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Jack Thompson's "Modest Proposal"
TrueNeutral:
I read an article about that too, but I lost the link and now I can't find it.
I believed it put it as 'video games can't be responsible for the youth crime wave because there IS no youth crime wave'. Or something like that.
Garcin:
--- Quote from: nihilist ---As Gabe said: "What’s scary is that people in the mainstream media listen to him." That's the most frightening part. The people in power, who influence what can and cannot be done, hear his fearmongering and crazy crap. Gamers and the gaming industry need to speak up louder to make sure that we aren't penanlized by what some crazy fuckwad says.
--- End quote ---
You got it buddy. PA posting that pic of him on CNN the other day. Now this here is fucked up. The gaming industry is now bigger dollar for dollar than the movie industry. Yet for movies you've got a whole bunch of incredibly bright people, and not a few pretty prominent publications, doing analysis on the trends, mores, effects, motivations, and happenings of the industry.
Whereas for the gaming industry, you've got the most prominent mainstream media sources going to some nutjob who just happens to be yelling louder and more creatively than the guy next door. Ironically, the basis for picking the anti-video game spokesperson (that his opinions are alarmist and his style is manic) pretty much guarantees that whoever it is, Thompson, or the lunatic next door, is going to be cracked worse than fine china in a mosh pit.
Again, Krahulik was right that Thompson himself is not so much the problem as a happenstance spokesperson for what essentially amounts to a cultural conspiracy to limit the media consumption choices of others. Krahulik was also right when he suggested that the thing to do about this is not to focus on striking out at Thompson himself, but to intelligently motivate prominent media sources (partly through their advertisers) to present, at least, a fact-based and relatively intelligent opponent to violent and sexual videogames to the public at large.
One problem here is that gaming culture, as financially established as it is, hasn't yet achieved mainstream cultural or intellectual respectability. Indeed, as it has been frequently pointed out, every new media form faces a period of reactionary-based opposition. And simple demographics will solve most of these problems -- as gamers age, and each new generation is brought up around gaming pretty much from the cradle, the fear bred from ignorance will become a thing of the past. But the Thompson phenomenon is also a creature of intellectually barren journalists under the delusion that a balanced view is the product of getting two zealots in the same room and making them fight. The whole thing is really fucking depressing, and the silver lining here is that, as with Child's Play, PA gets to be on the side of the angels.
LiterSize:
I was all ready to start refuting Jack Thompson directly yesterday after reading Gabe's initial post but the only way to really fight is to keep educated and when people as wacky as Jacky show up then common sense and empirical reason are all we should need... right?
Kansas, I'm looking at you and ID. But that's another thread and I'll say no more.
Bunnyman:
Hate to sound like an apologist, but...
Games are in very little danger of being banned. Many, many families own some form of game console...while it is in vogue for those in political circles to trash the gaming industry, people still want their games. And not just shock-value stuff like GTA (and Postal, Manhunt, and JFK Reloaded proved that shock alone only moves so many units; quality will win in the end); people play a lot of games. So there is a tacit social acceptance. Thompson, Schwartzenegger, and other demagogues/clueless politicians will still roll with it.
This doesn't, of course, excuse the double standard in reporting that pertains to games. For some reason, the need to fact check dissappears when discussing GTA:SA. Molly Ivins, for example, who I usually respect, thought San Andreas was meant to turn our children into "Amateur Pornographers." Over a hidden, unfinished minigame? Very few politicians who pan GTA have ever played the game, and are convinced that, for example, rape is a gameplay element (which it is not) and that killing cops is worth points (which it is not). Coming from people who we ordinarily expect to quantitatively and objectively back their policies and opinions, this is nothing less than hypocrisy.
Gabe is right in that Jack Thompson will do more damage to himself than anyone else. Let the ESA deal with him and don't worry about it.
jhocking:
--- Quote from: Bunnyman ---Molly Ivins, for example, who I usually respect
--- End quote ---
That's been a sore point for me for a while. The Democratic party has decided media messages, such as videogames, are a pulpit sticking point. My girlfriend, who is a lifelong Democrat, was full of bile for videogames when I first met her. It was only after being with me for a while, noting the games I play and observing first-hand somebody who works hard to make games, that she softened her stance.
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