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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Goalmaster3000 writes to tell us Joystiq.com is reporting that Jack Thompson has rescinded his offer of a $10,000 donation to charity if a video game were made to fit his model.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.
A lawyer lied, and people are surprised?
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.
So a satirical response to a satirical comment gives us what...
Ah, the irony!
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Well, I can see his point. Political statements are more important than people.
So, he thinks we weren't bright enough to realize his "satire"? Well, at least we're bright enough to know the difference between video game violence and real-life violence. Otherwise, we'd be bunny-hopping our BMX bikes over his front yard fence and blowing him away with my machine gun.
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.
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?
The guy spouts to be an expert in everything under the sun. But once you call him on it, you come to know he only has a superficial understanding of things. If you can imagine a slimy car salesman, that's Jack.
Someone should have made a game where you kill the CEO and the family, but they come back as zombies, and then you play as the zombies and go torture and kill the lawyer "Thomp Jackson"
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Jack Thompson, increasingly, resembles nothing more so than one of the least competent of slashdot's trolls.
...
MAN 1: I am going to kill you and rape your family!
MAN 2:
MAN 1: What, don't you know satire when you hear it? You have no sense of humor at all. Idiot.
"Jack Thompson Rescinds Offer" Should be: "Jack Thompson steals $10k from Charity"
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.
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."
Jack Thompson
"A Lisp programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing." - Alan Perlis
Oh, it wasn't that at all? Well, you know if someone had fucking LINKED THE ORIGINAL THING THAT JACK WROTE then I would have known that. Goddamn.
I found this description of the original hoo-hah:
You're welcome.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
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
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
if by "jack thompson" you mean "penny arcade"... http://www.penny-arcade.com/news.php?date=2005-10- 17#2834
for a minute there, i lost myself...
Tycho and Gabe just made the donation on Jack's behalf. See the 3rd post down.
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?
John B. Thompson, Attorney at Law
1172 South Dixie Hwy., Suite 111
Coral Gables, Florida 33146
305-666-4366
jackpeace@comcast.net
August 5, 2005
Patricia Vance
source: http://www.vgcats.com/jack.php
Make sure to write any letters or make any calls in the same civil manner as he himself has shown others.
Make extra sure.
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
http://croqaudile.com/?article_id=10299
Enjoy it. I know I did.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
...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
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.)
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.
In fact, I'll do it right now;
http://www.hardcoregamers.com/jack-thompson/
Looks can be deceiving. Or CAN they?