Mr. Thompson, You Don't Know Jack!

Mr. Thompson, You Don’t Know Jack!

“Murder simulators are not constitutionally protected speech. They’re not even speech. They’re dangerous physical appliances that teach a kid how to kill efficiently and to love it.”- Jack Thompson

The things wrong with this quote are…. Well pretty much all of it is wrong. First of all to categorize all video games as murder simulators is extremely naïve. There are very few games I would consider murder simulators, although in his defense most of the games he is attacking/attempting to sue are the ones I would see as that. But regardless of that he is stereotyping games. According to the ESRB ratings system, out of the 14,786 games they have rated 7,575 have some form of violence in them. That is ~51.2% of games, barely over half. If you don’t include the mild, cartoon, or fantasy violence the amount of games with violence decreases to 3309 games, ~22.38% of all games. The amount of games with intense violence, games that most of which I would understand calling “murder simulators,” is only 233, less than 1.6% of all games. To call all games “murder simulators” is a horrible stereotype.
So if you replace “murder simulators” with video games, he is claiming video games are not “constitutionally protected speech.” Well that is arguable. If movies are “constitutionally protected speech” then video games are also. It’s not uncommon also to find a game with a plot line with some sort of lesson in it (Assassin’s Creed anyone?)
Continuing along this quote to say that video games are “dangerous physical appliances that teach a kid how to kill efficiently and to love it” is just ridiculous. I don’t need to state again the percentages of games with violence, but that’s certainly a fair argument to this claim. But I think the biggest fact that disproves this is that video games do not teach kids how or where to obtain weapons, legally or illegally, and everyone knows how to fire a gun, and removing video games from the world will not change that. Movies and TV promote that just as much if not more than video games do.
The last part of this outrageous quote says that video games teach kids to love to kill. I’m astonished that anyone would make this claim. I’m seriously sitting here thinking how to respond to that it is such a horrible claim. The only thing I come up with at first is “….What!?” Mr. Thompson also accuses the DualShock system in the PlayStation controllers “gives you a pleasurable buzz back into your hands with each kill.” That is not at all the purpose of rumble features in video games nor what they accomplish. The rumble feature is meant to immerse gamers further into a realistic setting where they can feel the action or motion around them. I do not know of a single game that makes the controller rumble when you get a kill.
But going back to the main topic of this part of the blog, video games most certainly do not teach kids to love to kill. Mr. Thompson says “In every school shooting, we find that kids who pull the trigger are video gamers.” Time for more statistics! Out of all kids in America between the age of 7-18, 79% play video games on a regular basis, with the average American child playing 8 hours a week. So that means that roughly 4 out of 5 kids are going to be gamers, that means 4 out of 5 school shooters are going to be gamers as well. Now when you take gender into effect, 90% of boys play video games. I haven’t heard of any school shootings where it was a girl, but it may have happened. Regardless, it makes sense that it would be a boy who does a school shooting because male nature makes us aggressive while female nature makes them more nurturing. So if males commit almost all school shootings, that means 9 out of 10 school shooters are going to be gamers.
Going further into this topic of forming a love for killing, Mr. Thompson says that video games are psychological conditioning to teach how to kill without realizing the consequences and reality of ending a life. This is not true at all. I think everyone can distinguish the difference between ending a fictional, animated, and virtual life and actually killing someone. It’s not like a gamer is going to kill someone and think “oh they’ll just respawn in 3 seconds, no problem.” And if they do think that, gaming isn’t their problem, mental stability is. Really when it boils down to the root of it that’s the cause of these school shooting scenarios, mental stability. And as far as I know there is no video game that can degrade mental stability.
Now going beyond this quote and looking at other things that are having much more of an effect on youth than Mr. Thompson claims video games are having, drugs. In the year 2006, 2.7% of 12 graders had used steroids. Does this mean we should get rid of organized sports? Likewise, the percentage of gamers who commit violent crimes is far below than that, and there is not even solid proof that they are what cause the kids to do this.
So now that I’ve taken an entire page and a half to put to shame Jack Thompson, I think it’s only fair that I point out both sides of the story and point out things he does right… this is going to be hard. Mr. Thompson’s intentions are good; I don’t see how what he’s doing could have a negative or self-centered motive. Also I personally do not approve of Ao games, or any of the GTA games. I think that the GTA games are trash. Seriously, is it necessary for there to be a game where we can chop up a hooker with a chainsaw? No, not at all. But Rockstar has a right to make that game and if people want they also have a right to buy and enjoy that game as long as they are mature enough for it. I also agree (to somewhat of an extent) that young minds are impressionable and can easily have their morals watered down, and video games might be a source for this, but that’s why we have the ESRB ratings. It’s not the developer’s fault for a kid playing these games, it’s the parents who bought the game for the kid or the idiot retailer who sold it to them.
In the end Jack Thompson needs to shut up and stop treating gamers and game developers like they are brain dead demons and start putting his time to better and more effective uses.

Here are some great links:
8 myths about gaming debunked
Teen steroid use statistics
Jack Thompson’s wikipedia page.


Also, Jack Thompson has lots of ridiculous quotes and I’ll make short blogs now and then with these quotes. Here’s an example of one;

“I serve the Lord Jesus Christ, and you hate me because the world first hated Him. I follow the Creator of the Universe."-Jack Thompson
We don’t hate you because you’re religious. We hate you because you are more ignorant than you accuse us gamers of being.