Jack's image in GTAUpdated (also, I'm guilty of copy/paste)
Okay guys, if you don't know anything about Jack Thompson, grab a beer and read this. I know it's long, as I am compiling a lot of information, but in the end it is all worth it.
John Bruce "Jack" Thompson is an attorney at law often cited in the media for his views on the effects of obscenity and violence in popular media. A native of Ohio, he is a 1976 JD graduate of Vanderbilt University School of Law and has been practicing as a medical malpractice attorney in Florida since 1977. It is well known that Jack Thompson is hated by video game players everywhere. Despite what some may believe about gamers being biased, the simple fact is that they have a different view on a topic that they know much more about than him.
In 1999, Thompson filed a $33 million federal products liability class-action lawsuit against a number of entertainment companies, including Time Warner Inc., Polygram Film Entertainment Distribution Inc., Palm Pictures, Island Pictures and New Line Cinema, Atari Corp., Nintendo of America, Sega of America Inc. and Sony Computer Entertainment, on behalf of the parents of victims of the 1997 Paducah schoolhouse shootings. These included the producers and distributors of the movie The Basketball Diaries, Internet sex website operators and a variety of video game producers. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the case in 2002.You guys remember Ice T getting sued over "Cop Killer"? That was Jack Thompson.
Since the failure of the Paducah lawsuit, Thompson has continued to pursue the companies that develop violent video games in court: he has attempted to link the Columbine High School massacre and the Washington Sniper to first-person shooters; he has frequently attacked Rockstar, linking Rockstar North's Manhunt game and Grand Theft Auto series to a wide variety of murders, particularly those involving vehicles or weapons other than firearms.
Jack Thompson has a set of arguments and phrases that he often reinforces in public speech. Thompson describes video games with violent or competitive content as 'murder simulators' and 'sexual simulators'. He usually describes violent or sexual content as being 'dirty and yet highly arousing'. He asserts that young persons accused of violent crimes have 'trained' or 'rehearsed' their actions using 'murder simulators'. And asserts that video games are used by the military to desensitize and remove the inhibition to kill. There are no known commercial games being used for this purpose by any military forces. The source of this idea may be the literature of Dave Grossman, a fellow censorship advocate.
Jack, in GTA
Currently he is attempting to sue Rockstar North, makers of Grand Theft Auto, and is attacking The Sims 2, claiming "Sims 2, the latest version of the Sims video game franchise... contains, according to video game news sites, full frontal nudity, including nipples, penises, labia, and pubic hair."
That aside, here comes the drama, and it is great. On October 10, 2005, Thompson sent another open letter to members of the press and to ESA president Doug Lowenstein. 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 will donate $10,000 to the charity of Take Two's chairman Paul Eibeler's choosing. This letter was named "A Modest Video Game Proposal", obviouslly after Johnathan Swift's famous satire. His letter is as follows:
"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 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.
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.
In this letter, Jack Thompson declared he will give $10,000 to charity if any videogame company makes and releases a game based on a scenario he created. When the letter was written, the Video Game industry gasped. News agencies reported it was unlikely that Thompson's proposal will actually be turned into a game, as most videogame companies do not simply accept proposals from individuals.
Mike Krahulik, the artist behind popular gaming culture comic Penny-Arcade and a founder of the hugely successful Child's Play charity, contacted Thompson after he made this offer. Jack Thompson sitting high and mighty on 60-minutes, offering ten thousand dollars to a charity must have felt like a bit of an insult to Krahulik, who is a kid, and has donated millions of dollars for children's hospitals around the USA since his inception of Penny Arcade. His letter to Thompson said: "10 grand is pretty weak man. Through our charity www.childsplaycharity.org gamers have given over half a million dollars in toys and cash to children’s hospitals all over the country." Accidently, Krahulik had his phone number in his e-mail signature.
Responding with his usual mafia-like approach to legal issues, Thompson called a Penny-Arcade's author's personal cell phone. He was reportedly terrified to hear that it was the Jack Thompson. This conversation started with Jack Thompson asking Krahulik if Krahulik has ever donated to charity. Of course, Penny Arcade has - it's usually a couple Gameboys a year for Child's Play, but the "take" from the distributed gamer metamind is over five hundred thousand dollars in two years. This answer did not satisfy Thompson. He suggested that if Gabe mentioned him again in a comic, he would be sued so fast that his head would "spin," and that he, Jack Thompson, had given more to charity that Gabe could even imagine. Gabe isn't very good at math, so he may have a point.
Then he hung up.
Penny Arcade then wrote on their website:
Usually when a person threatens us with a lawsuit we don't really pay attention. The fact of the matter is that rude people and idiots often try to threaten people by gesturing wildly at the edifice of the legal system. But this man is actually a lawyer, and also demonstrably crazy, and he apparently has time to call random people who mail him on the phone so maybe he's looking for something to do. In any case, we aren't a flush with cash game company, so at the very least my cohort wanted to excise this erroneous statement from the record.
At this point, a bully had bullied a group, who's only defense is their writing. And their writing is based on humor, which is an incredible weapon. Penny-Arcade responded with this comic:
Penny-Arcade followed up with a commentary, both to clue now-joining readers, and to help insult Thompson a bit more:
Gabe's own voice rose triumphantly throughout this phase, I thought perhaps he was just getting into the rhetorical spirit of the thing, but the reality is that Jack screamed at him the entire time. The point he submitted went without answer: if a company made his reprehensible game, he would literally have to sue himself and talk about what a bastard he was on national television. Of course, he's not serious. Machination is too glorified a word for what he's doing. Ruse would make it seem debonair. He's essentially holding money hostage from charity, and if someone did make it, even as a joke, he would say that it didn't conform to his "design." This sort of thing is usually called a shell-game. The song license itself he mentions - Lawyers In Love - would probably run anywhere from ten to fifteen thousand by itself.
This vile "challenge" Jack Thompson has put to the supposedly monolithic "game industry" is like a topographical map of the twisted fantasy realm he inhabits. I could excerpt it, but I don't want to be accused of selective editing. The reality is that what he suggests is grotesque. I mean that it is literally disgusting. Of course, the violent acts he's cobbled together here from other games are robbed of a narrative context in which they make sense. Killing Gamestop and EB employees, though? That's not metaphor. He's not being metaphorical. He is batshit fucking loco insane.
Several more offhand remarks were made from both sides, Thompson using his harnessed media attention to make subtle public remarks, and Penny Arcade posting responces on their website. By this point, Thompson had asserted himself so radically, that the National Institute on Media and the Family becane to distance itself from the vociferous lawyer. The following article relates this letter.
Your commentary has included extreme hyperbole and your tactics have included personally attacking individuals for whom I have a great deal of respect. I believe that respect is essential in all our dealings, including respect for those with whom we disagree. Some of the people that you have publicly criticized are not only people of integrity, but are people who have worked to improve the lives of children," the letter continues.
Even though we have no formal relationship your use of my name and your inclusion of my name in correspondence have created the impression that we condone these tactics. We do not. The result is that our position and reputation as a research based, non-partisan, solution-focused organization has been jeopardized. Consequently, I ask that you cease using the Institute's or my name in any way that would give the impression that we support your efforts. I also ask that you remove the link to our website that appears on your site.
This being said, Jack responded inkind, with some vague legal threats. These legal threats are kind of disregarded, as he apparently makes a living with threatening legal crap on people. These two letters are too long to post here, but they can be found by following this link. These letters don't have much more to offer to the conversation, except to note that Jack loves to write big threatening letters, with extreme and drastic intentions.
Meanwhile, while Jack's defending his loco-batshit-crazy extremism, a group of modders known as the Fighting Hellfish released a mod for the game San Andreas, featuring Jack Thompson himself acting out the scenerio that Jack Thompson requested in his proposal; at one point even assassinating Doug Lowenstein. Acting under hypnosis, Thompson moonlights as Banman and takes to the streets in his Bannedwagon to destroy the entire shipment of Rockstar's Bully before it reaches distribution, finally making good on his threat. Jack later assassinates Janet Reno after thwarting her coup, which forces him to confront the realization that his time spent researching violent games have turned him into his own "Manchurian Candidate". This video game mod can be found here. (several screenshots are at the beginning of this article).
At this point Jack Thompson, who is completley burried underneith his own dog-shit, declared that his repellent suggestion was "satire," and we must conclude that his financial offer was also satire. Which of course is some new breed of satire apparently that I'm sure is just hilarious to the charities he is denying. Penny-Arcade did something that makes them total and unadultered heros:
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.
This check says "For Jack Thompson because Jack Thompson Won't". Following the issue of the check, Jack sent a letter to Penny-Arcade stating:
This story is completely false and defamatory. Take it down or else.
To which penny arcade replied:
Thank you for contacting Penny Arcade. I’m sorry but I am simply not able to respond to all my fan mail. I want you to know that I’m glad you enjoy the comic strip and I appreciate you taking the time to mail me.
Taking a huge knock to his pride, Thompson tried to get the authors at Penny Arcade into criminal trouble. Thompson contacted their police department to get them arrested based on harassment charges. Here is the document Thompson faxed Penny Arcade's local police department.
Besides the fact that he got their web address wrong in his fax, Penny Arcade found other discrepencies. On their website, Penny Arcade published this document along with:
Obviously he didn’t mention anything to the police department about his “Modest proposal” in which he asks that a game be developed in which players urinate on peoples brains and murder kids who work at game stores. He never mentions that he offered ten thousand dollars to charity and then said it was just “satire.” He doesn’t tell the police chief that Jerry and I just donated the ten thousand for him. I wonder why he left that part out?
They of course were not arrested. But to enjoy the situation to the best of their ability, they published a comic about it.
Even amist a faltering platform, Jack Thompson continued his tirad, and ball-in-his-court pursual of his goals. On his 14th appearance on CNN on October 18th (four days after this whole debacale started), he gave a slam piece on Miday's Blitz: The League. Afterwards, Thompson said:
Whom did CNN contact for a comment about Blitz: The League? They didn't contact Doug Lowenstein. They didn't contact the drooling cretins at Penny Arcade. They didn't even contact a single gamer, I guess because they wanted the truth.
They contacted Jack Thompson. Why? Because the "don't confuse me with the facts" gaming community (what's next, the marijuana community?) has nothing rational to say about the marketing of mature games to kids.
The purpose of the law in California is to say this: Parents, it is your job to make the decision on these games. We will not allow retailers to sell adult games to kids behind their parents' backs.
Wise up, gamers. The war was lost by you scofflaws a very long time ago. Even liberal CNN is on my side.
Jack Thompson thanks you for watching, and not seeing anyone other than me in the piece. I didn't see Penny Aracade personnel there, nor any drooling gamers. Just little old me. Why? Because CNN knows what I'm talking about. This was my 14th appearance on CNN. Glad to be of service in annoying the pixelante pukes. Fondly, Jack Thompson
PS: Put down the controller and get a life!
At this point, Jack is not only taking on the gaming industry and penny arcade, but he is taking on the entire gaming community. In 2004, four major violent crimes - murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assaults declined. That produced a 2.2% drop in the violent crime rate, making it the lowest since 1974. Violent crimes have been steadily decreasing since 2000, while video games are increasing sales at a near-expontential rate.
Now, we have a series of spin offs, like TV Show spin offs. Several people displayed their distaste for Jack Thompson, which Jack then turned into individual wars. For instance, the buddy icon you see to the right was seen on badassbuddy.com. He stated that this icon "constitutes criminal activity in a number of regards by Bolt and by its partner, BadAssBuddy," trying to get the police onto Badassbuddy.com people for threatening his life. After badassbuddy took the icon down, Jack followed up with a letter saying: "Mr. Kerner of Bolt Media has just called me to inform me of that, which has occurred as a result of his communication with BadAssBuddy.com. I believe the removal of the animation by BadAssBuddy.com, which put it up there with full knowledge as to the impropriety of doing so, constitutes an admission of guilt by BadAss Buddy, Bolt Media's business partner. Therefore, please proceed with an investigation and prosecution, if appropriate of Bad AssBuddy.com's employees who are responsible for this. " Like it was stated before, this person is loco-birdass certifiable.
Jack Thompson's next move happened on October 21st, seven days after this all started. He is trying to sic the FBI on Penny-Arcade for extortion. The following is a snippet from Jack Thompson to John McKay, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington:
Because of my prominence, for better or worse, on this public safety problem, a 'gamer' a few months ago decided to threaten to kill me via the Internet. I received thousands of e-mails from a kid who was able to blast e-mail me using a service in Ireland that made the death threats appear to come from the following e-mail address: georgewbush@whitehouse.gov.
Because of the domain name, the Secret Service here in Miami got involved and shut that extortion down.
Now there is new extortion, and it is coming from a Seattle company called Penny Arcade. I can provide the details to your investigators, but basically this company has been using, I believe I can show, their Internet site and various other means to encourage and solicit criminal harassment of me. This would appear to violate state and federal laws.
And it gets better. After stating this, he goes on an off-topic tangent with: "I asked Penny Arcade's attorney to stop this targeting, and he said it was my fault. Maybe he's played too many video games and thinks that flesh and blood people are just pixilated pinatas." Woah! The sacasm runs deep! It's a good thing you added that or, you know, no one would have known your feelings on the matter!
Penny-Arcade no longer has to fight back. Apparently, when Thompson messed with Penny Arcade, he failed to take into account the site's loyal readers. There is a 60 page thread on the Penny Arcade forums, with readers sharing their faxes emails, and otherwiseextremely well thought out complaints to the Florida Bar, explaining the situation. In responce, the Florida Bar is conducting an investigation into Thompson's practices (for instance, trying to get the guys at Penny Arcade arrested for harrasment when no harassment had taken place, or threatening to sue Badassbuddies.com for threatening his life, when no threats were made). According to a Wikipedia article on the matter, the Florida Bar has “received an overwhelming amount of complaints in the last several days about the issue, and is calling an emergency meeting to deal with the issue.” Hopefully Jack’s time in the spotlight will be coming to an end very soon.
Birth of "pixelante"
Of course, Jack isn't going to go down (or continue down) without a fight. He wrote to the Florida Bar, saying "Penny Arcade put out a 'news story' that was wholly false, and the purpose of it, of course, was to generate the sort of Internet-based gamers harassment of me that has caused me to coin the useful phrase 'pixelante.' Blank Rome is just a highly-paid pixelante. I was not getting this harassment at my new e-mail address until Penny Arcade did this. " We thus see the neologism of his coined word "pixelante." You can view his entire letter to the Bar here. Even better, you can buy pixelante shirts here, with all profit going to the charity that Penny Arcade started, Child Play. Now I will highlight my favorite part of his letter. He has this trait of skewing definitions:
Now, let me be clear. Any Bar complaint coming from these morons arising out of the above incident is baseless and itself constitutes a violation of a specific federal civil rights statute.
Some how, if you wrote a letter to the Florida Bar mentioning Jack, then you are violating his rights. And like all of his letters, he finishes with legal threats. And for whatever reason, he decided to threaten the Florida Bar association:
If The Bar proceeds with any of these, it does so at its own peril. The Bar paid me once. I am certainly willing it pay me again, along with others.
By Wednesday, I hadn't heard anything new about the drama for about a week. I was a bit saddened at the thought of everything being over, because the drama was so perfect, as it had to do with reallife situation, and issues that are relevant to me. I thought maybe someone decided legally, it was time to play dead. Turns out, Jack wasn't finished, he was just MIA because of Hurricane Wilma. The latest news is that someone posted flyers in Thompson's neighborhood which were highly critical of the game violence activist. Thompson faxed GamePolitics a copy of the flyer, which has a Halloween theme and begins with the salutation, "Dear neighbor of Jack Thompson," and proceeds to launch into a satirical call for a ban on trick-or-treating ("What is trick-or-treating, other than a very immersive violence simulation?"). I am still trying to find a copy of this letter. It looks like someone out there really knows the definition of satire, unlike Jack. Below is a copy of the flyer.
Of course Jack responded. Here is his responce:
Speaking of devastating blows, it turns out that Penny Arcade is in quite a bit of trouble. Turns out that one of their operatives in my neighborhood went door to door with a Penny Arcade flyer, and that has gotten PA into a whole heap of trouble. Trust me. Also, a kid in Katy, Texas threatened to kill me because of the PA self-immolation, and that has been more than useful. Trust me on that as well.
I'm a Christian so, Joseph's having told his brothers "What you intended for harm, God used for good." So it is with the sociopaths at Penny Arcade. They lied about what I said about the donation to a charity. They set their pixelantes on me, and they got caught, bigtime. My, my, my what a wicked web we weave when first we practice to deceive. I would much rather be me than PA right now. Trust me on that, too.
My favorite part, is how people become "opertatives" of Penny Arcade. If this is true, then Jack just gave Penny Arcade a lot of power. Now are they not only a comic, but they have legions of soldiers standing behind them. Jack, if this were the case -- which its not -- would you really want to be fighting this group? I mean, if Penny Arcade has "operatives" and they are all "sociopaths," would you really continue fighting them legally? Speaking of which, Jack has consistantly lumped all gaming enthusiasts into the catagory of "sociopath." But I digress; my real point is, a sociopath doesn't have any regard for the law, and if I were you, I would stop trying to pursue them legally, if you really thought they were operatives and sociopaths. In fact, if I were facing a legion of crazy minions of my arch nemesis, I would be locked in my house with a shotgun, franticlly playing GTA, in hopes that I learn enough combat to fend off these legions.
In any event, to conclude the message above, Jack said: "Oh, and one more thing, kids. Keep you eye on Bully. You won't see it much longer. -Jack Thompson. PS to Dennis McCauley: Fascinating how you're censoring and altering the news here. But why am I not surprised? "
I don't have any commentary on his conclusion, but it's interesting nonetheless. It seems that Jack is no longer fighting video games, but fighting Penny Arcade. This implies that Penny Arcade is ultimatly victorious, because he is no longer on track with his goals. Similarly, I am sure Penny Arcade is very happy with Jack, because he has increased their traffic ten-fold, along with increasing awareness of their charity and products. Anyone else not know about "Child's Play" charity before this? By the way, thanks to Gamepolitics.com for the recent information, and thanks for them letting me copy/paste some of their writing :)
Seattle Police Department announced today (october 28th) that it won't be kicking down Penny Arcade's door any time soon.
Our preliminary review of the document -- Jack Thompson's faxed complaint-- has led us to believe that it is most likely a civil matter, but we have forwarded it to the chief of our criminal investigations bureau to make sure that it is correct.
It seems at this point, Jack is trying to micromanage a defense against the entire gaming industry. Every little 16 year old that says something dumb, he sends some letter to someone demanding action. Penny Arcade has ceased the need to say anything bad about Jack, because he has taken it upon himself to antagonize the twenty million gamers in America. The only link between Penny Arcade, GTA, gamers, and the combined mental assault upon Jack, is Jack himself, yet he tries to draw a legal link between all of them. The reasent threat on Jack was made by a 16 year old. Jack claims this threat is "just the latest installment of the video game industry's intentional targeting of Thompson for harm. In the past several days a video game Internet site criminally orchestrated harassment of Thompson, including the filing of dozens of baseless Bar complaints and even a person going door-to-door in his neighborhood illegally handing out pamphlets referencing that video game site to his neighbors lying about Thompson's activities."
Now, from where this author sits, there isn't a vast conspiracy against Thompson, as Thompson tries to make it sound. This person simply targeted a vast amount of people, and all those people are retaliating. There is no orcastrating body, no conspiricy, and no collusion. Be this as it may, this didn't prevent Jack from releasing a press release today (October 29). Here are excepts from this release:
...The specific, grotesque death threat was captured on tape, and the identity and location of the boy have been determined. Law enforcement is now involved and an arrest may be imminent. The boy's mother has confirmed that her son did this, and that he is a player of the hyperviolent game Doom 3. Her response has just been to 'ground him and take away his games for awhile.
Take-Two/Rockstar, the makers of the Grand Theft Auto games, which is the video game developer being sued by Thompson in Alabama for those games' training of a teenager to kill... have led the 'shoot the messenger' assault upon Thompson. Take-Two has posted on its Rockstar Games web site the false and defamatory assertion that Thompson is a bisexual pedophile.
Take-Two's law firm/lobbyist, Blank Rome of Philadelphia, which is the largest single lobbyist contributor to the Republican National Committee, has launched a personal attack on Thompson apparently because it cannot win the case on the merits. Blank Rome has a long history of such assaults on opponents...
...the above is just a portion of the intentional, orchestrated assault by the video game industry, its lawyers, and its minions of teenaged terrorists to drive Thompson from the public square with illegal harassment and extortion violative of state and federal laws."
The criminal threats on the life of Thompson by video gamers, knowingly orchestrated by the industry and its Internet-based 'news' sites prove yet again that virtual violence can bleed over into real-life crime... Thompson will seek prosecution of those who knowingly incited this death threat as well.
You got to love the royal 'we.'
At this point, I will move onto another post to detail Jack Thompson VS Sony. I wait anxiously for more updates, as I am interested in how Penny Arcade will act in the future, and if Jack will continue to pick fights with them. As of right now, this is the full story. I will update this every second I hear new information, because this is downright badass. This is the perfect example of a defensless organization using the power of writing to be better and rise above low level insults, threats, and bullying.
Here is the Pi Rho response:
Monday, October 17, 2005 | Permalink | 12 comments | links to this post
Practicing for Xbox
These are two comics from the series Adventures with Pi-Rho!
AWPR: Practicing for XboxAWPR: Video Games Make Killing Fun
"Video Games Makes Killing Fun" and "Practicing for Xbox"
