Slashdot Mirror
Game Violence Lawsuit Hits Take Two, Sony, Wal-Mart
oDDmON oUT writes "According to TBO/AP, $246 million is being sought from hardware manufacturer Sony, game publisher Take Two, and retailer Wal-Mart, by the families of victims killed by two teenagers supposedly inspired by Grand Theft Auto. The suit was initiated by Miami lawyer, Jack Thompson, and is not the first time that Thompson has attempted to sue game makers. His crusade to implicate video games in violent incidents has led to countless media appearances, but his 1997 efforts to implicate id and others in a $33 million dollar suit stemming from a school shooting ultimately failed, when the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the case, writing that: 'We find that it is simply too far a leap from shooting characters on a video screen to shooting people in a classroom.'" This looks to be an extension of the lawsuit filed last month.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
theyve stopped blaming heavy metal
back in the day we didnt have no old school
Think about it. Someone offs Jack Thompson in a Barney suit. Current logic dictates that Barney is evil. Everyone wins.* * Please note that this is comedic and should not be taken orally or literally.
Oddly Draconis
Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.
This week's tops at the box office is Time Warner's remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which took in a whopping 28 million dollars for a 9 thousand dollar per screen average, yet only featured one dismemberment every 20 minutes. It dethroned Disney's ultraviolent Kill Bill, which continued to charge ahead at the box office. With an enviable 3 week total of 43.2 million dollars it's averaging 240 thousand dollars for every man woman and child disembowled, dismembered, or decapitated for your viewing pleasure.
In other news, a spat of school violence is sweeping across the nation. "I didn't even realize that trenchcoat wearing freak existed before he put on a hockey mask, pulled out a 2-foot machete, and started lumbering towards everyone" one spunky but virtuous survivor at a Des Moines High School told reporters. "We usually just laughed at him. Then he started killing us. Then the cops shot him dead. Who is laughing now Freak?"
Parents across the nation have uncovered the source of the violence: games that you play on your television, AKA "Videoed-Games" were present in all of the troubled children's rooms. "My son was a model student," the mother of one such corrupted child told reporters Tuesday, "the babysitter said he always came home from school on time, he never missed a meal (food disappeared regularly from the refridgerator), and he was so quiet and respectful those times we took him to see House of the Dead, 28 Days, House of 1000 corpses, and Spy Kids 3D. The other kids roughed him up a bit, but you know... boys will be boys. And then... And then..." The mother broke down into tears, "And then we accidentally opened the door to his room, and discovered these shiny little disks everywhere. They all had names like 'Devil Dice,' 'Dark Savior,' and 'Speed Devils Online'. He had a House of the Dead game that was so realistic it integrated footage from the movie! I immediatly increased his beatings from one to four per day. But even that wasn't enough to save him from the influence of these Demon Games."
"His father will be furious when the warden tells him," she added. "I'm so upset by this gaming-inspired lack of morality, I need to go watch 'Special Victims Unit.'" The mother then left the interview, forgetting the small baby she had brought with her.
The ______ Agenda
All those hours playing Pac-Man and Burger-Time made me eat too much!
Syntax error: loose != lose, affect != effect, then!=than
Dear Jack Thompson,
We will agree that video games can have a harmful effect on kids when you agree that parents who raise thoughtless murdering psychopaths are jackasses. Deal? Good. Oh, and instead of $260 million dollars - you get nothing. Good? Good.
Signed,
Some gamers.
-
Cathode Tan
The next questions is how did they get those guns? Someone is definitely at fault for that one.
<sarcasm>I think the game companies gave the guns to them.</sarcasm>
I should put together a short film about videogame violence about a serial killer who goes out every Halloween in a yellow jumpsuit and with a can of blue spraypaint who cannibalizes children who go out dressed as ghosts, leaving behind only their eyes.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
This lawyer is obviously right on the money, because there is plenty of statistical data to back him up. Just do a quick Google search for the sales figures for Grand Theft Auto 3. So far two people have acted violently and blamed GTA and, lo and behold, how many people have bought the game? Two. Obviously, the game automatically makes anyone that plays it extremely violent, because EVERYONE that has played it has become violent.
I just hope that this media publicity doesn't propel Grand Theft Auto series from the bottom of the charts up to, say... the number one game in America each month for over a year. If Mr. Thompson's theory stayed true, then the entire country would collapse into chaos!