Jack Thompson has officially lost it...

[Ian]

I've seen the comments at Penny Arcade about the video game Jack is daring people to make but didn't have a chance to read the "plot" until now. It's pretty frigging crazy:

http://gc.advancedmn.com/article.php?artid=5883

Osaki Kim is the father of a high school boy beaten to death with a baseball bat by a 14-year-old gamer. The killer obsessively played a violent video game in which one of the favored ways of killing is with a bat. The opening scene, before the interactive game play begins, is the Los Angeles courtroom in which the killer is sentenced "only" to life in prison after the judge and the jury have heard experts explain the connection between the game and the murder.

Osaki Kim (O.K.) exits the courtroom swearing revenge upon the video game industry whom he is convinced contributed to his son's murder. "Vengeance is mine, I will repay" he says. And boy, is O.K. not kidding.

O.K. is provided in his virtual reality playpen a panoply of weapons: machetes, Uzis, revolvers, shotguns, sniper rifles, Molotov cocktails, you name it. Even baseball bats. Especially baseball bats.

O.K. first hops a plane from LAX to New York to reach the Long Island home of the CEO of the company (Take This) that made the murder simulator on which his son's killer trained. O.K. gets "justice" by taking out this female CEO, whose name is Paula Eibel, along with her husband and kids. "An eye for an eye," says O.K., as he urinates onto the severed brain stems of the Eibel family victims, just as you do on the decapitated cops in the real video game Postal2.

It doesn't stop there either.

[MediumRare]

Sounds sick.
I suppose as long as it doesn't contain any sex scenes it's considered "suitable for age 12 and higher" (or whatever).

G

[Spazmogen]

I'll go out on a limb on this one...

I doubt Wal-Mart will have it anytime soon.

My watered down version of Duke Nukem was a big mistake. But that was a long, long time ago...

[LoneWolf]

Jack has "lost it"?

Jack never "had it", that's the problem.

I don't know if Jack Thompson has ever played a video game in his life, let alone a violent one. Jack isn't a technologist, nor is he a psychologist. Jack has majored in "lawyer" and minored in "politics". This isn't necessarily a problem, until a person like Jack gets the bit in his teeth about an issue he doesn't understand but knows he can use. This can either lead to overzealousness driven by a skewed version of self-righteousness (I am the true voice of morality), or an overdriving ambition (read: enhance my legal and/or political career) at the expense of the views of anyone else.

Jack can only succeed by conveniently minimizing a lot of facts, such as the ESRB ratings board, or poor parenting that is willing to go out and purchase their children violent video games without so much as reading the box, similar to the way things already work in other media industries (read music/movies). Maximizing the danger to childrens' health (rather than mounting a campaign to make parents more aware of ratings, and helping them to make wise choices for their kids) is how Jack will ultimately look out for number one, through the money he makes, and the publicity that will boost his legal career or lead to a new one in politics (imagine the campaign speech "Who was there to think of your children? I was!).

Ultimately, the responsibility should lie at a parent's doorstep. Most kids don't just have $50 lying around for the latest game: who do they get this money from when "Decapitation Nation Part IV for PC" comes out? I'm not at the children stage of my marriage yet, but when I was a child, television, movies, and music were vetted by my parents, similar to the way video games should be now. When I was old enough to have a paper route, how I spent my money was still supervised (I wasn't eighteen, after all). I should be doing the same for my children, and I should also be doing a good job of making sure my children understand the difference between real vs. simulated violence, as well as explaining sex to them so that the first place they hear/see this is not in a video game at a friend's house, but from me.

Jack is pandering to people who have stopped being parents because "it's too difficult" and want laws to babysit their kids instead. It's that simple.

[dolphinius_rex]

Some interesting posts and e-mail conversations regarding this whole thing:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/news.php?date=2005-10-14
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php?da ... 0-14&res=l
http://www.vgcats.com/jack.php

Here's a game mod based off of him:
http://hellfish.gtajunkies.com/Story.html

In other news, it looks like Penny Arcade made a donation in Jack's name too...

It was only a matter of time until a mod team took Jack Thompson's disgusting revenge fantasy and made it flesh - and, just as I suggested, it was deemed insufficient.

Thompson now claims that his repellent suggestion was "satire," and we must conclude that his financial offer was also satire, some new breed of satire apparently that I'm sure is just hilarious to people in need.

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 Eibeler'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.

Things appear to be really heating up!!

[Ian]

In Jack's letter to the police, he doesn't even have the URL for Penny Arcade correct. It's penny-arcade.com Jack.. not pennyarcade.com. I think that's a pr0n site or something.

[Ian]

bwahahahahaha.. Jack finally got what he deserves.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051122-5613.html

[dolphinius_rex]

To bad he wasn't actually dis-barred

[Ian]

Yeah, it is too bad. It's good to see that people are finally getting sick of him though.

[LoneWolf]

Apparently, Jack didn't get his rabies shots early enough...He should have known that foaming at the mouth isn't the best way to get people on your side.

The most persuasive forms of evil in the world are usually the quiet, soft-spoken, well-dressed ones that speak of their causes in reasonable tones and refuse to be debated into flame wars. Those that are loud-mouthed and antagonistic like Jack are more noticeable, and often annoy even those that agree with them to a point where they often lose, while quiet evil often flies under the radar, or seems reasonable enough until it is too late.