Not really. But seriously, what's up with that? And why is Jack Thompson such a fucking killjoy?

I saw today's Penny Arcade comic entitled "I See What You Did There", and it just tore open old angers towards this stupid shit about video games being the reason behind violence. Nevermind the fact that violence has been present in the world since before ordered society even existed. Let's also ignore the fact that explicit violence has existed in music, movies, and literature long before interactive entertainment was realized.

After reading the comic, I watched the trailer for the ludicrously entitled documentary "Moral Kombat", and read a bit about Spencer Halpin's desire to create an unbiased look at both sides of the issue. And if the trailer is any indication of the sheer amount of bias and anti-game sentiment that will be in this documentary, I'm going to go ape-shit. For something supposedly unbiased in nature, the trailer certainly seems to feature an awful lot of people notorious amongst gamers. And with the exception of Oddworld, every game featured in the trailer is one of explicit violence, which fails to represent the vast spectrum of games created over the last several decades.

I'm really just appalled by the sheer amount of ignorance of people who "righteously" wage against the "evils" of the gaming industry that are supposedly out to pervert children for a living.

I played Doom, Quake, and Mortal Kombat. I watched violent anime. I listened to explicit grunge rock. I was neglected and tormented by my peers. I didn't go out and express that violently. I was taught to be better than that. If anything, games gave me an outlet. And for that I'm certainly grateful. It just unnerves me to see people like Jack Thompson ignore violence in games as part of an over-arching social issue. It exists throughout popular culture, and always has. What he should wage against is trends in society, rather than trying to get such and such a developer shut down. A developer like Rock Star is the product of the trends of society, not the cause of it. What is needed in this society is greater emphasis on proper and positive parenting. That's where the real issue is. Don't want kids playing violent games? See to it that parents play an involved part in the upbringing of their children. To me, a parent who doesn't know the type of culture their child consumes is more appalling than the fact that children play violent video games.

Thoughts?

Jack Thompson is an old meme.

If people didn't bitch about the stupid faggot so much he wouldn't get as much attention and nobody would care about his douchebaggery.

The Eva Monkey wrote:I'm really just appalled by the sheer amount of ignorance of people who "righteously" wage against the "evils" of the gaming industry that are supposedly out to pervert children for a living.

They were raised that way, and no amount of argument, logic, or even if God came down from the heavens and said "Video games are OK" would sway their views. Every now and then while I'm working I have the TV on in the background. I don't have cable so it's usually on NBC or something and the 700 Club is on around 8 or 9am. I leave it on because PBS has teletubbies. Pat Robertson (I think that's the guy) is a posterboy for this type of mentality.

I played Doom, Quake, and Mortal Kombat. I watched violent anime. I listened to explicit grunge rock. I was neglected and tormented by my peers. I didn't go out and express that violently. I was taught to be better than that. If anything, games gave me an outlet. And for that I'm certainly grateful. It just unnerves me to see people like Jack Thompson ignore violence in games as part of an over-arching social issue. It exists throughout popular culture, and always has. What he should wage against is trends in society, rather than trying to get such and such a developer shut down. A developer like Rock Star is the product of the trends of society, not the cause of it. What is needed in this society is greater emphasis on proper and positive parenting. That's where the real issue is. Don't want kids playing violent games? See to it that parents play an involved part in the upbringing of their children. To me, a parent who doesn't know the type of culture their child consumes is more appalling than the fact that children play violent video games.

However much that makes sense, it's simply not enough to convince these people otherwise. The first time some rich sheltered politician who is completely out of touch with modern culture (the internet? what's that? OHHH those TUBES!) sees GTA San Andreas for the first time, they shit their pants and forever that shock is ingrained inside their brain. Nothing anyone can do about it. Let them get old and die, there's enough of them to make a shout about it, but not enough to really matter.

Some of these thoughts may seem rushed, but hopefully I made my point.

Disclaimer: Contains anti-Conservative viewpoints, though it's NOT my intent to offend anyone here, espeically considering how you can't lump one group of people together to begin with and have to look at how individuals act, too.


With that out of the way, I agree that video games can be thought of as an outlet, and what matters the most is how your parents/guardians/whoever, raised you and what they taught you morals-wise, not what video games you play.

It's VERY stupid how people, espeically the Right, says all this stupid shit about video games being evil or wrong, when violence is everywhere/has existed since society has. Hell, Bible-wise, look at Genesis,--Cain and Able--for crying out loud!

What is sad, though a good point that South Park pointed out in the episode Good Times With Weapons, is that society is more concerened with sex then violence, when it should be the other way around. For instance, Japan I believe has that viewpoint (Sex is simply something people do together, for love and/or other reasons, while violence isn't good/not intended for children to be exposed to) and you don't see their children or citiziens going apeshit, espeically those who DO play video games, now do you?

And parents that are in an uproar about the "evils" of violence? Instead, they should be complaining about all what's on TV---namely, just take a look at the Evening News---before pointing the blame at what their children do in their spare time.

Moral Combat: Yeah, a documentary's REALLY unbiased when it doesn't even bother to properly show both sides of the issue! /saracasm And what's with that shit about mentioning 9-11, how the HELL does that have anything to do with games?!

And to answer you're question about why Thompson's such a killjoy?
The Right has a seriously screwed-up viewpoint, thinking what matters most is taking care of yourself while everyone else/the enivronment can go fuck themselves, as well as considering themselves to be "true" Chiristians despite going against everything Jesus taught, namely, helping others less fortunate than you and caring for others.

But at the very least, doesn't this sort of issue say something about peoples' tendancy to go out and blame something as opposed to addressing societal trends? People are pre-disposed to violence irregardless, and eliminating the means to express that doesn't make people less violent, is simply makes them unable to engage in violence. And while that may well be what society needs, that doesn't really solve the underlying problem, now does it?

No, it doesn't. The underlying problem, IMHO, seems to be how you teach your children to treat others, as well as the fact society always puts the blame on trends instead of looking at whatever the REAL problem IS.

And prehaps this was asked before, but is it possible that anime/manga could be the next target for such scape-goating?? According to old(??) rumors, GAINAX's budget cut with Eva was due to the fact of the content of 17: The Splitting of the Breast and 19: A Man's Battle, and supposedly part of the reason EoTV couldn't have been made into what we now know as EoE is because parents(?) complained about the violent contain that was supposed to be in that. (<---Again, all this Eva "info" might be bull as I heard it quite awhile ago, thus the source might have been a fan who didn't know what they were talking about.)

(Interestingly enough, despite being somewhat replused by the violence in those episodes, at the same time, I was intergied...prehaps because I don't watch much violence to begin with, though hell, I felt the same way when watching EoE!)

MaggotMaster wrote:Jack Thompson is an old meme.

If people didn't bitch about the stupid faggot so much he wouldn't get as much attention and nobody would care about his douchebaggery.

Agreed. Wacko Jacko doesn't deserve the attention he gets.

Sailor Star Dust wrote:And prehaps this was asked before, but is it possible that anime/manga could be the next target for such scape-goating??

Anything could happen. But the concern with the gaming industry is that it now generates more revenue than the movie industry, and for that reason can be viewed as the largest segment of the entertainment industry. Anime and manga by comparison (in terms of numbers) are a much more obscure target. Anime and manga does have a considerable amount of questionable content, but it's quite a small target amongst giants.

Can anyone photoshop Jack Thompson's face onto a colossus, preferrably the first one getting stabbed in the head?

That would relieve a lot of stress.

Mundane wrote:Can anyone photoshop Jack Thompson's face onto a colossus, preferrably the first one getting stabbed in the head?

No, that would only vindicate his beliefs. Or at least it would in his eyes.

Video games have turned me into a Hadoken-slinging, turtle shell-kicking, core-shooting killing machine. Someone please lock me up, think of the children!

Didn't any of these fucks see "Bowling for Columbine"? Whatever you think of Moore, he gave us some excellent points about why america is so obsessed with blaming the entertainment industry for crime. All of their efforts since seem like one big attempt to discredit all of that.

read this and weep

http://atheists.org/ftpfiles/Press_Releases/20061227.txt

felineki wrote:Video games have turned me into a Hadoken-slinging, turtle shell-kicking, core-shooting killing machine. Someone please lock me up, think of the children!

And I'm a block stacking, sinistar slaying, magic missile casting muthafucka.

Mr. Tines wrote:read this and weep

http://atheists.org/ftpfiles/Press_Releases/20061227.txt

I want that game.
http://www.eternalforces.com/

Gah, it only runs on windows. And needs a 2.0Ghz processor so wine is out of the question.

Looks kinda cheap, but the concept sounds interesting. Battling antichrist? Why not?

Actually, the reviews I've seen of Eternal Forces, on Kotaku and Ars, for instance, basically suggest that it's just a bad game, but not really "bigoted" in any sense.

You can play as the Antichrist (but never win) and can do bad things to further your cause, like kill, but this will actually lower your chances of being able to win. Apparently taking the right path in the game is rather boring, as you have to spend hours doing things like (I kid you not) building cafes where people can have Bible study. On the other hand, the game basically plays on the fears of a strong UN and international community that are so popular among the survivalist fringe.

As for the wider issue, it seems like a repeat of the moral panic over comics in the 1950s. EM, you've already said most of what needs to be said. Comics got dirtier and racier, "corrupting the youth of America," until politicians threatened legal action, and the result was the voluntarily adopted self-censorship of the Comics Code. I think the ESRB's ratings system is largely doing the same thing (without the explicit censorship) and this whole thing will eventually blow over. The cable news channels will find something else to argue about, and the average age of gamers will continue to go up.

As for anime, I think we're going to be a fringe element that no-one really cares about enough for a while yet. If something like Nanoha were to be licensed and shown publicly in the US, that could change, but somehow that seems pretty unlikely anyway. The only area of contention might be over shoujo manga, as it seems like every time I go into Borders the manga row is packed with preteen girls.

Ornette wrote:

felineki wrote:Video games have turned me into a Hadoken-slinging, turtle shell-kicking, core-shooting killing machine. Someone please lock me up, think of the children!

And I'm a block stacking, sinistar slaying, magic missile casting muthafucka.

And I'm a dimension-hopping, crowbar-waving, magnum-weilding cyborg giant robot pilot with a PhD in theoretical physics and an infinite ammo carrying capacity!

I have played a great many FPS titles and done a great deal of research pertaining to both firearms and the effects they have, and have yet to see a single example of the former that realistically portrays all aspects of the latter. It seems to me that the vast majority of people who claim that games teach our children how to kill have very little experience in real-world killing.

Some interesting links:

Ars Tech's review of LB:ET

Desert Eagle .50 AE -- This was posted by a guy I know on another board. Watch carefully and compare with, say, the Desert Eagle as portrayed in Counter-Strike.

After-action report on the FBI's 1986 Miami firefight -- compare with the vast majority of fictional depictions of gun battles. In particular, note the actions of the two bad guys.

BobBQ wrote:It seems to me that the vast majority of people who claim that games teach our children how to kill have very little experience in real-world killing.

OTOH, not only do the US Army use some variant on the DOOM engine for training these days, I have read that in various school shootings, the perps have shown highly efficient stone-killer techniques that would seem to be be video-game trained (a much higher rate of kills/round than conventional law enforcement trained techniques).

Mr. Tines wrote:OTOH, not only do the US Army use some variant on the DOOM engine for training these days, I have read that in various school shootings, the perps have shown highly efficient stone-killer techniques that would seem to be be video-game trained (a much higher rate of kills/round than conventional law enforcement trained techniques).

I believe the game you're looking for is Full Spectrum Warrior.

Operating a gun isn't hard, especially if you're not planning on maintaining and cleaning it for the long run. I'm sure that video gaming has some positive effect on ability. I do know that my cousin, who plays a lot of FPS, is a much better trap shooter than me (even though I've probably spent much longer than him playing Duck Hunt ;).

*gasp* You played Duck Hunt as a child?! That's evil, now you're gonna go on an insane rampage of some sort! Think of the children! /sarcasm

(I liked the game; I think it was released seperately for Nintendo as well as with a tennis game of some sort? Hehe, "old school" games rocked. :mrgreen:)