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Jack Thompson Rescinds Offer
Goalmaster3000 writes to tell us Joystiq.com is reporting that Jack Thompson has rescinded his offer of a $10,000 donation to charity if a video game were made to fit his model. Recently a group of GTA modders cooked up a scenario to fit the bill but apparently Thompson is claiming that his piece 'A Modest Video Game Proposal' was intended as satire that the video game community was not bright enough to grasp. Perhaps Thompson was just afraid he was going to have to sue himself? Update: 10/17 20:02 GMT by SM: It appears that the Penny Arcade crew has taken the next step by donating the promised $10,000... in Jack Thompson's name.
With a name akin to Swift's famous "A Modest Proposal", I can believe that Thompson thought it to be satire all along. However, the bit about promising to donate to charity was uncalled for.
Well, I can see his point. Political statements are more important than people.
He is nothing but a common troll. He lives on attention. YOUR attention. Stop giving him page hits; stop giving him political capital; stop giving him the time of day.
Really, why is it necessary to point this out?
No kidding, what an ass. Who jokes about giving $10,000 to charity? I mean, if he'd offered it as a direct prize to the winner, that's one thing - but claiming you're going to give it to charity and then renegging? No wonder the NIMF wants him to never mention their name again.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
Well it sounded legit to me. Of course in this day and age people have forgotten about "Put up or shut up". It sounds like the put up part has been breached but thankfully the "shut up" portion remains. Hopefully that part will remain.
Thompson resorted to mere name-calling when he couldn't win his argument.
Then:
What a fucking moron.
IMO you need to work on your consistency.
It wasn't satire. If you read half the things he writes (by the way, his site www.stopkill.com looks severely cripple lately. Any explanation?), you'd understand that this man could actually be quite violent given the way he reacts to intelligent defense of game(r)s.
I honestly thought the guys who made Postal2 would make his game and put on the box 'Jack Thompson's (insert title)' just to call him out. It wasn't a joke to him, he wanted to know if the game industry would make itself the target instead of cops, hookers and other gangs/inmates to see if gamers would start killing eachother instead of a second grader bringing a gun to kill a fellow student. The man is honestly sick and twisted in a very bad way.
Perfecting Discordia
www.stevenvansickle.com
People don't say, "I will donate $10,000 to charity," as satire.
/syle
In all fairness to your valid point, the difference here is that the grandparent substantiates the fact that the guy is a "fucking moron," whereas Thompson's name-calling was apparently unsubstantiated and resulted solely from being unable to rebut the arguments of a 14-year-old kid.
It's the difference between saying "I can't stand up to you in an argument, so therefore you are an idiot." and saying "You can't stand up to a 14-year-old kid in an argument without resorting to ad hominem attacks, so therefore you are a moron."
It seems he probably originally did mean it to be satire... He was thinking "Do this outrageous thing that you won't do, and I'll donate $10,000". It turns out it's not that outrageous, and it was easily done. He thinks it's outrageous, because the theme is killing people that are supposed to be "on our side", but he doesn't realize that it's just a game, and games can go beyond the realm of what is acceptable in "real life" and still they themselves be acceptable.
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
I think this deserves a name -- let's call it the Slashdot Fallacy: The erroneous equation of one group of people with another group of people merely because the two groups happen to cohabitate on a certain website.
So it's the same people who are taking one position and then another? Do you have links to comments to back that up?
See, that responsibility is important and all, but the nuclear family is a relic of the past age. If the parents you mention fail to be concerned enough, we as the metaphorical village get stuck with the sociopathic loser for the next 30-60 years. Their responsibility becomes our responsibility.
Also keep in mind that nothing in American society comes close to the "it takes a village" philosophy. Our society is still nuclear-family at its core, and will not be changing any time soon.
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
I have to agree with you 100%.
He emailed Penny Arcade looking to vent his spleen against one of thier comics that played apon his request and the issue of video game violence. In the email he included his phone number. Can't remember if it was Tyco, but one of the board members called him to discuss the offer and clarify some of the vague points of his offer. He demanded to know how they received the phone number, threatened to sue them if they called again, and chewed the guy out on the phone.
Jack Thompson lost a child and blames video games. In the above actions, all he would have had to do is describe the pain of losing his child and state that he believed that video games played a role in his circumstance. He would have had a lot of sympathy and support from the people playing games, instead he treated all players a fringe psychopaths, and presented himself as a supreme *sshole. He doesn't know how to court the market, he's treatening to go to war against it.
He never would have donated $10,000. He thought it was a safe bet, because he thought the market was so controlled and fragile that it would have acted with the same rigidity as the *IAA and NEVER ALLOW such a game to be made. If he was going to spend that money, he would have done it a long time ago by sending it to his representative (with a letter wrapped around it, telling of the painful loss of his child and the circumstances under which it happened).
Far be it for me to point out the obvious questions of whether a father who is so quick to explode might have led a destablizing influence on his children. He may have been a model citizen before the incident, but today he's just a foaming at the mouth lunatic who's mad, and probably not to discriminating at who he hurts to received "justice" from the videogame industry.
Slashdotters seem to think video games have no effect on people. Thompson sees them as horrible killer-trainers. Personally, I fall somewhere in between.
I love playing Halo. It's exciting and fun, and the "violence" is pretty mild. I have played Unreal Tournament and GTA (older versions), but gave them up because to me, they were too sadistic. They didn't make me want to kill people, but they made me a little more inclined to be a jerk.
It's the same with TV. If I watch a show like "The Shield" or some pissy reality show where everybody hates each other, I get a little bit into that angry, "screw you" mentality.
Think about your personality and attitude. Me, I'm very laid back, because my dad is laid back. I like goofy jokes because my dad does, and my friends growing up did too. (I also watched Monty Python.) I can see how these influences shaped the way I am.
Most of us spend several hours a day using some kind of media - music, TV, internet, video games, etc. Just like the people we're around, these virtual friends DO shape our mentality, somewhat.
I will never be a homocidal maniac, regardless of what I watch or play. But I do know that seeing examples of people who laugh, who love and forgive each other - whether those are real people or on TV - makes it easier for me to do the same. Exposing myself to hours of anger and selfishness makes me likely to replay those thoughts and words. Just because I'm an adult doesn't mean that everything is equally good for me.
Does anybody else see that?
http://www.penny-arcade.com/news.php?date=2005-10- 12
Gabe was talking to Jack via email, suggesting a charity which would have liked to received the money, which Gabe is active in promoting. It is backed by gamers, but isn't pushing videogames (any more than other toys) upon children.
Jack noted that Gabe's phone number was in his email, and took it upon himself to call Gabe and personally chew him out and threaten Gabe.
Interesting comments, and completely off-base.
A man can be both pro presonal responsibility (eg, parent blamers), and anti-track your movements (if I understand what everyone above is saying correctly) without any inherent contradictions. As a parent, I strongly feel that it is my responsibility to society to make sure that I raise my children to be well-adjusted, generally law-abiding, and otherwise good people. At the same time, I feel that some of the tools that might make this easier (gps cell phones is the example above, but not the best) are not necessarily a good idea, since they can--although they don't have to--have the effect of encouraging parents to be lazy--I call it the "congress will fix it" syndrome.
That said, I am probably not as anti-tech as some people seem to be. A technology that helps a concerned parent do their job can be a good thing. But it can also be a bad thing for parents who are already shirking their responsibilities.
I do agree that many folks would be upset about parents searching their kids' rooms. I suspect that most of those who do are either kids or are young enough to remember what that was really like as a kid. I never had marijuana in my room (that I know of), but I had some other things that my parents didn't really appreciate (my mom, bless her heart, is one of the "Dungeons & Dragons is an evil evil game, and will corrupt your soul" types--I am an avid gamer; we still have discussions focused on that disagreement), so I know what it was like. I still plan to make sure I know what my kids have in their rooms. Why? Because that's part of knowing what your kids are doing. Do I plan to make a big deal of it? No. I will let my kids know that a certain level of privacy will be afforded, but that at the same time I need to know what they are doing in my house.
Will I get them GPS-enabled cell-phones? Probably not. In fact, I am unlikely to buy them anything so grandiose as a cell-phone. If they want one when they are older, then they can pay for it. That way when they talk for 3000 minutes on a 700 minute a month plan, they can foot the bill, not me. That will teach them responsibility much more quickly than having a gps-enabled phone. The goal is not to track their every movement--that just teaches them to lie, cheat (including leaving the phone somewhere they are not), and otherwise get around your pathetic attempts to know exactly where they are at any given moment. I would much rather teach my children that actions have consequences, and that life is not likely to hand them a free ride.
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
I hardly see why. The poster was not using his obscenity as evidence in a debate against Jack Thompson, rather instead he was stating it as a conclusion concerning Jack Thomson. The first is an ad hominem fallacy, the second a valid opinion, given the evidence. To reiterate, the poster was not using "Thompson is a fucking moron" in an argument against something Thompson was doing/saying, but rather was concluding "given these behaviors, I feel it it safe to conclude that thompson is, indeed, a fucking moron"
It doesn't matter if it was satire or not anyway. This game doesn't count - his original "challenge" requires a nationwide boxed retail distribution by summer of next year. The game was going to be created - of that no one should doubt. It is unlikely that a publisher would publish it, and more unlikely that any retailers would carry it.
But even if all that took place, it doesn't matter - this entire debate is being orchestrated by him. When he stops talking, there's nothing to fill the void - there aren't any pro-game people working the press. When he is talking, the debate is always about how bad these games are - not about how good they are.
The upshot:
If the gaming industry wants to gather public (not just gamer) support, they need to stop reacting and start acting.
This particular challenge is one he can't lose no matter how the industry reacts. "Are you still beating your wife?"
-Adam
So telling people to harass someone is "informative" and a good way of proving our point(s)?
Given what we know about his replies already, lets not drag ourselves to his level. The egomaniac craves attention, and guess what examples of the things those "evil gamers who oppose me do" he is going to bring up next? And we already know that he doesn't want to have a civil debate or discussion, so why even bother talking to a brick wall?
He also has been on a losing streak lately, and now you have to add more fuel and "creditability" to his fire. He may be nuts, but encouraging people to harass him just makes us look bad. Even more so when we are reduced to his level of "acting civil."
Seriously slashdot, enough with the spamming/calling/Ddosing of people we don't like; please grow up and be more mature about dealing with things like this. I don't have a problem with informative emails(i.e. non-emotional and informative complaining about company X's defective product or really restrictive DRM), but this one is really asking people not to be civil with the intent to hammer him. Stuff like this and intentionally Ddosing sites(i.e. needing to check the RIAA's site several times, "just to make sure it is still up")make no real progress with the issue at hand.