Jack Thompson's Proposal

[Aegis]

I'm somewhat surprised to have not seen this hit the forums. Whether it is a topic nobody here cares about, or just under the radar. I've been following it lately, both the responses, and Thompson's counter-responses, and have found myself quite amused by much of it. I figured I'd quote the initial proposal in hopes of sparking some discussion on the matter, and see where it goes...

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." The Golden Rule

This writer has been saying for seven years that violent video games can be "murder simulators" that incite as well as train some obsessive teen players to be violent.

I've been on 60 Minutes and in Reader's Digest this year explaining how an Alabama teen, with no criminal record, shot two policemen and a dispatcher in their heads and fled in a police car--a scenario he rehearsed for hundreds of hours on Take-Two/Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto video games.

I have sat with boys in jail cells, their lives over because of murder convictions, after they, with no history of violence, have killed innocents while in a dreamlike state. Said one cop who investigated such a murder in Grand Rapids, Michigan: "The killing was like an extension of the game."

The video game industry, through its lawyers, its spokesmen, and its head lobbyist, Doug Lowenstein, the president of the Entertainment Software Association, all say it is utter nonsense to suggest that what is dumped into a kid's head hour after hour, day after day, year after year, could possibly have behavioral consequences. Cigarette ads can persuade kids to smoke, but interactive simulators in which these same kids punch, hack, bludgeon, and maim affect not a wit their attitudes and behaviors, notwithstanding the findings of the American Psychological Association, published in August 2005.

The video game industry says Sticks and stones can break my bones, but games can never hurt me. Fine. I have a modest proposal for the video game industry. I'll write a check for $10,000 to the favorite charity of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc's chairman, Paul Eibeler - a man Bernard Goldberg ranks as #43 in his book 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America - if any video game company will create, manufacture, distribute, and sell a video game in 2006 like the following:

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 ****tails, 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.

O.K. then works his way, methodically back to LA by car, but on his way makes a stop at the Philadelphia law firm of Blank, Stare and goes floor by floor to wipe out the lawyers who protect Take This in its wrongful death law suits. "So sue me" O.K. spits, with singer Jackson Brown's 1980's hit Lawyers in Love blaring.

With the FBI now after him, O.K. keeps moving westward, shooting up high-tech video arcades called GameWerks. "Game over," O.K. laughs.

Of course, O.K. makes the obligatory runs to virtual versions of brick and mortar retailers Best Buy, Circuit City, Target, and Wal-Mart to steal supplies and bludgeon store managers and cash register clerks. "You should have checked kids' IDs!"

O.K. pushes on to Los Angeles. He must get there by May 10, 2006. That is the beginning of "E3" -- the Electronic Entertainment Expo -- the Super Bowl of the video game industry. O.K. must get to E3 to massacre all the video game industry execs with one final, monstrously delicious rampage.

How about it, video game industry? I've got the check and you've got the tech. It's all a fantasy, right? No harm can come from such a game, right? Go ahead, video game moguls. Target yourselves as you target others. I dare you.

So... Thoughts?

[Hill-Shatar]

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.

Please tell me this is not true.

This is sickening. Is this an idea of a proposal or a really sick man? There are some things that cross the lines.

[Hill-Shatar]

Sorry for double posting. This is the result of late night spamming do to a cat related hernia problem in Cochrane.

I am not an avid gamer. I actually did not start gaming until close to the mid ninties, and perhaps a little later.

I can tell you that violence in much worse cases have been around long before some of these games have been released. For example, when I was younger, two twelve year olds in a city not far away dragged a nine year old to a set of train tracks and beat him to a bloody pulp. At the end of that, he had no face left, basically, all his ribs were either shattered or splintered, he was bleeding internally in multiple places, and had a crack in his skull along the sagittal suture from a baseball bat.

They left his body there as it was pecked at my a flock of Ravens, set upon by insects until finally a train came along, nailed his frail body, killed him and threw him into a ditch, with one leg almost completely ripped off.

Neither child had ever played games other than board games or cottage games in there lives, save for a version of Kid Pix games. However, in modern day times, the blame would fall on the gaming industry.

These people seem convinced that so much of todays violence is from video games. But violence has been around for years… children have been killing other children in Africa for generations. Yet they do not have video games. I have seen my friends when I was twelve beat each other with Icicles, yet none of us played with video games. Some of the greatest atrocities committed on Earth, and all of the most gruesome deaths, happened without video games.

Given, there was a set of brothers who played Grand Theft Auto, and then went out and proceeded to kill someone with a shotgun, and shot several cars. What I want to know is, why kids at such ages were playing video games, and decided that killing was a good idea. Our instincts are not coded to randomly kill people. It is against family morals, and values, and against the basis of so many societies. If they decided it was a good idea, then why are they not now locked up in a mental hospital heavily dosed with happy gas? Why would such actions be taken? How did they even get access to a gun?

Of course, he knows that every single teen murderer was caused by video game violence. What about bullying? I know that many murdered children were killed, because of bullying. So, of course, they must have played a really violent video game to kill the person who was making their lives a living hell from the start, and 10 years after?

These kids would not be killing randomly, if in a dream, if it were not for the fact that they were inherently violent in the first place. Why in the hell would they go on a murder rampage otherwise? Because they played Grand Theft Auto? If this was true, then I would have hunted down all those who have disagreed with me long ago and killed them, because I decided it would be thuggin'. Puh-leese.

Yes, of course, he is also using his amazing abilities of time travel and telepathy to look back in the events of the past to see kids with guns shooting dreamily. Mmm..hmm… isn’t that a way to get a straightjacket? You can not shoot in a trancelike manner. This is total bull. I mean, would you think a person who was violent would be dreamlike? No. This is getting contradictory.

I think it is time to look back and recognize that kids have the abilities to be rational and intelligent on their own. They know that these are pixels, and not a real life. They know that doing this is real life is REALLY WRONG, and would not do it. They know that they will never lead these lives. These games are based around the darkest fantasies in all of our minds. Before I gamed I used to have pleasurable images of knocking someones block off. Did I react? No. Would I now? No. Would I expect my neighbour to come over and kill me because it seemed like a good idea? No. Is this paranoid? Yes. There is always a conspiracy by the gaming industry to influence the minds of our young adults to make them more susceptible to violence, and therefore use it in real life. They are externally raising male testosterone levels to make us interested in such thing. Also known as puberty, and production, this is a harmful disease that is slowly plaguing the human population with health, height and violence. Yes, also the CIA are preparing to take over our minds with a satellite network with some help from the borg.

I mean, everyday people are bombarded with images of violence. You can turn on the TV, turn it to CSI and see what happens to a persons head after falling forty feet. Or you can see what a bullet hole looks like. Or watch the little movies they have on the injuries taking place. Right after that, everyone will immediately get their CSI homekits and begin an investigation.

Just last night on TV I watched this lovely video of a person getting beheaded. Of course, this game must have a video game component. It was only rated AA! Just yesterday I finished watching 28 days later (a total piece of apocalypse crap, mind) and it was not violent? I mean, this is bad, when they are blaming all this on video games.

Not that anything is to blame specifically, of course. Media is specifically made to transfer news to us, in our own homes, and the top of the list is always violence or murder. Recently they have taken to going in great detail about recent hurricanes in the states, going into all the details of gunfire, death and looting… and not to mention other influences as well.

What are they going to do next, discover that the unhealthy amounts of STDs in teens are related to billboards? Although many teens are sexually active, mostly closer to twenty, they are much more careful then previous generations. They used to be having casual sex everywhere, no matter what the conditions or amount of privacy, nor did they truly care about STDs. Although today is not much of a problem compared to this, they may decided that all this unhealthy media coverage on the pop stars who control a vast amount of the music and entertainment industries is leading us down a road of disaster? So, we should not have entertainment, even though numbers are decreasing?

I mean, this guy probably was fighting in the sixties for free love. Which was heavily disliked and tabooed by the public and continues to be tabooed today. Of course, they made a decision leading to the destruction of thousands of lives, and the creation of thousands of unwanted children, not to mention the creation of many daily problems that came over today, such as drugs.

So which is worse. The fact that video games portray violence, or that the amount of violence that used to be given daily is not as bad? Are you going to have Law and Order, CSI and the ER removed from broadcasting because you see someone with a nosebleed from a punch from the schoolyard? You never know, this may instigate more violence, which also has been decreasing over the years, I believe, in school yards, and then a kid would end up killing another kid, because he owns a PS2.

Then he, the defender of human rights and beliefs, then goes on to make a game in great bloody detail! I thought that he wasn’t able to do that, as this level of graphic description is usually reserved for, in his opinion…. Video games. So, he combines his knowledge of acts that no one has ever done or ever will do and calls it *real life* as he goes along, making a violent video game, full of death, destruction and mayhem, in which kids are getting ideas for shooting up curcuit city! Yes, because so many games depict people entering a store to shoot it up and steal crappy merchandise. Yet kids can't seem to figure out what is wrong. We have the murdering of a family because of a murder in the family. He then goes on to talk about urinating on dead children's bodies.

This is possibly the most sickening moron I have ever seen. What kind of perverted arse would come up with something as this, a combination of things that would never, and can never, happen in real life, to get the point across that the gaming community are a bunch of murderous wackos! Why is this person preaching something about not spreading violence, and then spewing this! Why is he even allowed to say such things! I have never heard of something doing such violent things, but he seems to think it is a constant in the industry, that all games are based around the need to make kids think that they must kill randomly.

He off course as the discourse that is typical in the game, so sue me, whatever, get a life. Rarely do people stop at a law office to dance around and say sue me. Rarely does a person go on a murderous rampage to kill anything involved with games.

If this is what the opposition of gaming is, then gaming will be booming for millenniums to come.

Of course, at the end it is all the gaming industries fault for not targeting a bulls eye on their butts. Yes, I see, so the destruction of the E3 conference is going to solve all gaming. It is because of the target… it all makes sense now. Yes, I wonder why I did not see it before? You see, cops are killed because kids kill cops in video games, people are killed because you kill people in video games, and hunting has only gone on for the last couple of years after kids thought that squirrels were gnomes. Look out for that toadstool! In Mario, it attacks you!

I wonder what Fables take on the E3 conference thing is? Do you regularily lean back, and think, mmm… is this game violent enough? Sorry yo hear about your bloody death, by the way.

Oh, by the way, does this come across and sarcastic? Oops, hope I didn’t offend anyone… cause Jack Thompson would blame that on me telling someone off snarkily in a video game. Cause that’s where you can only learn it from….

[Lestat]

Instead of checking how many violent young murderers played videogames, they should check how many young people that play videogames become violent young murderers. Then we would have something to discuss.

This is like saying: all psychopathic murderers drive cars, so cars turn you into a psychopathic murderer.

[Aegis]

Originally Posted by Lestat

Instead of checking how many violent young murderers played videogames, they should check how many young people that play videogames become violent young murderers. Then we would have something to discuss.

This is like saying: all psychopathic murderers drive cars, so cars turn you into a psychopathic murderer.

Your first statement is the exact same thing, except one is pre-act, the other post.

As for my personal stance on the matter, Thompson, as loudmouthed and ignorant as he may come off, is simply filling his role. Like it or not, but there will always be a Jack Thompson, just as there always has been. It happened with Rock and Roll (the Devil's music!), and again with television. Video games just happen to be the new media on the block, and as such, they are the most vulnerable to attack.

The difference, however, is that unlike the past scapegoats of youth violence, we have the internet. People can rally together like never before, and create a vocal outcry. Some of responses to Thompson's proposal has been phenominal. For instance, the GTA modding community accepted, and created a mod based on Thompson's desired game. Thompson, however, reneged on his claim that he would donate $10,000 to a charity of Take-Two's CEO's choice (his name eludes me at the moment). This is the part I love, though. Once learning about this, Gabe and Tycho at Penny Arcade made the donation for him, in his name. When you take into considering the $500,000 those two have already raised via the annual Child's Play charity, it's easy to see how people have been affected by these games, don't you think?

[Lestat]

Originally Posted by Aegis

Your first statement is the exact same thing, except one is pre-act, the other post.

No it isn't. If you're going to use statistics to prove that videogames are a bad influence on otherwise normal kids, you'll have to prove that a significant percentage of children playing videogames turn into criminals. The fact that a significant percentage of children turned criminals played videogames is irrelevant. They might all have liked peanut butter for all I know, but that doesn't turn peanut butter into a criminal substance.

This belongs in a long line of people that said things as "Rock & Roll is the music of the Devil". I posted an article on it some time ago, but sorry I'm to lazy to put a link.

[Aegis]

The thing is, though, that regardless if you look at criminals who played violent games, as opposed to kids playing violent games become criminals, the numbers will essentially be the same. The only difference will lie in the fact because you're looking at a demographic, before they become criminals (I'm sure you know the inference I am making), you'll see the ratio of criminal tendencies to non-criminal tendencies, which you might not see otherwise if you were to simply look at the criminals.

What needs to be done is to examine the amount of violent/criminal tendencies in youth these days, in comparisson to when other influences (music, movies, television) were the scapegoat.

[Lestat]

I don't get you completely, but I think we're on the same side

What I object to is that these people reason as follows:
All/many/most people with deviant behaviour X have undergone influence Y thus influence Y causes deviant behaviour X.

But you can only conclude that influence Y causes deviant behaviour X if all/many/most people who have undergone influence Y are people with deviant behaviour X.

Secondly, concerning the game idea of these guys: I don't see why it would be so much worse making this game as a game in which you kill innocent bystanders, policemen, etc. without any reprisals. But of course, they would have to ask permission to use the names of any real life people or face the consequences and follow all other rules to which games are subjected. Maybe that way the gaming companies can reach the "disgruntled stuck-up fundamentalist" segment of the public.

[fable]

Originally Posted by Aegis

As for my personal stance on the matter, Thompson, as loudmouthed and ignorant as he may come off, is simply filling his role. Like it or not, but there will always be a Jack Thompson, just as there always has been. It happened with Rock and Roll (the Devil's music!), and again with television. Video games just happen to be the new media on the block, and as such, they are the most vulnerable to attack.

Absolutely. There have been many Thompsons through the years, who always find some vice of entertainment that is leading youth into criminal activity or hellish inquity, depending upon the secular or sacred stance of the speaker. The Puritan William Prynne believed that dancing was the cause of the destruction (as he saw it) of humanity, and in the 1960s, I remember reading numerous newspaper editorials condemning rock 'n roll as being music of chaos which would launch a series of anarchistic revolutions around the world.

I just have to ask myself: where are parents in this picture? If these self-appointed spokespeople for humanity are so concerned, why don't they concentrate on home life and family interaction, rather than trying to get games outlawed? But they never do.

[Dottie]

Any attempt to explain violence with a single factor is destined to become a bad joke imo, but I also think that the idea that media violence alters behaviour can't be that easily dismissed.

This is an article about violent TV shows, but I see little reason why the same could not be true for video games. Link

[Chimaera182]

Originally Posted by fable

If these self-appointed spokespeople for humanity are so concerned, why don't they concentrate on home life and family interaction, rather than trying to get games outlawed? But they never do.

I imagine it's political. They'd rather raise a loud voice and get people to pay attention to them than actually change anything. Sure, sometimes initiatives get picked up and things get done, but they just want to present themselves to the "moral majority" as someone who cares.

Of course, things always get blamed for the detriment of society if they don't conform to the majority's opinions/tastes. Rock music, like you mentioned, drugs and alcohol, TV/video game violence. It's silly what these people get worked up over. I personally have been playing computer games for about 12 years, and games altogether for about 16. I've never gotten into violent altercations of any kind, never fantasized about going all Rambo on people... but then again, I've always been a bit more into strategy games, and I am kind of struggling with megalomania. But when the world is mine, I'll deal with the Jack Thompsons of the world, I promise.

[Xandax]

Originally Posted by Lestat

Instead of checking how many violent young murderers played videogames, they should check how many young people that play videogames become violent young murderers. Then we would have something to discuss.

This is like saying: all psychopathic murderers drive cars, so cars turn you into a psychopathic murderer.

Yeah - I agree. It always strike me as odd when they draw this comparison when you think of the fact that millions of kids play videogames but doesn't turn out to be violent people based on it. But this aspect is often overlooked (I wonder why) in such situations.

Uhh - these young violent teens have played videogames, that must be why they are violent. But the honorstudents might have played as well - is that the reason why they are honorstudents?

Originally Posted by Aegis

The thing is, though, that regardless if you look at criminals who played violent games, as opposed to kids playing violent games become criminals, the numbers will essentially be the same. The only difference will lie in the fact because you're looking at a demographic, before they become criminals (I'm sure you know the inference I am making), you'll see the ratio of criminal tendencies to non-criminal tendencies, which you might not see otherwise if you were to simply look at the criminals.
<snip>

I think you are misunderstanding him, Aegis.
He isn't saying you need to look at the kids who became criminal, before they actually became criminal, and see if they played videogames.
But you need to look at *every* kid (including thoese who doesn't turn out to be criminals) who plays videogames and seeing how large a percentage of them becomes criminal. Not just how many criminals have played videogames. That is where the huge fault is in these comparisons. This will never yeild the same numbers (or close to), because the statistical sample (kids playing games) is going to be so much larger with a relative smaller properbility (turning criminal), as opposed to a smaller sample (criminals) who played videogames (large properbility) as kids. Statistically thoese two are very different.
It is like Lestat says, many of these kids likely have something else in comparison - they like penautbutter - but that doens't mean everybody who likes it turns out to be criminals.
Most kids these days plays videogames, and if they all (or most) turns out to be criminal, then there might be a link.

[Dottie]

Originally Posted by Xandax

Most kids these days plays videogames, and if they all (or most) turns out to be criminal, then there might be a link.

It's not necessary that most turn out to be criminals. I don't think anyone seriously believe that video games are the sole cause of violence. I would say there is a link if playing video games increases the chance of being a criminal, or being violent, even if the increase is quite small.

Then the question is how do you measure this. How do you know that video games causes violence, not that violent people play more games or that people with low 5-HIAA levels likes both video games and violence? (rhetorical question)

You do this with a prospective study. You measure video game consumption and violent behaviour in early years, and then you measure them again much later. If video game consumption predicts violent behaviour, and violent behaviour does not predict video game consumption then there is probably a link.

And that is the reason why I posted the link above, that is exactly such a study, but made on TV violence instead of vidoe games. I think it is relevant.

[Dottie]

I just noticed that APA have published the study on their web page. Lucky for all us who lack medline.

http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/dev392201.pdf

With access to the complete study, do anyone have any comments? Are you aware of any similar studies with the opposite conclusion, or is there any reason why this would not apply to computer games as well?

If not, wouldn't it be rational to conclude that playing violent computer games generally increases the probability for aggressive behaviour?