Staredit Network

If you don't know who Jack Thompson is, he's the guy that made GTA: SA rated Adult, wanted Sims 2 rated Mature and has been on a long spree of taking up headlines to save his low life career.
Or you can read this: Wikipedia is god.
Anyway I was wondering the input of SEN community of what you think the link of Violence and Video Gaming is. I'll post more detailed after there are some arguements, but since this is starcraft I doubt there will be, let's just see.

i dont think a game based on violence is good. it might be intertaining to sadistic illegitimate childs but not to me. i dont really care if they get off of the shelves im sure the gaming companies can make better games than those.

Jack Thompson should just back off. Who gives a crap if Rockstar makes violent games? Just have retailers check age. Oh, they're doing that? Shut up Thompson. Just let us play our games.

Ahem* Just because a game is violent doesnt mean it should be recalled. Like geez, Half Life 2 should be recalled too then! Oh and Halo! and NFS! and SC! and WC and Diablo and every other good game ever made! Its really retarded when someone wants games recalled because their violent...

For constructive critism on your arguement. There is a slight difference between Half Life when you're fending for your life against fictional monsters. And going out and beating a store owner to death and taking all his money for fun. Thompson is just running out of "catchy" things to say so now he's going the extremist way.

If u ask me this guys just jealous because he cant afford to buy good games like those. And if ur dumb enough to walk around beating someone with a baseball bat in real life then you deserve whatever comes to you, but u cant put the blame on the game makers.

I did a debate last year, you should of seen a topic I made in the serious disscustion around April-June 2005.

Anyways, (I was on the against team),

"Video game violence, it effects the smaller childern. Study shows that the younger children are to be more violent then the older. Since the young looks up to the old, the young would start to follow the same thought patterns, but since of their young mind they would be more "corrupted" then the older. So its really the older people's fualt! Should we start putting out a better message for the young?"

That was a peice I can remember from my debate on it. Theirs more to it, but I can't remember or find the notes about it.

children arent supposed to be playing those violent video games in the first place......

yes they shouldnt and the basic responsibilities is on the older people that take care of the children but since the older people do not know whats good for them thats the reason why they are recalling it.

Smaller children shouldnt be playing these violent games, yes. But think about it, older people buy it for the smaller children even if its rated M. So you cant blame the makers if its the parents buying it for the kids.

I like how he says may.


A similar topic about this had been made.

Should Violence in videogames be kept or held?

But there is a point between entertainment and just shock value. If you have heads flying off with blood spewing everywhere when you just shoot em, you might need to tone it down some.

Well some people think that the tortue scenes in Hostel are "a little much" but that doesn't seem to get any christians boycotting the movie. That's because movies have been around longer than Games and parents realize what "R" stands for. But somehow the word "MATURE -- FOR EXTREME GORE, BLOOD AND VIOLENCE, NUDITY, DRUG USE" just seems like a game for their children. Now to bring out the arguement I was going to say:
I got all this from an article you can read here. i'll take a few stuff from it and add my own spin.
First off the games don't make people "violent" they make them "aggresive" which is a tad different from "violent". Hitting me in the head with a newspaper will make me pretty aggresive real quick, it's not going to make me into a mass murderer. These games like "Grand Theft Auto" that apprently "train me to be a killer" is completely false. If I see in an FPS shooter like counter strike where a gun is fired, that doesn't mean I have the strenght to suddenly hold a desert eagle, aim perfectly, and pull the trigger without somehow killing myself. Not to mention all these incidents where kids were shooting people, here's a little question to Jack Thompson:
HOW DID THEY GET THE GUNS IN THE FIRST PLACE?!
Any parent who's dumb enough to tell their expermenting children at age 14-18 the combanation to their gun stash should be shot. Chances are if the parents are dumb enough to do that, they probably suck at raising thier kid or decided to beat the shiz out of them every day so much that they're in a near psychotic state.

But still, these games aren't mainstream violence. If anything it's the entire nation recovering from the Rap Ghetto era from 15 years ago. Chart:

(To find out where that chart is from click the link previously posted)

Look at that crime rate is at an all time low with the new GTA series coming out. There isn't really a connection between Violent Video Games and everyone killing each other. Also this has far gone past "Violence in Video Games" for Jack Thompson, now he just hates gamers themselves. Recently a fourm poster at www.metalgearsolid.org commited sucide. It's not sad enough, Jacko had to take a jump on the stupid doo doo head wagon and basically say that the reason he commited sucide was because he played games.

Luckily the crew responded to Jacko's letter but the point is that his death had nothing to do with him playing violent video games. He just wanted to get another stupid doo doo head remark. So let me try rapping this up.

1. If someone DOES kill someone over a violent video game, the problem started way before the game was even made.
2. It's mostly the parents fault for being such fooles and giving them games that are rated MATURE and are called GRAND THEFT AUTO (What did you think was going to be in the game?)
3. Jack Thompson's arguements are bias. He just hates video games themselves for all we know a Video Game raped him in an alleyway one day and now he's getting revenge.
4. THe crime rate HAS GONE DOWN while popularity in video games HAS GONE UP
5. Finally here is the most recent chart with a quote from the website:

"The FBI has just released its 2004 crime report. The results? The violent crime rate has further dropped 2.2% since 2003. The number of murders is down by 2.4%. And our violent youth? "As for trends in arrests of juveniles for violent crime, a comparison of 2004 data with those of 2003 indicated that the number of juveniles arrested for violent crimes declined 0.8 percent, 5.5 percent compared with 2000 data, and 30.9 percent compared with 1995 figures."

So the according to the FBI, the murder rate hit a new 40 year low in 2004. The best selling video game of 2004? Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. "

About your charts. Thompson will probably say that crime is decreasing a t a very fast level. Games are just slowing the rate of decrease down.

Anyway, look how many crimes are "related" to games. If you wanna go by his standards, which is if you own GTA, there have only been a few.

yes but it doesnt help the childrens behavior as they grow up. when you are young the things you see influence you on how you behave when you get older.

now imagine a kid that is given all of the porno gory and violent games and movies and compare him to a child that was risen normally. you will find a huge differnce.

BUT the falt is not on the games alone the parents also have a big factor on how thier offspring grow up. the games do not help. you blame the parents but wouldnt you think the child would be better if he didnt have a violent game?

But the only way they can get that violent video game, is through their parents, or anyone's parents. And if the parents are too retarded to read a label on a box that says "Grand Theft Auto" "Manhunt" "Bully" "The Warriors" do any of these names sound 10 and under safety? Don't blame the games blame the parents, games MIGHT make SOME people aggresive but it doesn't make every single person who's picked up a controller a mass murderer to be, or psychopath. Aggresion and teaching people to kill are two different things.

You lied about the no-link thing.

Jack Thompson is an attention whore

I started playing games at the age of 4 and violent ones at the age of 7. No joke, I got my PS1 for Christmas in 1995. I am fourteen now and I'm not messed up. If a child is messed up though... well, why do you think people blame video games? Parents don't want to take the responsability if their child being violent in anyway. Yeah, you may have a test on 100 kids that play violent games but when like 1 out of the 100 punches someone in class, some parents and people like Jack Thompson flip out.

We can't just accept that human beings are naturally violent, some more than others. So when something bad happens like the a murder that you can also do in Grand Theft Auto, we have to blame the games and not nature, nor society, nor real influences. We have to blame video games because we all know that since you can rip a person apart in God of War, you want to do it in real life.

Some of the games mentioned above do have a lot of violence, but they also have a storyline, not just mindless killing (though you cando that too ) I'm currently playing the Warriors and I love it, I'm into the movie and everything. Though I really don't feel like going out and mugging someone or stealing a car radio too much.

Things like this really bother me.

No, don't blame the kid's consious decision...blame the video game...don't blame the video game, blame the parents...don't blame the parents, blame society...

I'll admit, maybe video games did it to me, maybe not, it doesn't matter, it's a consious choice...there's a lot of times where I'd like to go beat the shiz out of people, but I don't. There's a lot of times where i'd like to go kill certain people, but I don't. Maybe I want to, but I don't, because there's obvious reasons why any human shouldn't do this...

If video games gave me the thought, who gives a shiz, it's still my choice. It's not like "DEEEEEEEEEEEH GTA3 IS K00L I WANNA BE LIK DAT GUY I MAD DAT JUMP IT WUZ AWWWWWSSUMMMMMMMMM IMA TRY WIT MOMZ CAR!!!"

No, not really.

You could go get the keys off the shelf and drive your mom's car over a bridge, but it's not a video game's fault. It's the person.

I hated him saying that the Sims2 should be rated adult, but I hated even more the alleged training of snipers on first person shooters. There is a BIG difference between keeping a gun steady, shifting your weight and holding your breath and keeping a control stick stationary and hitting a button.

Violent movies may be a source of crimes too. We should ban those too.

Hell, lets ban everything! Brave New World time, baby!

Jack Thompson is an idiot. I can't believe anyone actually takes him seriously between the outright lies, 2-year-old mentality, obvious logical errors and paranoia.

ASwell as his constant personal attack on gamers in general. I bet the average gamer has an IQ 30+ higher than his.