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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Goalmaster3000 writes to tell us Joystiq.com is reporting that Jack Thompson has rescinded his offer of a $10,000 donation to charity if a video game were made to fit his model.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.
The fact that the guy thinks he needs to explain that his request was satire just means he didn't understand that what he got back was infact satirical. You might say he's being sassed, and doesn't even realize it.
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
I saw the entirety of a back-and-forth e-mail conversation that a 14-year-old gamer had with this moron. It was hot on the heels of the Hot Coffee debacle, and the kid was actually very well-spoken. He brought up excellent arguments, rebutted points made by Thompson, and continued to press his original point.
Thompson kept trying to weave out of the argument, and eventually ended up calling him names, telling him to grow up because he was just a pathetic child, and other crap unbecoming of an attorney. The kid completely won the argument by not only proving that gamers were not just idiotic 14-year-old kids, but also because Thompson resorted to mere name-calling when he couldn't win his argument.
What a fucking moron.
I used to think Linux was cool -- then I turned 14.
since it goes with Shit. This basically sums up Jack Thompson's entire knowledge of the video game industry he has set out to try and destroy.
No, I don't think very young people should be playing violent videogames all day, every day but it is not Jack's problem. It is not the government's problem. It is a PARENTAL problem and should be dealt with as such. Parents should take fracking responsibility for raising their children and when their children become delusional, homicidal maniacs they should CONTINUE to take responsibility since it was THEIR parenting techniques that helped little Johnny become what he is today. It takes all of 5 to 15 minutes out of your hectic day to check in on what your child is playing, watching, or reading and if he/she is constantly going over to Billy's or Sandy's house then, as a parent, you had better damn well trust that Billy's Mom and Dad are raising their child like you are raising yours so that your philosophies match (ie. so that little Johhny doesn't run over to Billy's house to play GTA: San Andreas every day because Billy's parents don't give a shit what Billy plays).
Sorry for the rant but I'm past the point of believing the crap about it takes a village to raise a child. How about it takes a concerned parent (single or plural) to raise a child. If your job takes away too much of your parenting time then perhaps you should do without the new BMW and Lexus in the driveway and spend more time with your child, less with your paycheck -- eh?
Dream as if you'll live forever.
Live as if you'll die tomorrow.
~Anonymous~
In general, this is a 'contract to the world', an offer of reward on completion. It's often called a "race across the desert", a unilateral contract with neither consideration nor quid pro quo. The first one who completes the contract gets the reward. If revoked prior to completion, you generally have no recourse. If that is not the case, there are two common ways to sue, or offer as a baseline for negotition, for failure to fulfill his end of the promise.
First, if you complete the contract first and give sufficient notification of such, and it is prior to his unilateral revocation, you can argue that he breached the contract. As the first person across the line, you are typically entitled to the reward. Breach of that may entitle you to estop the contract. In other words, entitlement to fulfillment of his promise.
Second, if you say that you relied on his contract and had sufficient reason to believe that the contract would be fulfilled (i.e. there is precedent for this type of contract, e.g. auctions for services to be rendered; or it would be unreasonable economic policy to not enforce payment because your reliance on his statement was reasonable and it would be poor form to permit his type of statement when it incurs your type of economically inefficient reliance), you might be able to sue for your costs, your lost opportunity, or his benefit.
Tycho called this one already. When Penny Arcade's last Jack Thompson comic came out Tycho wrote the following:
- 14
"Of course, he's not serious. Machination is too glorified a word for what he's doing. Ruse would make it seem debonair. He's essentially holding money hostage from charity, and if someone did make it, even as a joke, he would say that it didn't conform to his "design." This sort of thing is usually called a shell-game."
http://www.penny-arcade.com/news.php?date=2005-10
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
this guy is a nutcase. ask anyone who has known him personally (like my dad). you guys are just feeding him. he eats this stuff up.
as great as it is to see penny arcade bothering the sad old dirtbag, he would be much more provoked if no one gave a crap what he said. everyone knows he's an idiot, so lets let this old man die lonely and ignored
-- lol pwned
If he can actually do that. I mean, he's made the offer, you make this game I give $10,000 to charity. I kind of wonder if he actually has the legal ability to just go "ha ha only kidding" at this point and back out.
I mean, the feeble "it's satire... really" identifier in the title doesn't change the fact that what follows is several pages of Mr. Thompson very personally fantasizing about violently killing his enemies. And I think the feeble attempts to pretend he was writing satire would mean even less from a legal perspective. Is "gotcha... it was just a joke!" a recognized defense in contract law?
I mean, I am not a lawyer, but then, Jack Thompson appears to only be a lawyer in the most superficial sense. So I would be very curious to see whether Thompson has stumbled into some kind of self-constructed legal trap by putting the offer to donate to charity into his work of "satire". If you post a public notice promising to donate $10,000 to charity if someone does thing X, are you in any way committing to this? Like, those public notices saying "$1000 reward for information leading to the capture of the kidnapper of Media Heartthrob". Are those public notices legally binding to the person who put them up? If so, I'd be very, very interested to see what happens if that group of GTA modders, or the people working on the sprite flash game, actually complete something. Since both of those games entered production before Thompson issued his retraction, is there any chance they could go to court and try to claim Thompson's offer legally binding or his retraction legally invalid?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
The mod does not fit the bill at all - other than the fact there is a lot of violence involved. The mod is only "Defemation of Character", as advertised; it has little do with Thomspon's scenario.
Gaming companies need to seriously address the issues Thompson brings up. I find particularly pursuasive his analogy to cigarette advertisements as well as the real world examples that have been coming up for the last seven years or so.
That's the thing about Jack's fantasy: He's already trying to live it. Whether he really does despise game(r)s that much or he's that much more of a power monger, he needs to see this come to fruition that he probably couldn't care if someone died to complete his vision. Given the gravity and senselessness of the violence in his proposal, I wouldn't be surprised at all if he's really pathologically violent. Read about his conversation with Mike Krahulik (Gabe) from Penny-Arcade, or even worse, read the transcript of his emails with Scott from VG Cats.
Personally, I still think the Postal2 team could have made his game and sold millions on it because everyone would accept it as a joke like the rest of thier work. People aren't supposed to take games this seriously, and even one of the institutes he frequently cites for research told him to stop referencing them in every way because he distorts thier studies, and gives them a bad name.
Perfecting Discordia
www.stevenvansickle.com
According to an update on today's Penny Arcade, PA went ahead and made the promised $10,000 donation themselves to the Entertainment Software Association... in his name.
The PA guys really know how to cut someone down with class. Help kids and drive Jack Thompson insane all in one fell-swoop. I wonder about what he's going to threaten to sue now.
E pluribus unum
It might be worth noting that the good people at Penny Arcade have already made up for Thompson's retraction, and donated $10,000 to charity in Thompson's Name. He he. Gotta love those PA kids.
Here's the quote from the PA site: "You know what, Jack? We're going to be the men you're not. You said that your insulting, illusory ten thousand dollars would go to the charity of Paul Eibler's choice. We've got a good guess that he'd direct your nonexistant largesse toward The Entertainment Software Association Foundation, a body that has raised over six point seven million dollars over the last eight years. We've just made the donation you never would, and never meant to. Ten thousand dollars' worth. And we made it in your name.
Mod my comments down. It'll be fun.
Oh I know, actually Gabe told Jack that $10,000 is pretty weak from a famous Miami lawyer when their charity has already raised half a million (in money, toys, etc.) in two years from the gamer community. That's what pissed off Jack. Then Jack accused their charity of being hollow because they're supposedly some flush-with-cash game company and that Jack's donations mean more in the ethical sense. When Gabe (Mike) emailed him back to clarify that they are not flush-with-cash at all, Jack called back and spent the entirety of the conversation screaming because Gabe asked him if Jack would have to sue himself for proposing such a horrifically malevolent game. Part of the way in the conversation, Jack hung up.
Check out the transcripts of emails between Jackie T. and Scott from VG Cats. It's even worse.
If this guy wants to play with fire, I suggest somebody put up a site to publish all of Jack's threats and verbal abuse (plus nonsense) and see if he gets institutionalized. I seriously think that man is pathologically violent.
Perfecting Discordia
www.stevenvansickle.com
I know that I just posted about not posting unless necessary, but I need to correct this (that, and we've already cracked the 100 comment marker.)
There is already enough information available to discredit Jack Thompson. When you need to, just mention that this is the same guy that requested the creation of a violent video game coupled with what appeared to be a straight donation to charity - and then renegged claiming satire. In fact, there wasn't even a thing indicating that there was satire involved: the game itself, even though the story line was poor, was plausable (and counter-productive to its cause, since it casts the anti-game advocate as a insane maniac), as was the alleged donation of ($10 000).
Even I could make a better satire myself - it involves making the donation sum ridiculous ($10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 plus 33+1/3 cents) so that it couldn't possible be legit under normal contract law, and eventually ends in having the protagonist beating himself up for creating the game that he created. While it still doesn't meet the requirements, it is a much better attempt.
The original "satire" can be twisted easily, as there is no good light that can be cast upon this - this is the equivalent of political suicide, as there is no damage control that can be performed to save face (aside from making that donation).
Jack is already discredited - all that's needed is to point to this incident in either a "commitioning violent games = supporting violent games", or as a "reneg on donation promise for no good reason". The legal departments from the ESA and other lobby groups have already countered similar laws in other states - they can easily take care of one nutcase that has not famous for his career success-rate (political, or legal).
I say again: Thompson is not a threat. There is no need to keep posting comments, or to keep posting articles about him on Slashdot. If you see a story about him in the mainstream media, feel free to post once (making sure that content is not excessivly repeated.) Other than that, the "Don't feed the troll" rule applies.
...this Jack Thompson fellow. And I say this as a games programmer, although not one who's ever worked on a violent game of any sort. Anyway.
When all this fuss kicked off over the last few weeks, I read a bit of what he has to say. And to be honest, reading what he says to people in private correspondance (and to an extent in his public statements) you get the impression that he's a rabid loon. Then on Penny Arcade, I spotted a link to an audio interview some guys did with him. I downloaded and had a listen. And to give the man some credit, he comes across much better in person. I'm much less surprised that he gets the attention he does, having listened to him - he comes across as a slightly opinionated but earnest and frank concerned guy, worried about the effect games have on kids and teenagers. At least, he does initially.
After a while though, when he's gone past the fairly logical point of discussing M-rated game sales to minors with someone who agrees with him, he starts getting a bit out there. EA in cahoots with the porn industry, deliberately aiming for them to make porno skins for The Sims? Please. Thing is, because he *seems* reasonable, people who don't know too much about games probably think he *is* reasonable. And in small doses, for short periods of time, he probably is. But disagree too much, scratch the surface of his arguments, and things suddenly get a lot stranger...
Game dev and music blog
Wow. I actually just spoke with this man, at the number above. He asked me who I was, and I made the mistake of saying that I wanted to ask him some questions about his proposal to the (oops) "internet community". He then started raising his voice, saying that he made this proposal to the "gaming industry", not a bunch of modders working out of their basement. I couldn't get a word in edgewise. He told me to get a dictionary, and hung up. Ever the cool-headed one, he.
Jack strikes me as an extremely fearful man. It could be argued that most of what he does is driven by fear. He's afraid of gamers. He's afraid of the world. So he became a lawyer so that he could feel powerful. And look at his responses to e-mails. He obviously feels threatened by VGCATS and Penny Arcade, and he has a fight/flight reaction (He tends to choose fight). Its obvious to me that these violent, threatening responses that he makes are caused by FEAR.
He pictures the gamers of the world as these horrible violent people that might shoot him or his family at any time, and so he wants to stop it. He imagines that we're all violent and that video games made us this way. He's afraid, so he strikes out. Like a cornered dog.
But what he doesnt seem to get is that, yeah, there are violent people, and yeah there are gamers, and yeah there are a few gamers that are also violent, but they are the VAST MINORITY. Most gamers are peaceful! It's like saying "HEY, all these murderers had something in common. They ate sandwiches. Sandwiches make you murder!"
Someone should draw him a venn diagram...
I'm honestly not sure if he means that he did commit to donate the money, or that he did give reasons why he won't. I'm also not clear on why he says that he hasn't been contacted WRT which charity to pay, then says that the terms of the proposal weren't met (and therefore implies he won't pay until they have been).
I don't think that games turn people into killers. In fact, I enjoy Unreal Tournament 2004, WoW, etc, which obviously involve "killing" to reach your goal. But I do support the parent posting's observations...
I think that in their rush to defend an anything-goes mentality, other posters in this thread overlook obvious connections:
1. Olympic and all world-class athletes use visualization as a part of their training. They imagine themselves doing their sport in as vivid a detail as they can. For example, a weight lifter imagines walking up to the weights, feeling the bar, gripping it, heaving it upwards, etc, etc. They imagine the perfect performance again and again, and it helps to shape their reactions to achieve it.
Your brain does not know the difference between real and imagined. That's why you can get angry "just thinking about that jerk that cut you off this morning". Obviously, higher-level functions allow us to reason and realize "it's just a memory/game" but our instincts and reflexes may not be so lucky.
2. Read Blink and see how what we view affects how we act. In particular, the experiment where people were primed (unknowingly) to be either rude or polite and how unbelievably strong the effect was. The experimenters expected noticable but minor differences and found HUGE differences in reaction that astonished them.
In light of that, someone who spends HOURS trying to grief others and demolish them (or get steamrolled themselves) in vicious ways will, as the parent comment says, definitely be more likely to be jerks. Or worse. And that's the difference, say between sports and video games: you cannot demolish 20 opposing basketball teams in a long night of playing. You can easily do this in video games, including some of my favorites.
Again, I'm not going to kill someone because I play violent games. But please don't ignore obvious and deep issues to say that video games (or porn, or whatever) have nothing to do with anything. (Read Blink's description of gender and racial biases that are very unconscious but can be accurately measured and can be affected by our experiences and then think about how games or porn present various different classes/professions/races/genders and imagine how being "primed" in this way would affect attitudes and interactions, even if they never were consciously accepted and acted upon in open ways.)
I think we ought to use Mr. Thompson for own ends. Seeing as he is so keen to sue people, maybe we should sign his email address up with every major spammer across the world and see how he reacts. I bet he'd have his legal dogs of war on their asses by the end of the week, maybe if we got really lucky the spammer and JT would use all their energies trying to eradicate each other leaving the rest of the world in peace. Oops, I hope JT doesn't decide to sue me for writing this!
I believe the mod in question is a GTA mod, so Rockstar should get together with the modders and host the mod on their servers. Make the mod downloadable in exchange for a charitable donation. Tens of thousands of gamers would no doubt donate hundreds of thousands of dollars downloading the thing. The charity wins and Rockstar gets a single piece of good publicity (as they are pretty much the "worst offender" when it comes to violent games).
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
You have a good point. Our moods in life are to a large extent reflections of the world around us, including video games. But then again, it gets ambigous when you start to dive in a bit deeper, as to WHAT mood they will induce. For instance, one of the games you mentioned that you do not like happens to be a favorite of mine, Unreal Tournament (the original) - you said it was too sadistic. My experience has been rather the opposite. When you get heated up and mad playing UT, you tend to LOSE. The game actually rewards a calm, quick, cool head. When you get mad, you make stupid mistakes - you repeately get fragged by people watching your reflexive, unintellegent step-by-step angry persuit of someone wounded (easy to bait), always going to the same place to snipe, hanging out there too long, etc. So, I don't think UT rewards sadism, I think it rewards creativity and doing the unexpected.
I find whether I am in a good or bad mood afterwards depends more on whether I thought I have done well or not. And I find a certain release from the stresses of the day - rather than yell at someone I care about, or be snapish, I like to play a 30-min session, and I feel more relaxed, like some of the stress has been burned off; and on rainy days, easier to do than jogging for a 1/2 hr.
Of course, I'm an adult, and I don't have kids. So my perspective is a bit different. But my point is that the SAME game will affect DIFFERENT people DIFFERENTLY. Who should then determine which games are acceptable and which games are not? It seems that, as with many things, it should be left to the individual. You choose not to play UT, because you don't like how it makes you feel, I choose to play UT because I like how it makes me feel. I don't think you can universally check off a game as being in the "This is a Not-Good-For-You, mean feeling inducing" category for all people.
And Monty Python STILL rocks.
I give my sincere gratitude ^_^
I think we should make a domain to counter his www.stopkill.com
We'll make www.stopjack.com
Okay, now did I leave that soapbox...?
Perfecting Discordia
www.stevenvansickle.com