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Good old Jack has been on the gamer's radars recently and never for good reasons either. Now before I state my opinions here, I would like to point out that I am in no way defending Jack and his antics but neither am I defending anyone elses. You could say I am trying to see a good side to all of this and give my general opinion on the gaming industry. So why am I doing this? I feel that Jack is misunderstood by the methods he uses and that one thing he does press on about the gaming industry is...immaturity.
Before my way of thinking changed, I will admit that Jack's accusations were absurd and that he was "out to destroy or take a chunk out of the gaming industry". I always saw Jack as one of those guys that wanted to be seen in the headlines and papers whether it was good or bad news but now after dwelling on the facts and of course the many headlines of crimes and murder committed over the recent months that are game related, I can now see the pattern and the reasoning behind Jack's antics to be rid of gaming companies that produce adult games.
So what makes me disagree with Jack? That is simple, I agree with the "why" but disagree with the "how". To give further explanation, the reason why Jack goes all out on his cases is because he wants to protect the youth of today (which I am afraid are far more corrupted than any video game can make them) but his methods are so distorted that he is left to be ridiculed and humilated by gamers, gaming sites and even the justice system.
The main reason he fails with cases is merely because he doesn't look at the big picture and goes for the big names even though it isn't them he should be targeting. You see today's society and generation are a laughing stock. Compare the last few years with say the 1990's to the late 2000-2001 and you will see the amount of complaints and court cases have risen considerably. Many of them are legit but most of them are merly fraudsters trying to make cash or morons not knowing any better.
So who is to blame for the whole situation? Well in all fairness, everyone is but everyone has equal shares within blame. At the moment everyone is pointing the finger at game developers yet personally I believe the most blame should be placed on game retailers and parents..as well as the kids. So lets break it down.
Game Retailers: Jack Thompson has finally realised it isn't the developers but the retailers that are causing the selling to underaged people. Working in the retail business myself, I know for a fact these guys are to blame and Jack has every right to send his son as a mystery shopper into a games store to trick them. In the UK, the police use everyday teenagers for "sting operations" to catch out the staff employees that try to cut corners in order to make money. Sure the developers make the games but the retailers sell the games and so these are the people you should be pointing the finger at.
Parents: Oh boy, it is public knowledge that recently a poll revealed that in the UK that 3/4 of parents are concerned about violence and nudity within video games. My question to those parents is a simple one. Out of that 3/4, how many of you partake in your childern's activities or even show any interest within their video games?
Concerning video game related crimes all over the world, I would love to ask the parents whether they had an active role within purchasing and playing the games their children played or even had any knowledge whatsoever of the games they played. Personally I have read and researched the majority of video game related crime and although I am not legally qualified to state it, I really do believe that the crimes were committed pretty much due to past problems such as something happening in their childhood or just because of something mentally.
Take the two six year olds hanging a kitten in a tree and stoning it to death, which GTA IV was blamed for due to them playing it a few hours beforehand. Straight away the story to me reeks of parental neglect, no supervision and the question of "Why the hell were six year olds allowed to play an 18 rated game?" I know that kids can be crafty and cunning...I was one and so were the parents and so were you guys but come on! Smell the coffee and use common sense!
The seventeen year old that threw a taco in his mother's face, yes he should have gone down when his mum shouted him for dinner, yes he shouldn't have got angry and moody because his gaming time was cut short but we've all been there at seventeen and hormones raging and changing our temperments. Alright there was no need to do what he did to his mum but then again she shouldn't have stormed into his room and switched off his console like she did. He is seventeen, old enough to get his own food, old enough to eat his own food and old enough to realise that if he's willing to play on the console longer, he will miss out on a freely cooked meal that he didn't have to prepare for himself.
The seventeen year old that shot his parents due to his father locking Halo 3 in a safe box with a gun. Again the son shouldn't have done what he did and that was purely down to being a spoilt brat with anger issues but yet again, that's done to personality and the choice of the human being holding the gun, not because a video game made him do it. This story was all about power trips and at the end of the day, whoever had the gun was the one in control. The teenager was told he couldn't do something, in this case play his game and in the end he decided he was going to play it whether it meant him getting hurt or someone else getting hurt.
These are just the articles that have got stuck in my head but on the surface it is easy to see why people blame videogames, as well as of course the media and people blowing it up out of proportion and blaming the wrong things. As you dig deeper and analyze the people involved, you can see a much bigger picture.
To be honest, I do hope this catches the eye of Jack Thompson because I would love to have a mature one on one chat with him about this subject and truly understand the mind behind it all but I do know I have lost that chance due to the many gaming sites using interviews to ridicule him.
Like I said before, I do not agree with his methods and he will never be in my good books for the bad reputation that he keeps giving the gaming industry but I can honestly see why he is motivated to stick with his goal. My advice Jack, if you do read these type of articles is this...Do not waste your time with the big fish, they are not to blame, aim for the retailers that sell to underage kids, help parents understand their role and most importantly teach not only parents but also yourself that not all kids and teenagers are saints. We were all kids once and we all know all the trouble we got into and all the tricks we used to pull. I'm talking about lying, using fake I.D's, making ourselves look older, getting older people to buy us stuff, learning how to get the pin numbers and other details of our parent's cards and so on.
The kids of today are not innocent and the biggest culprit of this is because the parents of today are still young ones themselves, not only that but compared to ten years ago, no parent has free time anymore. In order to keep the bills paid, they have to work like idiots to pay stuff off and when they do get time off, it is spent doing house chores or sleeping. Not many parents get time to enjoy their children, let alone get to be involved within their activities.
Back in the 90's while growing up, I had a mother and father that loved to game, I would spend hours with my mum, laughing and giggling while playing games on the Sega Mastersystem and Megadrive. Even now at 21, I still play hideen object games and crime solving games like CSI and Law & Order with her on the PC. Hell with correct supervision, they were the reason at aged 11 that I was able to play Duke Nukem 3D and the supervisor was my 15 year old brother, yet not once did I go out and kill someone or commit any other crime because of a game.
Final thoughts? Overall, I believe that Jack has the right idea but wrong method and wrong people to accuse. I would say stop looking at the surface and dig deeper but within this day and age, that means time and money, and when it comes to a big investigation that means digging deep into the parents and child involved, that means a lot of time and money when it can be simply swept under the carpet and be done with. I don't think we will ever see the last of Jack but like the moral of the day "Good can't exist without evil and evil can't exist without good"...Gaming can't exist without anti-gamers and vice versa. I just really hope that Jack and the many anti-gaming communities out there will realise the true evil that are fellow human beings before it is too late. Otherwise the many innocent lives that have been taken, will have gone to waste for nothing.
Sounds exaggerated and over the top, also sounds that I am using that for my own use but it is true. Many criminals these days get a third choice within court instead of the traditional two of guilty or not guilty. The third choice is basically "Guilty but plead insanity", this basically means they get thrown into rehab for a duration of time which is decided depending on the severity of the case. If they have been good and survive that duration then they are set free and free to do whatever they did again with yet another lifeline of pleading insanity. What does this have to do with video games? If you know how the justice system works and know how corrupt it is then you will know exactly how it ties in with video games because the number one reason for insanity when used as a plea within court is video games.
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Comments
If all he did was try to enforce the law or you know, go after the little kids playing GTA or other M-rated games, then I'd understand.
But no, he decides to blame god for THQ's stocks dropping and he decides to go after each gamer like we're all criminals.
He's a parasite and frankly, I've had enough of him.
Alright, he is using religious reasons to cloud over his personal reasons but to me, personally that's the last cry for help from someone. Criminals do it all the time in attempt to lessen their sentence..."Yes God told me to do it" or "God came to me in a dream and said I was the only one that could carry out his wishes"
Being Agnostic I do not believe there is a god but I do believe that there is something out there, however I do respect other's beliefs and religions. Even if there are very extreme, only time I don't is when it is being forced upon me or preached at me.
@Silver: The antics and methods of Jack are quite simple when you look at them. By hitting a well known company, he has become headline news and is always imprinted within every mind of every gamer.
Take Sir Goodwin, the former boss of Royal Bank of Scotland. He is in the news at the moment because he made the bank have a complete total loss of £24 billion, he has "retired" and is now claiming a £693,000 a year pension, which currently in Britain, everyday workers have been told they won't have a pension purely because the pension scheme is in debt. Of course he isn't the sole cause of RBS' collapse but he is the only one cashing out on it and now he is in the news and like Jack, hated but always in the mind.
Game retailers have always been the problem with underaged selling yet people always turn a blind eye to it. I was buying 18+ games when I was 14 and before that my parents were buying them for me but as long as they sat with me while playing them and I didn't play them after a certain time or before bed time. I was good to play the goriest and violent games of that time.
One word is the key to all of this and it is everyone's responsibility for the safety of our youngsters...SUPERVISION. I am not saying hound the poor kid every minute of its life but a peek from behind the door every now and then wouldn't hurt a little or like I said before in the article. Have knowledge of the games your kid plays and if they must play "that" game but it needs to be bought, set some damn rules. If those rules are broken, dicispline the child.
I think common sense is the key really. Giving GTA to a 6 year old is plain stupidity and there's no justification. I however have played Fallout 3 in front of my 13 year old sister, and Ive lived with her for 13 years to know that she can handle virtual violence pretty well. I wouldn't play it in front of a 13 year old with say, a challenging attitude, or a child under 11 or 12 really, because they probably haven't been exposed to violence and bad language. But in the western world, ill say its impossible to find a 15 year old who hasn't been exposed to violence, nudity, bad language or any other mature theme.
I think retailers should be more responsible, but to be honest the large retailers in the UK are clamping down. I wanted to buy MGS4 which is a 15, and they didn't sell it to me because Im short and I didn't have any ID on me. And Im going on 17. I don't think they could do much more really.
I can tell you now in my area, all the youths have been exposed to more violence and sex in the real world than any game could give them. The fact that with today's society that kids are having kids themselves kind of tells you the way toay's youths are thinking and that's got nothing to do with video games.
In fact I can gaurentee that most of the youths around my area don't even own a console, I know this because everyday when I come home from work, all I see is them hanging around the streets, trying to act hard, cool and tough while smoking, drinking, cussing and being general idiots.
However indeed, the UK usually have a good grip on things like this, hell I am 21 and still get IDed, it annoys me because I am over the age but inside I am glad it is done.
Like I mentioned above though, everyone is to blame and not just in the games industry but within the world and today's way of living and thinking.
At first, my opinions of him were different, much different. Then after a couple years I started to see him as a source of a good laugh. But now, he's just a thorn in the side of lots of gamers and other people everywhere.
In all seriousness, he has a few points in his arguments. His flaw is, imo, that he categorizes all gamers as one single entity. We're all blood thirsty psychopaths on the edge of committing a serious crime and getting locked up for years, to him.
I just think he's fighting a losing battle. Hell, his own state stripped him of his license to practice law and kicked him out because of his actions.
I don't like him. He doesn't amuse me anymore and he likes to make bad decisions. I think he should just buy a cottage out in the country somewhere and live out the rest of his days. Of course, Vampires DO live forever right?
In respect, upon the surface and looking at a handful of people that are unemployed, that is the case but I have been there and even I was considered all of the above.
Everyone in life categorises people into groups, Jack does it purely because he knows people will kick up a fuss about it. He would rather have bad attention and be known as the bad guy than not be known at all. Other than having a stubborn personality, that's why he has not once said he is wrong or apologised for his actions, because if he did, he wouldn't be seen as the bad guy.
Maybe I am trying to see a good side to this rather than always seeing the immediate bad side but look at this way...the more Jack and people worry about games like GTA IV being violent etc. the more appealing it looks to kids.
It is a known fact that kids and teenagers hit the thing called "rebellion" and do all the things that parents hate them doing. If they can annoy their parents, they will do it. The more something is restricted from them, the more chance they will see it as a challenge.
So what do you do? Ban it? No because kids are smart, if they have the balls and confidence to blag their way through a sale by using a fake ID then there is nothing stopping them from going out their way of ordering a banned videogame or turning to piracy.
Take down the companies that make them? Something that people have tried to do and failed for years. Won't happen and this is what Jack has realised.
Impose restrictions upon game retailers and help parents learn more about what their children do in the world of videogaming? Pretty much all you can do...don't work against them but work with them. Set the boundaries but at the end of the day, realise that if they are an older teen, they are becoming a young adult and their own person. Personally I am a lot mature than I should be for my age but around 16/17 is around the age that you leave a teenager to grow up on their own with some aid.
Younger than that then a parent "should" take an active role and duty for the teen. Of course I am not telling parents on how to be a parent but I have always sat on the sidelines and this type of situation is what I analyze a lot of andevery case I have looked at, I have always made a connection that it is either lack of parenting or something mentally wrong with the child
He managed to misbehave and step on enough toes to get himself disbarred....Call me crazy, but I think that takes some work to accomplish....
Were his intentions good? Maybe so, but remember the old phrase "The road to hell is paved with good intentions"......I'm sure Hitler had good intentions too (not comparing the two, just trying to point out 'good intentions' don't mean jack, if you pardon the pun).
But there lies a problem here too. What Jack's doing is he's trying to slander violent video games so that the parents of the child only see Jack's point of view and ignore the kid's.
For example, I'm not sure if Jack was involved in this but, a couple of months ago there was controversy surrounding Mass Effect and it's "completely inappropriate sex scene." Anyone who's played Mass Effect know that that's a crock of shit. Not only do you have to work for many hours in order to even get the option to see the scene, but you hardly see anything anyway. The point being, when anti-game advocates find one small "offense" they jump on it like a pack of wolves. They then launch a campaign that ends up dragging the media in to the mix and things tend to get blown WAY out of proportion.
It's up to the parents. It can't be put any simpler. If the parents are unwilling to care then it''s on them if their kid turns out to be a rapist or murderer or whatever.
Jack Thompson tries to exploit the parents. If they listen, then us "kids" have no chance to prove our maturity as their minds are made up.
THAT'S why I've had enough of Jack.
But then again, Mass Effect is one example of many. The Oblivion fiasco is another of the more famous (or infamous for that matter) examples. They find a remnant of sexuality in the game and all of a sudden it's bad. And about the large amounts of blood and gore that supposedly influenced the new "M" rating, the ESRB didn't seem to have a problem until several months after it's release.
I tell ya, politicians are gonna lead us right to Armageddon.
And then they'll still blame us.
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