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More Ridiculous Antics from Anti-Game Crusader, Jack Thompson

More Ridiculous Antics from Anti-Game Crusader, Jack Thompson

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If you are a faithful news reader, you know the antics of Jack Thompson that have caused more eye-rolling than fear on the faces of video game execs. Thompson has antagonized Rockstar for the Grand Theft Auto series, The Warriors, and Bully. He has also taken up tirades against games as innocent as The Sims. Currently, the lawyer is suing companies like Best Buy and Target for selling Grand Theft Auto to Devin Moore (Don’t know who he is? Check out our previous coverage ). The man’s tirades have gotten old fast, but he still continues to pursue his goal. We don’t know exactly what his goal is, but it is starting to seem like he just wants to get rid of the video game industry entirely.

Thompson’s most recent antic was challenging the video game industry to create, manufacture, distribute, and sell a video game in 2006 with his proposed plot. If they followed through with this, he would donate $10,000 to Paul Eibeler’s, CEO of Take-Two Interactive, favorite charity. Thompson proposal is 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 hope 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 bran 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 and 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 Electronics Entertainment Expo–the Super Bowl of the video game industry. O.K. must get into 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.”

What Thompson couldn’t expect was someone to follow through with his dare. But someone did. The mod community created a mod called Defamation of Character: a Jack Thompson Murder Simulator. Although the mod met all of Thompson’s requirements, he decided not to donate the $10,000. He stated that his proposal was “satire” meant to “highlight the patent hypocrisy and recklessness exhibited by the video game industry’s willingness to target cops, women, homosexuals, and other groups with some of their violent games.”

After his refusal to pay out, Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik from Penny Arcade decided to donate $10,000 to the Entertainment Software Association Foundation (ESAF), the very organization that Thompson would like to destroy, and accused Thompson of being guilty of just what he criticized others of.

Thompson called the story “completely false and defamatory” and demanded that the group “take it down or else.” I’m sure this threat has Penny Arcade shaking in their boots.

Apparently, this “or else” that he threatened meant reporting the group to the Seattle Police Department. Part of his letter to the department stated:

“A Seattle business by the name of Penny Arcade…employs certain personnel who have decided to commence and orchestrate criminal harassment of me by various means.”

Hope you enjoyed your entertainment for the weekend, courtesy of Jack Thompson. Keep checking back to Cheat Code Central for more updates on this story as it unfolds.

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