Slashdot Mirror
Jack Thompson Continues To Talk
Lucerin Red writes "It seems the next game on Jack Thompson's censorship list is Killer 7. The article posted by IGN quotes Jack as saying "There is no question in my mind that a videogame containing 'full-blown sex sequences' cannot be rated anything other than 'AO' rather than 'M.'" The 'full-blown sex sequences' are no more then you could see in a rated R movie." Meanwhile, MowAlon writes "Those of you keeping up with all the latest in the Rockstar Games/Take-Two Interactive/ESRB/EA Games sex scandal may be interested in a radio interview just made available: ChatterBox Video Game Radio just posted an 80-minute audio interview with Jack Thompson, the Miami lawyer out to shut down Rockstar Games. The interview provides a much deeper insight into his views, opinions, and efforts than anything else I've read about him elsewhere on the internet. One highlight includes Jack saying "Will Wright said he wants Electronic Arts to collaborate with the porn industry to allow wholesale modification of their game"."
If he wanted to go after GTA and get it an AO rating for the violence, I'd probably be fine with that. Considering the amount of violence in the game, it's not too hard for anyone who's ever played it to say it may be innapropriate for a majority of younger teenagers. Consider, for example, the movie Titanic in which you could see a breast that wasn't a really poor and clunky animation rendered on 5 year old hardware. This movie was rated PG-13. Consider several R rated movies with sex scenes that are more pornographic than the comical and largely unerotic scene in San Andreas.
This is merely the latest Salem witch trial. Eventually the whole thing will blow over. Eventually, Jack Thompson, like Senator McCarthy will go so far over the top that he will lose credibility. I think that this has already happened to an extent when he went after The Sims 2. When he does go, I can honestly say that I won't miss him one bit. Goodbye, moronic fuckwad.
And I'd futher like to point out that if you glanced to the left of the page you would have seen that it says, very clearly: "The ChatterBox Video Game Radio show airs weekly from KFNX 1100AM in Phoenix, Arizona."
-1 (Troll) is antihammer
If he wants to lobby for something, perhaps they should make the ESRB ratings enforcable on game resellers or something. Perhaps levy fines on retailers who sell M or AO games to children under 17 (e.g. require ID to purchase these games). It'd probably be an easier fight than Jack's crusade to destroy the ESRB and Rockstar.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
It seems the only people who print stories about Jack Thompson are gaming sites. How about we just ignore him? He's obviously been terribly ineffective at a mainstream media and lobbying level. It's only when people like Hilary Clinton start shouting that anyone listens.
He feeds on people hating him. I worry that games journalists are feeding off him too. IGN, Gamespot, Slashdot, Kotaku all need to stop running stories on him, then he'll have nothing left.
We don't all need a bad guy, people.
I sometimes wonder if the games industry should just use the same ratings system as the movies, possibly migrating some of the ESRB subcategories useful for describing game content.
Not only are many people apparently under-educated about the meaning of the ESRB ratings - I mean, just look at all the stories about kids playing GTA and parents who let them - but having a separate ratings system makes it impossible to have apples-to-apples comparisons between these two types of media which makes it easy for people to misrepresent the situation. The fact is, these games aren't for kids that's for sure but they aren't any worse than R-rated movies. That they are called "MA" is perhaps the source of the confusion - they may simply not know what that really means. Using the same ratings system seems like it would at least simplify the arguments people seem to want to have about all this.
-Eric Cosky
That would be better but the MPAA has copyrighted (tradmarked?) the movie rating system and has prosecuted people that come too close to copying it.
the "full blown sex" in Killer 7 is fully clothed... Basically a woman grinding on a man sitting in a wheelchair. The player can only see her from about mid-torso on up. The sounds of her pleasure are certainly audible, as is the "pretend" masturbation in another scene, but there is NO nudity anywhere in this game. Anyone ever play "Fear Effect" for the ps1? Full anime nudity in that game, but no one whined about it back then (1999??) There are much worse things on network tv here in the states.
I, for one, am looking forward to the inevitable
It's true. You thought Will was some guy who likes to design fun, open-ended games? Wrong. Porn king.
Please e-mail me (Host and Producer) if you know of another station interested in syndicating the program.
Jack Thompson needs to slow down.
At this rate, I won't have enough money to buy all the games he's going after!
The US AO rating does seem to be completly stupid, no game is ever actually rated it.
In the UK we have a slightly stange situation where most games have advisory ratings from PEGI (who took over a couple of years ago from ELSPA), but under certain critera they can have the legally enforced BBFC ratings, like DVDs and films.
But in the UK, the highest ratings (18+ for PEGI, 18 for BBFC) have been used (although the 18+ PEGI rating is rare, as most of them go into the BBFC ratings). Indeed, both Grand Theft Auto (all of them) and Killer 7 are BBFC 18, and they're commonly availible, I can go into my local ASDA (owned by Wal Mart) and buy them. But in the US, it seems that everyone is allergic to the AO rating, even the ESRB. I'd guess it's some sort of weird market forces, where the shops have all decided that AO really means it's banned. And mysteriously the industry run ESRB avoids it like a plauge as well. If I wasn't pissed, I'm sure I could make a better essay on the US puritan streak etc. (it's half like the Daily Mail ran a country!), but instead I'll end up with a horrid steam of conciousness thing. I mean, it's only some dry humping FFS. How does that change the bloody rating...
I'd also like to note the BBFC said during all this ho-hah over GTA:SA, that even if the "Hot Coffee" had been in the game, it would still be rated the same.
(I should note that for BBFC, there is the Restricted 18 rating as well (can only be sold in licenced sex shops, used for hardcore porn), but no game has ever qualified for it AFAIK).
10 PRINT "LOOK AROUND YOU ";
20 GOTO 10
The game industry needs an advocacy group, or maybe have a lobbyist or perhaps buy off a senator :P
Seriously, you don't see gun manufacturers targeted like you might have in the past. Anyone remember that video of those Columbine kids with a small arsenal shooting trees in the woods? Anyone try to trace back where they got those guns and hold them as responsible as Doom??
These grieving families get counciled by layers that tell them to sue the video game companies, and defense lawyers use it as a defense tactic...not much different than what they tried to do to rock, when some kids commited suicide after playing a Judas Priest record backwards...or with rap when this guy shot a state trooper and blamed it on Tupac b/c he was listening to one of his songs in the car.
The game industry has always had its level of releative violence, even before Mortal Kombat. IMO the main problem is that the industry has become more visible and mainstream, and it has no real protection against people like this guy Thompson trying to rage his own little war.
On the other side, Rockstar's recent actions don't help matters...the explicitness (or lack of) the content is not the point. Their dishonsty makes an organization like the ESRB look ineffective. Additionally, it doesn't help when you have fools commiting murder over virtual property. You don't give the enemy anything to hold over you, regardless of whether you think its inconsequential. If they can use it, that's a problem.
"Death and poverty like me so much, they brought friends!" - Vash the Stampede, Trigun
Jack Thompson is naked under his clothes.
Jack Thompson keeps talking about sex.
Jack Thompson has a poorly defined, but detectible penis.
ban Jack Thompson!
Seriously. The only reason the ratings have any power is because various stores refuse to carry AO games. If the rating system bows to this idiot, the gaming industry needs to respond by only producing AO games. If the top five studios went in together, they coudl do it. If the rating people refuse to 'overrate' games, include hidden content the same way Rockstar did...content you can't possibly get to, but is included in the data files anyway. Scan in hardcode porn and put it in the texture file or whatever.
And then watching retail stores that refuse to carry AO games either give in or get made irrelevant, thus making the entire rating system irrelevant.
Congrats, Jack. It's entirely possible you'll be the death of the entire video game rating system if you piss the industry off bad enough. They'll just make everything AO, and then where will you be?
Which incidentally will result in parents being trained to purchase completely harmless AO games, and thus not batting an eye when 13-year old Jonny wants Hardcore Rape Simulator 2: The Revenge, now with motion feedback.
But when has anyone who cares 'about the children' actually cared when their actions harm children?
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Well, it's partly rational. I really think Thompson is truly stretching the point and makign all kinds of specious arguments. Especially when it comes to his discussion of the class action suit.
When we start holding parents at fault? When do we start punishing the legal guardians? If we advocate fining retailers for selling the product to under-age kids, will we bring charges against the parents? I've worked in retail. In most cases, it's an adult that makes the purchase, irrespective of wether or not you make a point of directing them to the age rating. It seems that you can't make parents aware of the problem.
I, the interviewer, agree with you completely. Although I'm extremely pleased with the content of the interview, and the fact that it does something for the community that hasn't been done yet (get out Jack's unslanted/unedited views), I was very unhappy with my interview style. My only defense is that he's a lawyer who's been doing this for a long time and who's put a lot more thought and research into this subject than I ever could. I was prepared, believe it or not, but just stood there and let him talk when I should have taken more control. Like you said, though, he probably would have hung up on me even earlier, and that was the absolute last thing I wanted to happen.
Does anyone else find it ironic that the radio station he was interviewed for has the same name as a GTA radio station, a series he's always been so avidly fighting? (In GTAIII, the talk radio station was called Chatterbox, hosted by Lazlo, for anyone who didn't know) ...Anyone? Didn't think so.
You know, some of Jack's points were really interesting. But you could have countered better? C'mon how many times did you bring up the Ken/Barbie doll defense? You could have easily just told him to switch on the TV at any time of the day and you'll see things which are 100x more serious than videogames. You also let him talk too long when replying to an answer and often times he sidetracked you into another argument. (WTH was he doing talking about McCarthiasm.. I mean c'mon) I wish you had done some more research on the ESRB, Lowenstein, ESA etc. The illinois ban he mentioned is being challenged for a number of valid reasons and I really wish you looked into all this stuff before the interview. It also seemed to me that you bought into some of his arguments regarding interactivity of video games having more of an effect than movies yet there is no solid scientific study to back it up. And you fail to mention that that obviously the vast majority of the video gaming population doesn't go kill people. You know, if this guy actually was working to reform the industry (he really does have some valid points but from his arguments he's obviously just doing this to milk his 30-seconds of fame for all its worth), I would actually be rooting for him. That being said, I'm sure you learned about interviewing through this experience and you will be better prepared when you interview a prominent figure in the future. Mr. Thompson was clearly trying to overwhelm you with his legal innuendos and side tracking arguments.
"but lets not kid ourselves about the nature of the tittilation being peddled."
I think everyone here understands what these games are about, we read the reviews, we see the screenshots, we play the games... but what Jack Thompson is saying (and his agenda) is that these games are dangerous and are corrupting our youth and turning them into violent killers... the problem with this is it's just not true.
Video games have enough stigma attached to them already.. do we really need another ass-hat running around spouting lies and making the Video game studios water down or censor these games like they already do for movies, TV, and songs?
"wrote him a letter explaining that I was a gamer and liked what he was doing."
And he wrote you a positive reply? Amazing...
Try an experiment, write him as a gamer and tell him you don't like what he is doing.. see what kind of response you get...
"Thompson is anti-violent games in the hands of minors."
If there is no correlation between youths who commit acts of violence and Violent video games then why is this good?
If there is actually a correlaton between reduced violence in minors who play violent video games (which the vioence in youth statistics does show) then wouldn't Jack be doing a bad thing currently?