Jack Thompson Rescinds Offer 430
Goalmaster3000 writes to tell us Joystiq.com is reporting that Jack Thompson has rescinded his offer of a $10,000 donation to charity if a video game were made to fit his model. Recently a group of GTA modders cooked up a scenario to fit the bill but apparently Thompson is claiming that his piece 'A Modest Video Game Proposal' was intended as satire that the video game community was not bright enough to grasp. Perhaps Thompson was just afraid he was going to have to sue himself? Update: 10/17 20:02 GMT by SM: It appears that the Penny Arcade crew has taken the next step by donating the promised $10,000... in Jack Thompson's name.
Ugh (Score:5, Interesting)
-Jesse
This man is a moron (Score:5, Interesting)
Thompson kept trying to weave out of the argument, and eventually ended up calling him names, telling him to grow up because he was just a pathetic child, and other crap unbecoming of an attorney. The kid completely won the argument by not only proving that gamers were not just idiotic 14-year-old kids, but also because Thompson resorted to mere name-calling when he couldn't win his argument.
What a fucking moron.
Jack is an interesting name... (Score:5, Interesting)
No, I don't think very young people should be playing violent videogames all day, every day but it is not Jack's problem. It is not the government's problem. It is a PARENTAL problem and should be dealt with as such. Parents should take fracking responsibility for raising their children and when their children become delusional, homicidal maniacs they should CONTINUE to take responsibility since it was THEIR parenting techniques that helped little Johnny become what he is today. It takes all of 5 to 15 minutes out of your hectic day to check in on what your child is playing, watching, or reading and if he/she is constantly going over to Billy's or Sandy's house then, as a parent, you had better damn well trust that Billy's Mom and Dad are raising their child like you are raising yours so that your philosophies match (ie. so that little Johhny doesn't run over to Billy's house to play GTA: San Andreas every day because Billy's parents don't give a shit what Billy plays).
Sorry for the rant but I'm past the point of believing the crap about it takes a village to raise a child. How about it takes a concerned parent (single or plural) to raise a child. If your job takes away too much of your parenting time then perhaps you should do without the new BMW and Lexus in the driveway and spend more time with your child, less with your paycheck -- eh?
Depends on Performance (Score:5, Interesting)
First, if you complete the contract first and give sufficient notification of such, and it is prior to his unilateral revocation, you can argue that he breached the contract. As the first person across the line, you are typically entitled to the reward. Breach of that may entitle you to estop the contract. In other words, entitlement to fulfillment of his promise.
Second, if you say that you relied on his contract and had sufficient reason to believe that the contract would be fulfilled (i.e. there is precedent for this type of contract, e.g. auctions for services to be rendered; or it would be unreasonable economic policy to not enforce payment because your reliance on his statement was reasonable and it would be poor form to permit his type of statement when it incurs your type of economically inefficient reliance), you might be able to sue for your costs, your lost opportunity, or his benefit.
Tycho (Score:5, Interesting)
"Of course, he's not serious. Machination is too glorified a word for what he's doing. Ruse would make it seem debonair. He's essentially holding money hostage from charity, and if someone did make it, even as a joke, he would say that it didn't conform to his "design." This sort of thing is usually called a shell-game."
http://www.penny-arcade.com/news.php?date=2005-10
stop feeding him (Score:2, Interesting)
as great as it is to see penny arcade bothering the sad old dirtbag, he would be much more provoked if no one gave a crap what he said. everyone knows he's an idiot, so lets let this old man die lonely and ignored
I have to wonder (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean, the feeble "it's satire... really" identifier in the title doesn't change the fact that what follows is several pages of Mr. Thompson very personally fantasizing about violently killing his enemies. And I think the feeble attempts to pretend he was writing satire would mean even less from a legal perspective. Is "gotcha... it was just a joke!" a recognized defense in contract law?
I mean, I am not a lawyer, but then, Jack Thompson appears to only be a lawyer in the most superficial sense. So I would be very curious to see whether Thompson has stumbled into some kind of self-constructed legal trap by putting the offer to donate to charity into his work of "satire". If you post a public notice promising to donate $10,000 to charity if someone does thing X, are you in any way committing to this? Like, those public notices saying "$1000 reward for information leading to the capture of the kidnapper of Media Heartthrob". Are those public notices legally binding to the person who put them up? If so, I'd be very, very interested to see what happens if that group of GTA modders, or the people working on the sprite flash game [derekyu.com], actually complete something. Since both of those games entered production before Thompson issued his retraction, is there any chance they could go to court and try to claim Thompson's offer legally binding or his retraction legally invalid?
Poster has it wrong (Score:2, Interesting)
Gaming companies need to seriously address the issues Thompson brings up. I find particularly pursuasive his analogy to cigarette advertisements as well as the real world examples that have been coming up for the last seven years or so.
Re:News Flash: Jack gone postal (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally, I still think the Postal2 team could have made his game and sold millions on it because everyone would accept it as a joke like the rest of thier work. People aren't supposed to take games this seriously, and even one of the institutes he frequently cites for research told him to stop referencing them in every way because he distorts thier studies, and gives them a bad name.
Re:Ugh (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Ugh (Score:3, Interesting)
As a non-lawyer, I wonder if you can sue to break a contract because your intent wasn't to honor the contract, but to make a satrical point. I doubt it.
If you enter a contract without intent to deliver, there's a host of laws you violate. Good thing that his contract was with the "public" in general, as that's the least likely group to sue for grievences, and the least likely to be defended under these circumstances.
Re:What a prick. (Score:3, Interesting)
The PA guys really know how to cut someone down with class. Help kids and drive Jack Thompson insane all in one fell-swoop. I wonder about what he's going to threaten to sue now.
PA's taken care of it. (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's the quote from the PA site: "You know what, Jack? We're going to be the men you're not. You said that your insulting, illusory ten thousand dollars would go to the charity of Paul Eibler's choice. We've got a good guess that he'd direct your nonexistant largesse toward The Entertainment Software Association Foundation, a body that has raised over six point seven million dollars over the last eight years. We've just made the donation you never would, and never meant to. Ten thousand dollars' worth. And we made it in your name.
Re:Minor Corrections. (Score:5, Interesting)
Check out the transcripts of emails between Jackie T. and Scott from VG Cats. It's even worse.
If this guy wants to play with fire, I suggest somebody put up a site to publish all of Jack's threats and verbal abuse (plus nonsense) and see if he gets institutionalized. I seriously think that man is pathologically violent.
Re:STOP GIVING THIS GUY FREE PRESS. (Score:3, Interesting)
I know that I just posted about not posting unless necessary, but I need to correct this (that, and we've already cracked the 100 comment marker.)
There is already enough information available to discredit Jack Thompson [wikipedia.org]. When you need to, just mention that this is the same guy that requested the creation of a violent video game coupled with what appeared to be a straight donation to charity - and then renegged claiming satire. In fact, there wasn't even a thing indicating that there was satire involved: the game itself, even though the story line was poor, was plausable (and counter-productive to its cause, since it casts the anti-game advocate as a insane maniac), as was the alleged donation of ($10 000).
Even I could make a better satire myself - it involves making the donation sum ridiculous ($10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 plus 33+1/3 cents) so that it couldn't possible be legit under normal contract law, and eventually ends in having the protagonist beating himself up for creating the game that he created. While it still doesn't meet the requirements, it is a much better attempt.
The original "satire" can be twisted easily, as there is no good light that can be cast upon this - this is the equivalent of political suicide, as there is no damage control that can be performed to save face (aside from making that donation).
Jack is already discredited - all that's needed is to point to this incident in either a "commitioning violent games = supporting violent games", or as a "reneg on donation promise for no good reason". The legal departments from the ESA and other lobby groups have already countered similar laws in other states - they can easily take care of one nutcase that has not famous for his career success-rate (political, or legal).
I say again: Thompson is not a threat. There is no need to keep posting comments, or to keep posting articles about him on Slashdot. If you see a story about him in the mainstream media, feel free to post once (making sure that content is not excessivly repeated.) Other than that, the "Don't feed the troll" rule applies.
Very strange man... (Score:5, Interesting)
When all this fuss kicked off over the last few weeks, I read a bit of what he has to say. And to be honest, reading what he says to people in private correspondance (and to an extent in his public statements) you get the impression that he's a rabid loon. Then on Penny Arcade, I spotted a link to an audio interview [chatterboxgameshow.com] some guys did with him. I downloaded and had a listen. And to give the man some credit, he comes across much better in person. I'm much less surprised that he gets the attention he does, having listened to him - he comes across as a slightly opinionated but earnest and frank concerned guy, worried about the effect games have on kids and teenagers. At least, he does initially.
After a while though, when he's gone past the fairly logical point of discussing M-rated game sales to minors with someone who agrees with him, he starts getting a bit out there. EA in cahoots with the porn industry, deliberately aiming for them to make porno skins for The Sims? Please. Thing is, because he *seems* reasonable, people who don't know too much about games probably think he *is* reasonable. And in small doses, for short periods of time, he probably is. But disagree too much, scratch the surface of his arguments, and things suddenly get a lot stranger...
Re:I have to wonder (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I have to wonder (Score:3, Interesting)
And besides, the game was created. So, the withdrawal defense doesn't work. The offeror made an offer which could be accepted by performance, the performance was made. Now, there are some situations where I could foresee holding him legally responsible. Imagine this scenario: instead of saying "I will donate to charity x amount if someone creates y," (besides which you would have 3rd party beneficiary problems) he says "I will pay x amount to whoever creates this game for me." (direct contractual privity with whomever takes up the challenge) This is not charity, but rather a promise to pay money for performance of an action (create y) for which he could be held legally liable (presuming he doesn't withdraw prior to completion of performance, and he STILL might liable on a promissory estoppel or detrimental reliance theory). Then, if there is a caveat "You must donate the money to charity" the caveat would be unenforceable for the reasons given above, but the initial term of handing over the money might still be enforceable (of course, the court would then look at whether this transaction was essentially a charitable donation, or whether it was a contract for services, with a single unenforceable clause - in other words severability).
Talk about a law school exam in the making. Sheesh.
Re:Contact him (Score:5, Interesting)
Jack is a very fearful man... (Score:3, Interesting)
He pictures the gamers of the world as these horrible violent people that might shoot him or his family at any time, and so he wants to stop it. He imagines that we're all violent and that video games made us this way. He's afraid, so he strikes out. Like a cornered dog.
But what he doesnt seem to get is that, yeah, there are violent people, and yeah there are gamers, and yeah there are a few gamers that are also violent, but they are the VAST MINORITY. Most gamers are peaceful! It's like saying "HEY, all these murderers had something in common. They ate sandwiches. Sandwiches make you murder!"
Someone should draw him a venn diagram...
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Ugh (Score:4, Interesting)
If only the money was satirical [joystiq.com].
I think it would be hilarious if Rockstar would release the mod. Even with no fanfare as a download from their site, it would be a hilarious rebuttal. It seems that with this man logic doesn't work. He is convinced gamers are all like this kid [sikvid.com].
Agreed: Olympic training & Blink (Score:5, Interesting)
I think that in their rush to defend an anything-goes mentality, other posters in this thread overlook obvious connections:
1. Olympic and all world-class athletes use visualization as a part of their training. They imagine themselves doing their sport in as vivid a detail as they can. For example, a weight lifter imagines walking up to the weights, feeling the bar, gripping it, heaving it upwards, etc, etc. They imagine the perfect performance again and again, and it helps to shape their reactions to achieve it.
Your brain does not know the difference between real and imagined. That's why you can get angry "just thinking about that jerk that cut you off this morning". Obviously, higher-level functions allow us to reason and realize "it's just a memory/game" but our instincts and reflexes may not be so lucky.
2. Read Blink and see how what we view affects how we act. In particular, the experiment where people were primed (unknowingly) to be either rude or polite and how unbelievably strong the effect was. The experimenters expected noticable but minor differences and found HUGE differences in reaction that astonished them.
In light of that, someone who spends HOURS trying to grief others and demolish them (or get steamrolled themselves) in vicious ways will, as the parent comment says, definitely be more likely to be jerks. Or worse. And that's the difference, say between sports and video games: you cannot demolish 20 opposing basketball teams in a long night of playing. You can easily do this in video games, including some of my favorites.
Again, I'm not going to kill someone because I play violent games. But please don't ignore obvious and deep issues to say that video games (or porn, or whatever) have nothing to do with anything. (Read Blink's description of gender and racial biases that are very unconscious but can be accurately measured and can be affected by our experiences and then think about how games or porn present various different classes/professions/races/genders and imagine how being "primed" in this way would affect attitudes and interactions, even if they never were consciously accepted and acted upon in open ways.)
Kill two birds with one stone.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Best case scenario: (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Media: what's good for me? (Score:2, Interesting)
I find whether I am in a good or bad mood afterwards depends more on whether I thought I have done well or not. And I find a certain release from the stresses of the day - rather than yell at someone I care about, or be snapish, I like to play a 30-min session, and I feel more relaxed, like some of the stress has been burned off; and on rainy days, easier to do than jogging for a 1/2 hr.
Of course, I'm an adult, and I don't have kids. So my perspective is a bit different. But my point is that the SAME game will affect DIFFERENT people DIFFERENTLY. Who should then determine which games are acceptable and which games are not? It seems that, as with many things, it should be left to the individual. You choose not to play UT, because you don't like how it makes you feel, I choose to play UT because I like how it makes me feel. I don't think you can universally check off a game as being in the "This is a Not-Good-For-You, mean feeling inducing" category for all people.
And Monty Python STILL rocks.
Re:Minor Corrections. (Score:3, Interesting)
I think we should make a domain to counter his www.stopkill.com
We'll make www.stopjack.com
Okay, now did I leave that soapbox...?