The Jack Thompson Chronicles

(Apologies for heavy linkage, but this man is just everywhere!)

I'm assuming everyone who has not lived in China for the past year has a few clues who Jack Thompson is. After stepping into the spotlight by acting as attorney for a murder which involved the violent Rockstar game Manhunt (1,2), he took the world by storm. And by 'took the world', I mean 'left everyone rolling on the floor with laughter', and by 'by storm', I mean 'pointing and laughing'. I mean, this man seems to think computer games are the spawn of Satan, including The Sims! Just look at this (non)interview with the man JT. If the quote 'i’m too busy destroying best buy and rockstar' is genuine, this man scares me.

Not surprisingly, his opinions of ESA, Take Two, Rockstar Games, GTA: San Andreas, and the Hot Coffee mod are not very high. He manages to combine poorly constructed arguments with vicious personal attacks at everyone who disagrees with him, and then fails to see why no one takes him seriously or doesn't want to have to do anything with him.

The fun part actually started when Jack Thompson made a proposal for a violent game himself, challenging any game company to create it. The game itself involved a father avenging his murdered son (murdered by someone who played too many violent games) by murdering everyone from 'Take This', their laywers, 'GameWerks' for creating and publishing the game, as well as Best Buy, Circuit City, Target and Wal-Mart, because they distributed it. The final part involves making a massacre out of E3, since this is 'the Super Bowl of the video game industry', and of course all computer game creators deserve to die.
Jack Thompsons offered $10,000 for charity if any game company would create, manufacture and distribute this game in 2006.

Though originally everyone just made fun of this, and it wasn't expected that anyone would make a game out of this (not because it was too violent, but because game companies don't normally accept game proposals from individuals), it WAS. A mod has been created for, ironically, GTA: San Andreas called 'Defamation of Character: A Jack Thompson Murder Simulator'. You gotta love it.
So what did Jack Thompson do? Yep, you guessed it: he said he was only kidding. So Penny-Arcade, ever the vigilantes they are, donated the $10,000 themselves, in Jack Thompson's name. His response? He tried to get them shut down and arrested by faxing the local police station a letter claiming Penny-Arcade harrassed him! (scroll down on the above link, there's more about that)

On a side note, Jack T also didn't like VG Cats, an online comic about gaming (yes, another one, but this one features cats!). There is an entire page filled with email conversations between Jack Thompson and Scott Ramsoomair (author of the VG Cats comic), which was set up shortly after Scott made fun of Jack, and JT CC'ed Scott on some anti-game propaganda (he seems to do this a lot, CC'ing random people on his emails). It's very surreal to see a lawyer degrade to personal attacks in his emails so fast that your head spins.
Scott's comic is funny, and most of the time pure genius, though sometimes references some pretty old games, but most of all it does not promote violence at all - it's just parody.

It seems this concept is lost on Jack Thompson. Which is why he will also hate the following: The 'I hate Jack Thompson' T-shirt.
If only we could have a tv show about the daily adventures of Jacky T, it would be funnier than Chappelle's Show.

On a final note, check out Jack Thompson's homepage, stopkill.com. Yes, that is his homepage. Seriously. I'd make a comment about 1995 being here to ask for its website design style back, but someone would probably post a comment saying 1980 is here, asking for its stupid joke back.

[Nov 25, 2005] Update! After arguing his (retarded, as usual) case too aggressively, Jack Thompson has been banned from practicing law in Alabama! Though JT is from Florida, this is funny nonetheless.