| I started typing out one of my usual entries, but then i realized how lazy i am. writing a new entry might tempt my brain to...work. so instead read the essay i (mostly phil) wrote last week.
Devon Fox
Vanessa Ballmer
English
October 24, 2005
Jack, the First Amendment Ripper
Hello, my name is Devon. I use to be a chronic gamer, reclusively playing video games for hours – and occasionally days – on end. I have played just about every violent video game you can imagine. I have dismembered children, bludgeoned the elderly, maimed woman, and countless other equally ethically intolerable acts. And worse - the weapon of choice might have been a mere screw driver. Will having played all of those violent games mean that I’ll grow up and follow through on those horrid acts? For argument's sake (and all probable reality), I believe I will not. Jack Thompson, a Miami attorney, on the other hand, does. In addition to resenting video games in general, Jack Thompson also opposes those who make and play them. He accuses them of inducing violence—especially in children. Not only does Thompson assert that will I go out and commit murder, but that I will go out on a ballistic murderous-rampage destroying all in my path. He is a figurehead amongst critics and anti-freedom groups, a sue-happy low-life form who hungers for expurgation and attention. He makes himself out to be a hypothetical shield against the violence of video games, but if he were true to his cause, he would better serve as a tangible shield against the juvenile gunfire that he is so ruthlessly trying to prevent. The following is a beautiful rant on the differing views of Jack Thompson, the electronic gaming industry, and me, a gamer, on the issue of video game violence.
For starters, those in favor of the censorship of video games (Jack Thompson) are plagued by confirmation bias. They proclaim, without hesitation, that studies suggest that violent games might cause increased levels of aggression. But they blatantly ignore and throw away the multitude of divergent studies, insinuated by the gaming industry, that have revealed that there aren’t any and there never has been an “acknowledged a link between virtual violence and the real thing” (Bradley). Instead, the censors use their false studies in a pathetic attempt to prove their own ideas, not the truth.
For example, In a recent study by the American Psychological Association, it was stated that “common sense dictates” (“blast video game violence”) that video games are the source of the children’s violent behavior. The study then went on to put the electronic gaming industry and gamers like me on the same moral level as the smoking industry and corporate executives who promote sex to minors. These studies are completely false and unabashedly biased in favor of the censors. And the low-blows to gamers and the industry in general were incredibly uncalled-for, let alone unfounded. The APA should not be allowed to publish such baseless experiments and in addition should revoke the inappropriate ones. “Common sense” cannot be arbitrarily labeled factual by an organization claiming to use the scientific method. Thompson wants video games to cause violence, so he can attack the game makers with “the game made me do it,” while representing delinquent clients in court. He’s willing to censor my media for money.
Take the Devin Moore case for instance. Officer Arnold Strickland had arrested:
“Devin Moore on suspicion of stealing a car. Moore had no criminal history and was cooperative as Strickland booked him inside the Fayette Police Station. Then suddenly, inexplicably, Moore snapped. This is where it happened according to Devin Moore's own statement, he lunged at Officer Arnold Strickland, grabbing his .40-caliber Glock automatic and shot Strickland twice, once in the head. Officer James Crump heard the shots and came running. Moore met him about here in the hallway and fired three shots into Crump. One of those shots was in the head. He kept walking down the hallway towards the door of the emergency dispatcher. Once here, he turned and fired five shots into Ace Mealer. Again, one of those shots was in the head. Along the way, Moore had grabbed a set of car keys. He went out the door to the parking lot, jumped into a police cruiser and took off. It all took less than a minute, and three men were dead” (Bradley).
Devin Moore is an 18-year-old, who has played fairly large amounts of ‘Grand Theft Auto,’ a popular, but rather violent game. Jack Thompson has chosen to be the attorney representing Moore—we all knew he would leap on a case like this. His defense is that “Devin Moore was, in effect, trained to do what he did. He was given a murder simulator” (Bradley).
Doug Lowenstein, who represents the electronic gaming industry in the United States, stated on a nationally televised 60 Minutes interview in response to Jack’s criticism of violent games, “if people have a criminal mind, it's not because they're getting their ideas from the video games. There's something much more deeply wrong with the individual, and it's not the game that's the problem” (Bradley). And that, yes, “Devin Moore [did have] a profoundly troubled upbringing” (Bradley). Thompson, who was also present at the broadcast, ignored these statements. He simply refuses to acknowledge the palpable evidence that he is wrong, so that he may continue his mission to take down the entire industry.
Look Jack, if you truly believe that video games can actually cause unintentional violent behavior, then don’t you think a sadistic gamer, angry at the bowdlerization of his/her games by your hands, would’ve come along by now and brutally murdered you only to allege that video games were the culprit. Yes, that would be terribly ironic. But be that as it may, it goes to show my point that, no, video games cannot be used as an excuse for murder. You, my little friend with your incurable thrust for a law-suit pay-off, are trying to use video games to get away with murder.
Later in the interview, and still in retaliation to our favorite Miami lawyer, Lowenstein said, “My job is to defend the right of people in this industry to create the products that they want to create. That's free expression” (Bradley). By winning this case, Thompson hopes to have games altered or removed from the market. He completely disregards the hard work the programmers put into making games to earn a pay-check. Without the games, they’re actors without movies. He also disregards the programmers’ right to free speech, which should allow them to make any game, regardless of content.
This man is sick; he desires only to fuel his relentless appetite for censorship. And I can only draw one simple conclusion from his actions and words: Jack Thompson hates the creative freedom of the programmers. He is a censorship juggernaut who is fighting against the basic rights given to us in the Constitution.
Jack Thompson fails to see this logic and for the last twenty years has been out on a mission to censor the entire body that contradicts his misguided ideology. He openly opposes the freedoms of the First Amendment. On his website (which contains many silly grammatical errors; that alone should tip off wary readers), stopkill.com, he proudly proclaims that he was nominated “censor of the year” (“Welcome to Stopkill.com”).
Unlike Jack’s wild accusations, here’s some credible evidence on the effects of violent gaming. In 2004, psychologist William Kronenberger found “that when playing a violent video game, children with a diagnosis of disruptive behavior disorder had less brain activity in the frontal lobes of their brain than did children who had no history of chronic violent behavior” (Healy). That is to say, for those who act out violent behavior, it is not due to the game itself, but to the gamers’ background and environment. Unlike the study by the APA, this study isn’t biased—it’s hard to lie on a brain scan.
For example, if a psychotic little 6-year-old plays a vicious game and proceeds to destroy furniture and harass small animals, it is not the game that caused him to be the way he is. He is most likely a troubled child, possibly with a lack of parenting to boot, and regardless to the lawsuit his parents are filing-out, he cannot blame his actions on video games. Despite what Thompson might say, video games did not give birth to rosemary’s baby. Jack Thompson did.
Thompson and many other critics from the older generations are much too traditional, naïve, and inconsiderate of new ideas. They live in perpetual fear of the changes in society that the new generations are inducing. To them, the electronic gaming industry is insulting and its video games are offensive and cause malevolence. Thompson and his groupies view us, gamers, as libelous and out of control, and so they’re using the make-believe reality to find a scapegoat. But they’ve forgotten that once upon a time to them, their beloved comic books were once considered the enemy and the focus of artistic restriction. “[in the 1950’s] comic books were blamed for juvenile delinquency, and I think what you really have here is very much the same phenomenon playing itself out again with a new medium” (Bradley).
In my opinion, always objecting to the industry’s freedom of speech is just a giant popularity stunt to Jack Thompson. If for no other reason, there’s no-way a human could be as big an idiot as Jack portrays himself to be. He recently wrote a letter to the public and in it “he proposes that if someone [will] ‘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” (“Freedom of Speech”). He clearly did not think this one out, since nobody is going to make a game for him. The purpose of this man’s life is to hate and persecute programmers and now he’s asking them to work under him? As Tim Buckley, a gamer and web-comic artist of Ctrl-Alt-Delete so adequately put it, “why would a video game company spend the millions of dollars it takes to design, develop, produce and market a video game, when they could just donate the ten grand themselves and be done with it? Why don't you offer something that would actually motivate these companies, such as offering to throw yourself off a cliff?” (Buckley). Even if he does find a group of programmers who are willing to make his game, it’ll only be as a joke. So you and I can rest assured that there’ll be a secret code to turn the character into Jack Thompson in heart shaped-underwear. Buy as many copies as you possibly can before Jack sues the makers ten times what he paid them!
The first amendment to our Constitution gives us many rights. Foremost amongst those liberties is our right to free speech, which includes the right for you and me to play all the sickeningly violent and pornographic video games that our little hearts desire. The amendment also clearly states that there shall never be any law that infringes upon said liberty. That is ironic since today censorship is succeeding in modifying, reducing, and/or simply blocking our entertainment. Censorship of any type is a direct violation of the First Amendment! Jack Thompson worships censorship, and proudly wears his “badge of courage” (“welcome to stopkill.com”) for his Censor of the Year nomination. He doesn’t just stand against my games, but our freedoms!
Yes, I do understand that not all censorship is bad, but a line must be draw. I, along with the vast majority, agree that minors should not watch pornographic material. That is why I believe that censorship should aim to protect children, who are not yet mature enough to make all their own decisions, and not to patronize responsible adults. And even then it should be the child’s parent’s who will decide what is acceptable for the youth to be exposed to, not the government or some gross lawyer from Miami. Any censorship what-so-ever for adults is absolutely unacceptable. The pornography industry isn’t censored, so why should the video game industry be?
Violence and sex in video games represent the gaming industry’s (and its programmer’s) right to free speech. Jack Thompson on the other hand represents everything that opposes freedom. So again as Tim Buckley, so adequately put it, “not even being skullfucked by a cinderblock is going to knock any sense into this guy” (Buckley). |
