditry

Satire Is Supposed To Be Over The Top

2005-10-19T15:31:00.000-04:00

I was going to wait a while before digging into Jack Thompson, but given the events over at Penny-Arcade, I have had to move up my agenda. Jack has demanded the end of the popular web comic due to their inflammatory comments about him. He has brought this on himself; foremost by putting himself in the public forum with his “nearly 100 national and international television appearances, hundreds of radio interviews, and nearly 200 college campus appearances” (quoted right from his site). Also, he did this by offering a $10,000 donation along with his “satire”. I never knew that satire could include a donation offering, otherwise I would have done that years ago and become well known.

Well, if satire is the name of the game, let’s drop the puck.

November 1, 2005
Uxbridge-ON
Last night, while children were running around gathering their candy from the local neighbors, one man went on a rampage killing hundreds of children, parents and police officers in this small farming town. The police have released the testimony given by the 21 year old Grant Goodine who perpetrated this heinous act. Here follows his account of events.

“Well, about 5 o’clock in the evening my doorbell rang and when I answered the door I saw a small pack of tiny demons. Well, I did what anyone in this situation would do, I slid on my spiked brass knuckles and killed the beasts with my bare hands. I looked down the street and saw that there was a small army of these beasts, both big and small, ravaging my street. I had no choice but to rid my town of this plague.

“I went inside and loaded up my pistol, shotgun, chain gun, an experimental plasma weapon, and set out on my crusade against evil. It took about two minuets to clear my street of the infestation and then I moved on towards down town where I knew they would be concentrated. The only odd thing I noticed was the larger ones jumping in front of the smaller ones as if trying to protect them. It didn’t work

“As I reached downtown larger beasts about the size of cars started getting in my way and had to be destroyed, with a few plasma blasts they exploded in a fiery mess. By this point I was fighting almost exclusively large creatures. I knew there were more to be destroyed and when a large flying thing with a bright shining eye. One rocket took it down just fine.

“At some point they overwhelmed me and took me captive. And now you know what happened.”

Upon hearing this, anti-gaming activists came to his defense and when they asked him if the popular video game Doom made him believe that his victims were demons he responded: “What? No. I just hate kids, and the damn parents and cops kept getting in my way.”

Please note that this is satire, and while the names may be real, the events are not and please note the date of the post and the date of the events. And in the off event that something like this happens on Halloween, I’m sorry, I didn’t plan it, and don’t blame me for creating killers.

So Much For This Being "The One"

2005-10-14T12:10:00.000-04:00

As some of you may know, there was a young man in the states who killed 2 policemen and a dispatcher. This man's name was Devin Moore. After being convicted of murder, he has recently been recieved the death penalty. Now I'm not really in favor of capital punishment, but that's not the point here.

Jack Thompson was quite the voice for this case, he even appeared on 60 Minuets about this, teling people that Grand Theft Auto: Vice City trained him on how to do this in a stressful situation and he shouldn't be held responible for his actions, but the developers/distributors should be.

When Columbine happened, one of the first things I saw during the aftermath was a news report showing the covers of Doom and Half-Life on the screen saying that these games were found in the two boys rooms and were probably responsible for their actions.

I had played both these games even though I was only 13 at the time and I had never even considered these actions.
I had been bullied throughout the years and was mostly a loner, much like the two killers.
Neither of these games teaches you how to hide a bunch of pipe bombs in your own house from your parents.

I do see the ruling on the Devin Moore case a small victory for the industry as this was a very big chance for a ruling to accept the gaming defence. I've always believed that we are all responsible for our own actions and trying to tell people that some game did it is a joke. At the rate things are going, I don't doubt that there will be a ruling that blames the video game the young man played before he killed someone, but this isn't it.

Now, I'm not trying to be sexist by saying these cases will be brought against men, but this is because I honestly cannot see a case where we see a girl blamed for killing someone after playing Halo, or Doom 3. And something tells me that Mr. Thompson would say the same thing.

Welcome To The Middle

2005-10-13T18:20:00.000-04:00

Too long now have I wanted someone else to take on the challenge of walking the middle line, a rational line, in the battle of video games vs politics. I was inspired to take a step in the right direction after reading this article on the CBS news website. For those keeping track, I'm not in or from the U.S., I haven't even recently traveled to the U.S. I'm a proud Canadian from a small farming town in Ontario.

What qualifies me for this job? I'm a print whore who loves to read the news, espically when it relates to gaming. I do not use "1337"(Leet). I plan to end up in the gaming industry as part of a marketing department once I finish school. More importantly, being 21, I have grown up in the Nintendo Generation. One of my earliest memories is my dad buying a nintendo, the original one, and playing games like Mario, Hogans Alley, Lee Trevino's Fighting Golf, Dragon Warrior, and together we'd play R/C Pro AM, me holding the gas and firing the rockets, him steering. These were great moments and formed a bond between the two of us. I came of studied while 3D graphics became norm, I saw the formation of the ESRB, I was just about to enter high school when Columbine happened. This war has sprung up around me and I've always said it will die down, it just happens to every new media form. I am tired of waiting.

Now I just want to say, I do think it's a good idea for the ESRB system to be enforced, like it is here in Ontario. I have some issues with laws being formed in the U.S. right now that enable charges to be laid for anyone who provides M rated games to minors. This means if a parent, who believes that their child is ready for a game, buys it for them they can be charged for it. I know some parents don't want to raise their children, but this isn't a soloution.

Curently my key point of critique will be Jack Thompson as he has made himself a public figure and as such must accept his share of arguments. As some of you know, he refuses to listen to e-mails sent to him. I will post my own attempt to have a mature debate with him from earlier this year, and if I can find it I will later post an e-mail that he sent a real response to.

Here's my letter and his response copied & pasted right out of GMail:

Video Game Violence

Grant Goodine

to jackpeace

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Mar 4

Dear Mr. Thompson,

First of all, I am aware that this will most likely get lost in most
of the "hate mail" that you are receiving in relation to your CBS.com
interview, but I would like to set the record straight on a few points
you made.

I'd like to begin with the overused case of Littleton. The fact that
these teenagers played Doom and Half-Life is a small factor in their
actions, the stronger influence was clearly their bullying at the
hands of their fellow students. Even so they made the active choice to
go on the shooting spree. I myself went through bullying as a child
and played most of the violent games of the time. But I had the value
for life and was able to differentiate reality from fantasy that I was
never even tempted to "take my revenge" so to speak.

Secondly, you claim that Best Buy carding people for proof of age is
an industry first. Here in Canada, Wal-Mart has been doing this for
the past few years. I believe they were the first to do this. And
making this seem like an obscure event is unfair as EB Games, one of
the biggest game sellers in Canada, carded everyone who bought GTA:
San Andreas.

One thing I did respect though, is something that most people seem
afraid to mention, government funded games. You singled out Full
Spectrum Warrior. This is a tactics training program for the Army as
is the FREE game America's Army. The later is meant more as a
recruitment tool as it glorifies the military life.

I do feel however that it is irresponsible to be such an advocate and
just sue the companies and try to block their material. Even with the
age checks, parents who are ignorant to the content will still buy the
game to "shut their kids up". I believe that the major step should be
education of the parents, make them understand what is in these games.
Also children need to be better able to tell the difference between
reality and the fantasy of video games. With a good take on the fact
that those games are not real, the danger gets greatly reduced.

I will admit to being slightly desensitized to violence in the media,
but that is also part of seeing on the news regularly about "X number
of people were tragically killed today by Y EVENT". Violence is a part
of society, not a good thing but inevitable.

As I said, the key challenge before we can curb the connection, is
education of both parents and children. I would love to be able to go
around to the elementary schools around me and teach the parents about
what is in the games that their children are begging for for
Christmas, make them understand that some of them shouldn't be played
for years to come. However I do believe that for the properly adjusted
person, playing M rated games at 15 or 16 shouldn't be a problem. In
fact that is when I started playing Quake and Half-Life.

Thank you for your time, I do hope you respond and not just delete this.

Grant Goodine
Uxbridge Ontario Canada

ReplyForward

Jack Thompson

to me

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Mar 4

set yourself straight
And here is what it takes to get him to really respond.