Slashdot Mirror
Jack Thompson Weighs in on Oblivion
Robotron23 writes "Jack Thompson has commenced his attack on The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion by seeking appearances on several talk shows. A press release announcing his availability speaks of Take Two not having 'learned its lesson' over the Hot Coffee scandal, before continuing to detail the issues surrounding Oblivion's re-rating, in particular regarding nudity - concluding that the game content will spawn 'an even worse disaster' than occurred during Hot Coffee."
Subject line says it all.
Video games don't make me fell violent, morons do.
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
That's the responsibility of the developer, not the publisher. But then again it's Jackass Thompson, of course he's only talking out of his rear end without bothering to do any research. How did that man manage to become a lawyer?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
If I understand correctly, it was a 3rd party mod applied to Oblivion that caused the nudity fuss, not a 3rd party unlocking of existing content a la Hot Coffee.
As people have said already, you might as well rate every single game ever made as Mature, since any game can be hacked independently to show nudity or sex or clones of Jack Thompson for that matter.
Argh.
I think that there should be a new rating introduced. How about "TM", or maybe "T-M". It would stand for "Teen-Moddable", and underneath it it would say: "This game can be modified by the players. This means that there can be boobies and heavy sexual innuendo."
Would you kindly mod me +1 insightful?
He likes to instigate things. He likes attention. Everyone knows his stance, which you either agree with or don't (hopefully it is the latter). Can we just be done with him now? Honestly, the best course of action is to ignore him.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Can't be pissed off at Thompson for being a wanker...He was born that way, I doubt he could help it. I guess you could blame his parents for not slapping the stupid out of him...
All that being said, W. T. F. was the ESRB thinking giving that game a goddamn Teen rating? DIABLO II got a goddamn M rating. Any moron would know that a first person game with fricking SWORDS is going to rate an M. Didn't Morrowind rate an M?
Really, does it weight that heavily on the sales if it ends up rated M?
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Gah, this is nothing but Troll bait.....We can't stop Jack Thompson from talking to the press. We can't stop the press from listening to him...so why do we even bother to post these. All we get are comments ranging from the useless to the insane (yes threating JAck with violence is an excellent way of proving he's wrong *sigh*). This post included ;)
Lets me tag stores like this with "asshole attentionwhore bullshit esrb fud"
/offtopic
Even if it doesn't accomplish anything it makes me feel better
You have to be kidding me. I hope this guy appears on a few call-in shows. I'd love to ask him some questions.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Jack Thompson: the Dvorak of the gaming world.
The skin was a nude skin used to render clothing. It was technical nudity. It was unlocked via a third party modification. There was no intended nudity or a fellatio minigame, just a skinning component detached and refactored. Not nearly as severe, but still hot-coffee-esque.
Clearly, Mr. Thompson does not understand the technical nature of the problems he addresses with his hellfire and brimstone approach. In both the Hot Coffee and this new Oblivion case, the consumer must have the desire to modify the game in order to access content which the developers did not intend for the consumer to see. Sure, in the Hot Coffee case, the "questionable" content was there but inaccessable in any way through normal operation of them game. In the Oblivion case, the "questionable" content isn't even in the data of the game!
Mr. Thompson should turn his efforts elsewhere. My suggestion would be the consumer instead of the manufacturers, because they are far more likely to listen.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
This is just ridiculous. If you're going to make an accurate model of a human character, of course you're going to have to start with a naked form and build up from there.
I can understand people getting offended at "Hot Coffee", which was explicitly sexual, but this is just silly. People are naked beneath their clothing. It's true! Take-Two showed more no skin than you'd see in the world normally, but they made the horrible sin of starting from anatomically correct base. You might as well ban mannequins.
FTA:
During your interview, Thompson also gives antidotes from his new book, "Out of Harm's Way" (Tyndale House Publishers).
I wish someone would give me an antidote to Jack Thompson...
OK, as nuts as this guy is, are you kidding me?
A little bit of topless-ness in a game rated T which was sold to kids of all ages is worse that a full sex mini-game, complete with sounds and visuals which was in a game rated MA which was sold to kids of all ages?
Remember kids: Jack Thompson says sex mini-games are better than topless-ness. Just make sure the female isn't topless.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
How can user mods be prevented, also how can a developer be held resposable for a non-sanctioned mod (something that would void any warenty on the product)? That is the real question.
The "Lesson" is that Hillary Clinton is a stooge or at least bottom feeding to get conservative votes and people like Jack Thompson have declared war on an entertanment industy accusing it of erodeing our morals. Media reflects our culture not the other way around, "fix" our culture and the desire for simulated violence will go away on it's own.
Just my 2 cents...
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
First, get a bunch of gamers together. Give half of them the most violent video game you can think of, and give the other half a bunch of articles/rants by Jack Thompson, and tell each group to play/read for an hour. At the end of that hour, administer a few tests to see how violent each group is.
I guarantee you that the Thompson group will be much more prone to start bashing in heads, particularly Mr. Thompson's.
Many Bothans died to bring you this sig.
How much Rockstar screwed us over.
I WANT to call this guy an idiot (which he is) and say that there's NO WAY that the publisher should be held responsible for a user-made mod. But last time I did that, it turned out Rockstar actual HAD included the "offending" content, and HAD lied about it. All us gamer types were calling Jack a moron for confusing "official" content with user mods, but he turned out to be right.
So thanks, Rockstar, for being idiots and forgetting to delete the mini-game you had to disable at the last minute to keep your "M" rating. And thanks even MORE for lying about it, making US look like jerks for defending you.
"Last summer the video game industry was rocked by revelations that Take-Two Interactive, the makers of the hyper-violent Grand Theft Auto games, had illegally embedded in GTA: San Andreas graphic interactive adult sexual material."
Illegally imbedded? Since when is depicting nuidity in a work of art/literature/film/video game illegal? Pretty sure we can do that given the first amendment. The rating system is not law either, so not showing the ESRB all content is no more illegal. Seems his attitude is a bit skewed.
"It is also clear that Take-Two corporately and its senior officers, including CEO Paul Eibeler, individually, must now be prosecuted criminally for the knowing distribution of "sexual material harmful to minors" which is a felony in most states and nationally. The undersigned intends to work toward that end immediately"
Again, the ratings system is not law. Because a game is rated teen does not mean it is intended to be marketed towards kids. If anything, get on the ESRB for misrepresenting the game. Why not sue every publisher who puts out sexually explicit books. It's not the publisher's responsibility to dictate who should buy their material. His statements are outrageous.
I notice in the article it says, "In Thompson's engrossing memoir...Thompson explains the moral, legal, ethical, and racial implications of this battle" (i.e. the battle against Satan's own game industry) - but Racial implications? Don't suppose anyone's actually read the memoir and can explain what on earth he claims the racial implications might be?
There are topless males in the game. By applying the MALE texture to the FEMALE model, you get boobies. Sort of.
Was he dropped on his head too many times as a baby?
No, too few.
"Knowledge, sir, should be free to all!"
~Harcourt Fenton Mudd
For those who dont know, all the Mod did is:
It changes the male bare chest texture for the female bare chest (which has a bra)
Theres no "hot coffee" no hidden sex scenes, games, or anything, just some kid who realized in our culture is ok to show male breasts not female breasts you can do this "MOD" in ANY game.
Case closed.
Is there a way to send this info to ALL the talk shows this moron is presenting hilself on? (seriously)
p.s. IMO Oblivion does desserve an M rating theres quite a bit of blood, realistic violence, you can create an "evil" character, and theres some innuendo here and there, worst of all Oblivion (the land) does look a lot like hell. I have no idea why the ESRB didnt rated it "M" in the first place. My guess is they didnt played it at all. ( in which case is the ESRB the one who should be sued)
Go ahead MOD my day!
More opinions here
He should see what kids do with GI Joe and Barbie.
Nasty, dirty, horrible things. And that ho Barbie likes it. Poor Ken.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Nah. From what I can tell, he just jumps on the stories after they hit media sources. As soon as it's on GameSpot or Slashdot, it's fair game for him.
Of course, I've only got recent memory to go off of since I was too young to follow these things in the nineties, but I'm almost positive that he has yet to create a scandal...he just jumps in and makes a bigger mess out of what's already there. He's reacting to this after the fact, and I recall him doing the same with Hot Coffee.
I think the only genuine news he's created so far was his "modest proposal," and that was built off of the GTA story.
Goo goo g'joob.
Woot. I'm buying it. Thanks for the tip, Jackie boy.
Check out the cave on the east side of lake Hylia. Strange and wonderful things live in it.
Lets face it. One part of most boys development is to make liberal use of our adrenaline & testosterone. Some people play sports, some play video games, some get in fights, some go on murderous rampages, some break things, some hike, et al. The point is that it happens. Now, if there's a better outlet to fast-paced violent video games, then lets find it. IMHO if it means that some bored teenager wants to do -something- I'd rather it be beating the crap out of some virtual enemy than against a real person.
i ldren.cfm?from=sids
I think the real issue with the 'older' audience is that they've forgotten these key periods in a young boy's life. I say boys because in general people aren't afraid about girls morals being eroded. Its like there's a magical shield around girls that say they can't be violent offenders or mass murderers. Thats another flaw in their logic.
Not only that, they've mistakenly attributed the realism in video games as an increased threat to our childrens morals than the 'harmless' nature of games in the old days, like double dragon (The sole activity of the game is killing people).
If Jack really wanted to solve the problem, he'd come up with a new teenage pass-time that they actually want to do more than games.
Just to end this thought:
"Part of the research challenge is to try to learn what positive changes affecting children born most recently are associated with the reductions in both victimization and offending"
Quote relates to the severe decrease in crime from teenagers recently.
http://www.nichd.nih.gov/new/releases/americas_ch
Bye!
First of all, yes, there is blood in Oblivion and occasionally blood skidmarks as the corpse is thrown back by the Havok engine.
But also try stuff like this:
- decayed corpses in cages, corpses hanged over a flame, corpses hanged from ropes (sometimes with a kicked chair underneath, meaning the bugger was alive when he got hanged), a burning corpse looking like he tried crawling out of a lava pool right in the very first oblivion gate. Skeletons in spiked cages. I'm told there's even one with a tiny skeleton inside it, presumably a pregnant woman was left to die in that cage. People or corpses in cages whose bottom you can open and let them fall on some spikes below. Etc.
- the end of the Dark Brotherhood quest arc was already mentioned, so lemme detail a bit more: they hanged the bugger upside down and gutted him like sardine. Alive. Literally. The fresh corpse is basically hollowed. They'll even talk about it.
- towards the end of the Figher's Guild quest arc you get to experience getting drugged out of your mind, and in that hallucinating state going and slaughtering a whole village of innocents, including going in each and every single house and slaughtering every single villager.
- heck, if blood was bad, you can also set people on fire and watch them running around burning. (Try enchanting your bow for maximum fire damage, for example, watch people bursting in bright flames every time they get hit by an arrow. Or make a potion of fire damage and "poison" your arrow with it, same effect.)
- torturing people. Spoiler warning, btw. In one quest along the main line you get to explore a madman's "paradise". In fact, it's closer to our idea of "hell", and one section has people in cages in or over lava. And you can play with the levers to lower them into the lava, or raise them out of it. In the previous section you get to watch people be hunted by demons for sport, and you get one quest to free an even nastier demon and sic it on them.
That's just off the top of my head. Basically I'd say it's a _very_ gruesome game at times, not a super happy fun escapade through flower-filled meadows where deer bounce around.
So _if_ violence is considered a reason to keep kids from playing a game, then, yes, I fail to see why this game wasn't M to start with.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
And nudity is bad because...?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The best thing to do is just let him keep on ranting publicly, in the press and in court rooms. He does a great enough job making an ass out of himself, much better than anyone else could do to him. For added effect, maybe he can piss off another judge and get a contempt charge.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If Jack really wanted to solve the problem, he'd come up with a new teenage pass-time that they actually want to do more than games.
It's called masturbation.
There's a religious talk show called steve brown etc., and Jack was on there last week. A caller called in though and challenged him on whether video games cause violence when statistically violence is going down (at least in the us). Thompson said something about how the caller was wrong about violence going down and talked about some news study that showed it was going up. The caller then said something like "I can't believe you'd be calling a news story more accurate than crime statistics from the US govt." It was pretty funny...thompson basically conceded and then made some lame statement that violence would be down even more if there weren't violent video games, which is obviously bs. So anyway, why don't all of us arm ourselves with statistics like that guy and call into every show he's on?
3
Oh and that show has an mp3, here's the link for it: http://media.gospelcom.net/kln/sbetc/050606sbe.mp
>I think the real issue with the 'older' audience is that they've forgotten these key periods in a young boy's life.
I disagree: I think most people remember *exactly* how they were when they were younger and, now that they're older and more mature, are appalled by their own behavior and want to prevent other people from making the mistakes they made. It's just like stage mothers. One of my best friends is a hardcore Christian who is against drugs, homosexuality, and sex before marriage. Know why? Because when we were in college together she was spending every weekend drunk and coked out of her skull, screwing other girls. I keep pointing out to her that she wouldn't be where she is now if she hadn't done those things -- in fact, if she hadn't she'd probably be more like me, raised low-key liberal Christian with no particular urge to bust loose during college, and now as an adult completely permissive towards other people's rights to do whatever they want and vaguely agnostic, rather than who she became: right-wing Christian woman. Needless to say, she does not agree with me at all, because she, like Jack Thompson, thinks she has the right to tell other people how to live their lives. Which is, fundamentally, what this is all about: people who don't think you should know or live what they know or have lived. Santimonious bastards.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Tonight, on "Eye on Springfield": just miles from your doorstep, hundreds of teenage boys are playing videogames where they are given weapons and trained to kill. The town calls it an "arcade", but a more alarmist name would be "The Killbot Factory."
I can say this with all honesty:
Looking at a breast has never, EVER made me want to shoot someone, slash someone, burn someone, etc.
Listening to Jack Thompson talk and knowing he's allowed to breath the same air as actual human beings, however, has. Well, only him, really, but...
So I say we ban Jack Thompson from this plane of reality. Won't somebody think of the children?!
Thanks for the heads up. I didn't support it when Tipper did it to music, and I think Eliot Spitzer is barking up the wrong tree by looking for more video game labeling legislation. He should stick to enforcing the laws we already have.
You know, nude patches have been around as long as female characters in video games. Odd that it has become such a hot issue during an election year when the incumbents have performed so poorly on real issues.
The model meshes\characters\_male\femaleupperbodynude.nif refers to the texture textures\characters\imperial\female\UpperBodyFemal e.dds, which has distinctly female breasts with fully bump-mapped nipples.
I'd love to know how this whole "male texture overlayed on the female mesh" business got started, because it's complete rubbish. Yes, you COULD do that, but that's not what's going on.
If it ain't broke, it needs more features!
Bethesda's views on user mods are just the opposite...They want an active mod community, and they opened up the API hooks to help the mod community make better mods.
Almost all good RPGs are doing this these days, because it drives interest and gets new content for free. Look at Neverwinter Nights...The mod community there is huge, and that game is still popular well past the point where a lot of similar games stalled.
Sure, every now and then you're going to get boobies. It's a hard life. It should be common sense that mods can add to the game and change the rating. Mind I think the game was rated too low, but I think that based on the out-of-the-box content, not the mods.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
No, he need to be confronted and exposed publically, otherwise people will continue to believe him. He's a self-agrandizing moron, but people think because he's a lawyer he knows what he's talking about. More people need to show up and confront him with the fact that he's been disbarred in two states and is for lack of a better words, a nutcase and a leech on society.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
disagree: I think most people remember *exactly* how they were when they were younger and, now that they're older and more mature, are appalled by their own behavior and want to prevent other people from making the mistakes they made.
So now looking for boobies is a mistake? I think they're still in denial about how teenage boys are.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
That, and Stalin killed mostly Russians and Ukranians, which were, nominally, his countrymen at the time. It's always been more acceptable to kill your own citizens than to conquer other nations, and then start wiping out some of their citizens.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
They're NIPPLES. Is this guy gay and really scared of females, or did his dad never give him the old talk?
Honestly, this is just part of a large problem in the USA. The idea that nudity is this horrible thing that will ruin children and make people go to hell.
IT'S ON OUR BODIES. If you don't want your children seeing other people's genitalia or titties, might as well cut them off your kids, 'cuz they're gonna see their own.
I couldn't agree more. I'm the rare exception to the rule. I never really looked for boobs as a teen (correction: Real boobs. As in, in person. Pr0n is unrelated, and I never really looked for much of that, either).
/.er avoids social situations? Alert the authorities!) Sure, I WANTED some female companionship, but I found the girls near me to have little to nothing in common so I just stuck to my Internets and video games.
In general, as a teen, I was rather disgusted by/afraid of/confused by/etc. my peers at school. Thus, I avoided social scenes as much as possible. (A
What I can tell you now is that that was a terrible mistake. Sure, it was fun, but I'm in college now and my lack os social skills has been a great handicap. Boys need to chase boobs. Silly and immature, maybe, but you need to crawl before you can walk. If you don't look for girls, learn to talk to them when you're young, when will you learn to have a realistic and mature relationship with one? If you don't make your mistakes when you're young, you just end up making them later.
Okay, this isn't perfect. Problems can arise. If a boy ends up too successful in this pursuit of girls, he could end up a father early. Or a number of other bad scenarios. But that's just a fact of life: If you want to get anything, you need to take risks. Bad things can and will happen, sometimes terrible, life altering things. But who are we to deny teen boys their awkward and confusing, but important social development because a small minority may get hurt?
Sorry to rant, but perhaps South Park put it best (paraphrased). You can't just keep your kids away from other kids and love because bad things can happen. You can't just hide a boy from girls until he's 18 and expect him to know how to get a girl and treat her properly. Mistakes are painful, but they're a part of growing up. When you try to deny kids the chance to make mistakes, you deny them the chance to learn and mature.
I was eliding a lot in that summary. She was raised in a very conservative, sheltered home in a rural area. I was raised in a permissive (although Christian -- at least one of my parents has been teaching sunday school continuously since the '60's) household. It's simplistic to believe that this is all that drove us to our different approaches, but I really had nothing to rebel against when I was old enough to have the choice, and she did. I had several friends who were children of pastors, and *wow* did they tear things up when they got out on their own. And to be fair I had two friends who were children of pastors who never did *anything* out of line: they were unbelievably well-behaved kids. So it's not simple causality. But, in my own personal sampling, I've only known one person who came from a background like mine and ended up seriously stuck in the sex/drugs/alcohol rut, whereas I know six people from heavily sheltered backgrounds who went *crazy* when they hit college. And I know a lot more people from permissive backgrounds than from sheltered backgrounds. And, to track things forwards, the three people from the sheltered background->CRAAAAAAAZY transition I still know, are now all heavily into exactly what their parents were into: shelter and control.
See, this is the thing. I expect that if I had kids they'd be like me, and I'd probably be right. The two people I'm thinking of, both daughters of pastors, went off to college and spent the next four years trying to figure out how many things they could stick in which orifices at the same time, and now, they both think exactly the same thing I do: that their kids would be like them. So, it's perfectly rational for them to want to prevent that kind of behavior, which, I have to say, should be prevented coz it's potentially deadly, while it's perfectly rational for me to use the same line of reasoning to say that there's no need for laws or legislation of morality. We take the same assumptions, do the same logic, and come up with conflicting conclusions, because our histories are different.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
My overriding thought at this moment is that for us to discuss further, we are going to branch wider and wider. There's a lot here for us to discuss, so I'm going to be short on some points. It may even be worth us leaving this discussion alone - slashdot I find it a poor medium for these discussions
Meh. Pretty off-topic tho. I supposed I could bump it to one of the mailing lists like atheist-talkhttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/atheist- talk/.
My understanding is that philosophers talk about "possible worlds". And these "possible worlds" includes the universe.
When I refer to universe, I refer to that spacial/temporal realm in which we humans are confined. Anything that is outside of space and time (for example, I contend, numbers) is not contained purely within the universe. A timeless and spaceless creator would be outside the universe.
God, as defined as timeless and spaceless, is within a "possible world" but is outside our universe.
Actually, in philosophy the term "universe" is generally used to refer to "all possible universes". You don't seem to understand how this blows your argument of a 'causeless cause'. If God exists in a universe outside of the "mainstream" universe this begs the question of the creation of THAT universe.
Sure, people have motivations and justifications for their reasons - but not good justifications. Just subjective ones that fail if put up to a different subjective standard.
Exactly.
You and I differ on a much more fundamental point - is there a God? We can discuss that without getting into the questions of whether the Christian God is the true God, or whether we should offer praise to Zeus instead. Let us first establish whether there is a God.
I'm perfectly willing to concede this point, as long as we strictly limit said God to those attributes that can be inferred by logical arguments (created the "mainstream" universe, really powerful, really knowledgeable) as opposed to evidence. I don't personally buy these arguments, but I'm willing to concede them. But this really doesn't get you anywhere. Let's call this diety Creator.
The problem that we now come to is you would probably like to add more attributes to Creator. The most important is called "interventionism". The idea that Creator mucked about with the "mainstream" universe after it's creation. This isn't something that can be logically inferred. You have to rely on evidence, and this is where the idea of proving the Christian god by logical argument begins to crumble.
I would very much like to read these documents, if you can recall what they are (esp. if you have weblinks).
The two most famous are Prophyry's "Against the Christians" and Celsus' "On the True Doctrine: A Discourse Against the Christians". Both are obscure academic publications, though you can get translations on Amazon. Both are basically reconstructions based on Christian counter-arguments. Celsus' is more readable.
Regarding motivations - Paul, and all the Apostles, had little to gain from Christianity. Paul lived out his days under house arrest, and other apostles met horrible deaths as Martyrs. If I was creating a new religion for fun and profit, I would hardly be willing to die for its cause. That to me says, at least, that Paul believed what he wrote.
You don't clearly understand the personal motivations that come with being a cult leader, and the fact that most of them end up buying into their own hype. Or Paul could have just been crazy. And the motivations certainly could have been confused. Many people questioned David Koresh's motivations, but in the end he died for his beliefs.
So, your argument here is that the knowledge of philosophers today is much greater than that of those in the past?
Of course it is, mainly because modern philosophers have READ the earlier philosophers and know what they knew. Plato, Aristotle, Augustin