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General: Column: Politics, Hypocrites and Twits
Dana
Member Posts: 2,415
Dave Bonnewell digs into the vicious video game politics that plays itself out in the mass media of America. "Behind the Online" is a weekly column Bonnewell writes for MMORPG.com.
| Last month also marked the one year anniversary of one of Jack Thompson's most duplicitous and malicious measures. On October 10, 2005, Jack Thompson sent an open letter titled "A Modest Video Game Proposal" to members of the press and to Entertainment Software Association president Doug Lowenstein. Mr. Lowenstein, by the way, was the focus of personal attacks by Thompson in a CBS interview in which Thompson compared Mr. Lowenstein to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, knowing full well that Mr. Lowenstein happens to be Jewish. Anyway, back to the letter. In this letter he proposed that if someone could "create, manufacture, distribute, and sell a video game in 2006" that allows players to play the scenario he has written, he would write a check for ten grand to the charity of Take-Two's chairman Paul Eibeler's choosing. Now, here's where things really get interesting. The premise is a Grand Theft Auto-style game in which the focus of brutality is not on police officers and civilians, but rather on the industry leaders responsible for marketing violent video games, such as Take-Two CEO Eibeler and his family. |
The whole editorial is here.
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
Comments
Jack Thompson is a grandstanding blow
hard to be sure but that doesn't mean that the gaming industry isn't
full of a bunch of immature idiots who are their own worst enemy.
There is a generational and cultural
disconnect between the gaming community and society at large. This
gulf is made worse by the perverse delight that a great number of
game developers and players take in making society uncomfortable. It
is sort of like the kid who gets a thrill out of showing up at
grandma's for Thanksgiving with enough rings through his eyebrow,
nose and ears to hang a shower curtain. The discomfort of his family
is his main goal, not any sense of self expression.
Dave's article is typical of the
sophomoric garbage that is offered as a defense of the industry.
Thompson is a hypocrite, yes. But me thinks the lady protests too
much. This industry is ran mostly by a bunch of socially inept geeks
with a bad case of arrested development and funded by companies who
would sell their own daughters for a buck. Most game developers
can't even get a date, let alone be the parents of teenagers and
worried about the impact that games may have on their children.
See, ranting like an asshole won't help
your case and the above paragraph did not help mine.
Point is that the industry resists any
suggestion that it may want to self edit or self police. Any effort
on the behalf of parent groups to rate games or inform parents about
content that is not suitable for teens and children is met with anger
and or ridicule. The truth is that the industry not only doesn't
want government involvement, they don't really want parental
involvement either. They have accepted the current rating system
because they know that they don't really have a choice and that
public opinion would turn against them without it. They would be
most satisfied if parents just gave their credit cards to the little
punks and let them have at it. Of course this is until society goes
down the tubes and really does begin to look like one of American
McGee's games.
I forget the name of the guy in the middle of the debate, but he had it right.
IT IS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE PARENTS TO MONITOR THE ACTIVITIES OF THIER CHILDREN. It is not up to politicians and lawyers to determine what is appropriate for ME to play as a 30 yr old adult. MA ratings on video games are thier for a reason. If Mr. Thompson was trying to put pressure on retailers to ensure that the sales of MA rated games are sold to only those individuals over the age of 18 that would be all well and dandy, but to say that a developer doesn't have the right to produce a game because he doesn't like the content is plain assinine.
So if you're a game developer you can't get a date let alone find a woman to have your children? How sophomoric is that?
Self edit or self police? In order to do that then some sort of guide lines would have to be laid down as to what a developer can put into a game to start with. Then from thier they would police themselves by ensuring that that content doesn't make it into the game.
Or do you mean restraint on the part of game devs.? Restraint would be a little more fitting as it would take some to keep excessive violence to the point of being needless out of games. But would we stop thier.
Can your same assumption be made of the movie industry, or how about music; after all we all know that hip hop is the bane of the music industry. Are all producers simply trying to hide from thier responsibilities as adults to edit a song every time an artist tells a girl to get low? Let's ignore the deflamitory remarks I've heard in rock, metal, country, blue grass and just focus on hip hop as the evil enteprise much like video games.
China has, is, or was implementing a law that limitted how long the chinese peoples could play video games, or just MMO. This is a communist country and better suited for the ideals of Mr. Thompson and anyone else that feels that the government has a right to say what we can watch, play, say, or listen to.
The same constitutional rights that allow a game dev. like rockstar to produce the games they produce, also give you the same rights to make an assinine comment like game devs. can't get dates or have children. Funny how that works.
Seriously, Adam had a great point - violence existed long before video games. Bullies have existed for a very long time. I had to deal with bullies long before I got the uber-violent Atari 2600 game Combat. Those blocks trained me for violence!
Also, as was pointed out, parents are responsible for their children. Games have ratings, just like movies. If parents cannot be bothered to view it, then they are not being good parents.
I also liked that Adam pointed out that of all the social ills, this guy is targeting video games. If he actually cared about anything besides his own fame and fortune, wouldn't he be volunteering or donating money to schools?
As an adult I will never need to fear not being able to purchase a game I want to play because (living in the US) that would be against the constitution and it would never make it past the supreme court. (no matter how much anyone whines or grandstands)
I agree that parents need to take control of their kids. Kids today are spoiled beyond belief. Many of them have computers in their bedrooms with internet connections giving them access to porn and other things that arn't appropriate for children their age. Ten year-olds should be outside climbing trees and not sitting in front of the computer all day. I had videogames as a child and it was awesome ^^ but my parents made sure that I used them in moderation and didn't sit there all day. Now that I am an adult I can make my own choice as to how much time I spend with the computer/games.
and the part about game devs not being able to get dates... thats just insane... My fiance is a game animator and most of the other devs I meet are married and make a very good living. Getting a game together isn't easy, these people are passionate about what they do and are very hard working.
Honestly, the system works. The only thing that concerns me is parental ignorance of the rating system and the occasional bad parent who lets little Johnny buy GTA: San Andreas. Yes, this type of parent should not be allowed to have kids, especially since Video games have such a strong physiological effect on the really young kids. The older people become, the better they get at keeping their own sense of reality. I would hate to see a generation of kids grow up with Tony Montana as their role model (I do like Scarface, BTW).
Really, I think what Thompson is anger at is the lax mindset towards violence in America in general, but he's taking it out on video games because he had to deal with a couple of cases where some kid that probably already had psychological issues, used video games as is inspiration to commit murder. And you know what that leads back too...BAD PARENTS!
If you want to get rid of all the screwed up people in the world, get rid of all the screwed up parents!
.....................................
...but time flows like a river...
...and history repeats...
-Leader of "The Fighting Irish" in DAoC on Hib/Kay-
I like how he mentioned Collombine, because those kids litteraly had voices in their heads telling them to commite homicide. I also like how all these nutts assume that violent video game cause violent kids. Isn't it possible and in fact more likely that violent kids like playing violent video games!?
The worst school shooting in US history happened in 1927.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster
((For those of you idiots that don't trust Wikipedia, please not that all of their claims are cited with newspapers and history books as sources.))
The question is allways where does it end. Would a game where you get to play the role of a doctor performing abortions with a very graphical interface be ethical or acceptable?
/me shrugs
We don't know what the future holds, specialy when it comes to technology. What if in a not so distant future our central nerveous systems are pluged in a computer and what we experience in these simulations feels real, the sights, sounds, smell? If we kill someone in such a simulation and enjoy it?
These dicussions and debates lay the fondations for the future.
KK.
Some parents do care about the games their kids play, the other night a father came onto the Dark Messiah of Might and Magic Forum at Ubi.com and created a thread to get feedback, he wanted to know first hand from the players whether he should let his young teenage kids get the game.
After the feedback he got from the forum members he decided his kids were mature enough to handle the violence and minimal partial nudity the game contains.
If more parents were like him it would keep everyone happy, the parents get a better understanding of the game and its suitability for their kids and the kids get the game they wanted.
Maximum-Gamers.com Administrator "The clues are out there.....S.N.A.F.U."
From what i remember, $10,000 was given to a charity from PennyArcade because Thompson didn't donate to a charity. Was a long time ago so you may have to search PennyArcade's site... I think I remember that they have their own charity for getting video games to children in hospital or something.
Personally I hate the effect that Jack is having on violent games coming out, though my computer is pretty old so most games I play I turn graphic options down which reduces the gore. :P
Nice article anyhow, i'd like to see more in the future.
And maybe if you read the articles you link to you would have noted it as a bombing instead of misquoting it as a shooting. And the relevance of something that happened 100 years ago - 40 years before television is what exactly?
I guess Jack figures that parents who cant keep their children away from drugs and guns are also incapable of keeping them away from games they shouldnt be playing. Personally I think he should spend his time trying to convince wal-mart not to stock the games, as wal-mart controls what gets published by sheer sales volume.
Strange article; 2 paragraphs of apologies for posting it, character attacks on someone I never heard of, and then finally one completely unrelated paragraph about how censorship is bad, m'kay? What was the article trying to say?
This is just too funny.
First you have the original article/editorial which puts the blame on a specific type of people (who shocker of shocker he dislikes to begin with)
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Than you have people who reply with things like "Its the parents responsiblity".They seem to not understand the simple fact that responsibilty is a chain,not a block. In other words, responsibility does not ever stop at one person.
This is becuase when and if that one person fails in its responsibility,that responsibility is than clearly shown to belong to others as well.
An example:
Parent fails in the responsibility of keeping their child off drugs.
Child uses drugs and as such breaks the law.NOW we see the responsibilty that the law enforcement have in the issue.
Neighbor sees that child using ,buying or selling drugs. NOW we see the neighbors responsibility on the issue.
It goes on and on.Its called a society.
The only question is the directness of the responsibility.Not the existance of it.In other words ,who bears the most weight of a given responsibility.
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Than we see people say things like "its not the governments responsibility".Well, even IF we forget the simple point explained above,we are still left with the simple fact that the people are responsible for thier government.
In the US the people ARE the government and can change it at will IF enough of them choose to do so.
While this is harder in some other countries,its still very possible in almost all.
And so, since people are responsible ,so to is the government of those people.
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The whole selling point of a society is people working together to handle the various responsibilities they face.
Whether said responsibility is a child out of control, a product that can affect some children as a trigger to help them go out of control, or a group of people not living up to their end of the responsibilities, its up to society as a whole to live up to them.
Things fall apart when people dont accept that they too have a responsibilty.
I thoughts exactely on this. This "article" I find poorly writen as it is and takes a ridiculous and biased stand-point on this issue. Our culture at large seems to promote violence, video games are no exception to this rule, even more so since they are interactive.
People who say that it is the job of the parents are correct, but these said parents just are not doing their jobs. Clearly something needs to be done in order to fix this problem, and it seems just because "gamers" are too immature to do anything about it and maybe actually vote in an election, that is a failed solution.
I hate Jack Thompson yes, but lets face it, he quotes actual creditable studies on human psychology rather than just babbling away like Adam Sesslar did. The connection is there, but most gamers are too dumb to actually admit this anyway.
This problem doesn't even seem to have a solution.
Office of Justice Juvenile offender report (1.15MB PDF file) (be sure to check out pages 3 & 4)
As far as a "solution" goes... if we are going to blame an industry for a problem that in fact has been on the decline, and hold them accountable for a lack of control on the part of parents, then you are just asking for widespread censorship. Also, don't expect it to just stop at games either.
What about the next time some kids go on a rampage, after seeing a violet "R" rated movie that their parents just let him watch...will we then sart banning all movies with violent content too? How about cable TV or music (people like Jack Thompson also blame Rap for youth violence) should we censor those as well?
On a historical note...There was once a bill before Congress to ban Rock and Roll music too (1955 I belive) because that used to be scapegoat for all of America's Youth problems.
Music Censorship in America
Today such public outrage and restrictions on artistic expression over Rock and Roll seem quanitly misguded, but back then people took it quite seriously. Just as we do today, they had people like Jack Thompson running around to the media telling people how "this new Rock and Roll music" would turn America's children into a buch of violent drug addicts and sex fiends.
Parents were told how Rock would threaten the very fabric of American society, and as usual many politcians were ready to jump on the censorship bandwagon. Thompson's predecessors would tell parents about "credible proof" from psychiatrists of the corrupting influence of this new evil form of music. Every time some teenager was involved in violence, they would show the culprit listened to Rock and Roll (neglecing to metion all of the other Rock and Roll listening kids that didn't commit crimes) and claim that this clearly showed a link between Rock and crime among the youth of their day.
Does any of this history sound similar to the arguments we hear today? It should.
IMHO...All we are seeing today is the same historical pattern repeating itself again (over and over). In 10-20 years there will probably be some other form of entertainment/music genre (popular among kids, but not the adults) that Mr. Thompson's spiritual successor will be trying to "Protect America's Youth" from. When people don't learn from history, it will repeat itself again and again....