gT Interviews JT, Mostly about GP

Alright now that I have some coffee in me I can give a little bit more of a reply.


Firstly, people stop getting so insulted by whatever GameTwat is saying about us! The site is named gameTWAT. That should give a good indication of what you can expect from the site. You insult yourselves by being insulted by GameTwat. Come on, most of you are too good for that.

Now we move onto Jack's bullshit.


"an you sum up nice and succinctly what your problem with Video Games has been over the years?

Surely, and glad you asked, because most folks state what my position is and harpoon me for their fictions. I only oppose the sale of mature and adult games to kids at ages below the game rating. That’s it."


I would like to believe that Jack. I truly would. But as the old adage goes, actions speak louder than words. And all of your actions have pointed to one thing and one things alone, total banning of mature games to all consumers. Or did you honestly think if you would have had Bully declared a public nuisance that adults would still be able to legally obtain it?

"In this country, Grand Theft Auto games have been sold to kids as young as ten. My son, who did a sting with me, proved it, as has the US Federal Trade Commission over and over and over again."

Actually the Federal Trade Commission has shown a drastic decline in the sale of M-Rated games to children.

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2006/03/videogameshop.shtm

As you can see in 2005 underage buyers were successful only 45% of the time in comparison to 85% in 2000.

Now compare that to an industry in which is receiving comparatively little pressure, the movie industry.

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2007/04/marketingviolence.shtm

In there you will see that in 2006 that minors were able to obtain an R rated movie 71% of the time. And you will also notice an explicit CD 76% of the time. Now which industry isn't pulling their weight again?

"The problem with this is that the age rating is clearly an admission by the industry that an adult game is potentially harmful to, let’s say, a 12-year-old."

So would you also say that an R rated movie is also harmful to children? And if so Jack why don't you go after them next. They are also a voluntary system with no force of law AND are more easily obtained by minors than video games.

"merican Psychological Association has found that hyper-violent, “Mature-rated” games played by teen boys, young teens, leads to increased aggression. Brain scan studies at Harvard literally prove, visually, why this is true. The games are processed in a different part of the brain in kids, and it is the part that leads to copycatting. Take a look at the following Allstate Insurance ad recently run in major American newspapers. It gets at the same thing.

Game brain processing in teens does not connect to the frontal lobes. It’s a bit complicated, but every parent knows that kids copycat what they see and practice."

Once again demonizing of the normal, healthy human emotion known as aggression. Yes Jack games may increase aggression, peewee football increases aggression, a rousing game of chess increases aggression. You yourself are an aggressive fuck. But all aggression doesn't lead to violence.


"What of the accusation that the American Psychological Association actually doesn’t say that whatsoever, that you’re simply twisting their words? That what the APA actually says is that there’s no causal link between games and violence?

That’s absolutely false. Go read the report. It doesn’t say there is a correlation. It says there is causation. One of the psychologists on the APA panel who issued that report is one of our experts in the Alabama case. He confirms that the APA found causation.

The head of the panel, interviewed even by the head e-tard at GP, confirmed its causation, not mere correlation that they found between increased aggression and gameplay. I have no earthly idea where you got the notion that the APA said otherwise. Please read the report rather than what gamers say the report says. Here is what it says, at http://www.apa.org/releases/violentvideoC05.html"


That study mentioned aggression, not violence. And it definitely didn't mention anything about someone shooting up a school. Please make smaller leaps of logic, we don't want you hurting yourself.

"Do you feel you get mis-represented in gaming media (not just GamePolitics)?

Oh, surely. That’s Dennis McCauley’s plan. He demonizes me and makes money doing so. If you check the “news” articles (there is one up there right now about my alleged “contempt of court” problem, there will be hundreds of posts to those stories just because I’m in them."


Oh please. Start taking some personal responsibility Jack. The person making you look bad is you. Lets look at some of your quotes.

'EGM: You once compared Doug Lowenstein, president of the Entertainment Software Association, to Saddam Hussein.
JT: If I did, I want to apologize to Saddam Hussein. Doug is a propagandist to whom the facts don't matter.' "

"The Bible doesn't promote killing innocent people, Grand Theft Auto does. Islam does. Islam promotes the killing of innocent people. The Quran requires the infidel, whether Jew or Christian, to be killed. ... That's a core essence of the religion. ... Muhammad was a pirate who killed infidels and who advocated the killing of infidels. Not a nice guy. Osama bin Laden is in keeping with his fine tradition."

"Any letter from a video gamer like you would deepen his concern. Are you actually so confused that you think gamers have any influence on anyone. Gamers are considered by normal people to be cretins. Get used to it."

"I love the smell of burning gamers in the morning."

"Why don't you go buy a suicide game, practice that, and get real good at it."

"I would extend my condolences to you on your loss of consciousness, but you're a gamer, and gamer, by definition, lost all sentient being status upon the purchase of GTA. Hooah! "

Well I could continue posting on and on, but you get the drift. So you are saying that without Dennis "demonizing" you, after saying all that bullshit that we would like you? How fucking delusional are you? The person who makes Jack look bad is Jack.

"The more he demonizes and misrepresents my position, the more his lemming-like gamer robots go crazy posting their reiterations of his propaganda. McCauley is not a journalist. He’s an industry lapdog. He gave up any and all pretense at being a journalist when he signed on with industry propagandist and lobbyist ECA."

Entertainment CONSUMERS association. Consumers aren't the industry, they are the customers. I know it is a lot of letters for you, but do try to keep up.

"What is he does is akin to being a “journalist” about the Presidential race and being on the payroll of Senator McCain. McCauley even filed a Bar complaint against me to shut me down and he refused to tell his readers aobut his conflict of interest in filing the complaint. Pathetic.

He’s a tool of the industry, and anyone other than his sycophantic readers knows it."

If Dennis is not a real journalist then you would not send him stories, end of discussion. You always say how moot this site is but still you spend so much damn time here. Its sad. So either you do think this is a news outlet and hope to somehow get your point across, or the other running theory is that you have a homosexual attraction to Dennis.

"I’m all for virtual reality and the good it can do. But when industry tools suggest that playing GTA for five hours a day does not desensitize you to violence (as well as not letting you do more productive things, since time is the stuff of which life is made), then they need to be shipped off to Mongolia where they have no electricity to “get a life.”

I would like you to look here, namely at section 8: http://www.pbs.org/kcts/videogamerevolution/impact/myths.html

Primates are able to deferentiate between real violence and pretend violence, at yet you say that humans are unable to do the same thing. I have played just about every violent game under the sun, and yet I still get squeamish at the sight of blood. Telling me that I'm desensitized is a total joke.

Also I would like to point you here: http://www.mongolianembassy.us/images/picts_capital_001.jpg

That is mongolia. You might notice something we in America like to call street lights. Street lights are powered with electricity.


"They’re people who have no idea what is really going on in the world. They care almost nothing about anything other than themselves and their petty concerns. They do not put the good of others ahead of their own narrow interests, because they are all about what they want to do, not what should be done for others.

GP really ought to stand for Godless Pissants."

And yet you never seem to be able to counter our arguments. Sad.


"Absolutely. It’s a free society. But that does not mean adults are free to sell adult games to other people’s children with no parents in sight. See, that’s the big industry lie. They say they want parents to make these decisions, and then they defend in courtrooms their “right” to sell mature and adult games to 12-year-olds whose parents are not there. It is a total lie and fraud to suggest this is about denying adults their right to buy games."

Wrong. All the systems now come with parental controls. They tools are there, if parents choose not to use them then tough shit. The industry isn't going to raise your children for you.

"Tell that to the FBI and the Secret Service who have found otherwise, as have the heads of major American health care organizations like the American Medical Association. We have almost as many guns as people over here. The guns aren’t going to be confiscated, so we have to do something about the stimuli to use them. President Clinton figured it out. He said just that after Columbine."

Ah, so games wouldn't be used to harm others without a video game as a stimuli. So what game did John Wilkes Booth play?

"But there are more School Shootings in America than the rest of the world combined. I’ll be honest: I’ve made up that rather-spurious ’statistic’, but it certainly feels like that. How do you account for the fact that every country in Europe has videogames, and a mere percentage of the school shootings?

Because we have more guns. Kind of simple."

That makes no sense. Just because we have more guns does not mean that they aren't accessible to the minors of the other countries. You admitted that these countries do have guns, albeit in smaller quantities and yet they don't have the problem with school shootings? It doesn't take many guns to have a school shooting Jack, it takes ONE.

This points that there is an underlying problem in our society that our government is afraid to look at. So instead they use sleight of hand to pull our attention onto a scapegoat, and viola, the video game violence issue is born.

"Do you truly feel your ‘tone’ in messages on boards like GamePolitics are fitting for a professional lawyer?

Absolutely."

The Florida Bar disagrees.


"But, looking back, Doom was a rubbish way of learning to kill, wasn’t it? You couldn’t even aim where you were shooting. Or look up.

So why were the Marines using Doom to train their soldiers to kill? Riddle me that.

It’s not just about the skills to kill, it’s the willingness to kill. That is the other side of the coin, and it is why the military uses virtual reality to break down the reluctance of new recruits to kill.

Get Col. Grossman’s book On Killing, nominated for a Pulitzer. You’ll learn a lo"

Col Grossman is a proven liar. And with this comment we go back to primates and play fighting.

"As games get more realistic with technological progress, what’s that going to do to The Kids’ brains?

It’s going to train them more effectively to kill. That is why the military have been pushing in that direction.

Any GamePolitics moron (sorry to be redundant) who thinks that the more virtually real killing can be makes one more likely to transfer killing skills to real reality from virtual reality hasn’t been paying attention to the hundreds of millions of dollars the military establishment is spending to achieve just that.

The Wii was the next step, and your Review Board realized that by mentioning the ability to turn your physique into one giant controller. It makes killing more likely. Welcome to A Clockwork Orange world, thanks to Sony, Nintendo, and the anti-Christ, Bill Gates ;]"


First you say that you can't gain skill from games then you say you can one sentence later? Which is it Jack.

"All they have to do is voluntary state that any retailers caught selling their age restricted games to anyone below the age at which the games are rated will suffer sanctions from the makers of the games. Totally voluntary, totally non-government, totally do-able, and totally censored as an idea at GamePolitics.

I floated that idea a year ago, and it is where we are going to wind up, maybe three or four years from now, after more school massacres like V-Tech. Cho by the way was prepped for what he did on Counter-Strike."

Your memory is giving out in your old age Jack. Dennis has made mention of this in the past. But shouldn't the movie industry be the first to make such a threat to the retailers? After all, they are selling more violent material to children than the game industry.

"It turns out that Cho was a Counter-Strike nut. The Washington Post reported that."

Then retracted it.

"He was a gamer in high school,"

Who played Sonic the Hedgehog.

"given scientific findings, that Counter-Strike helped him pull it off, obviously."

I don't recall Cho clicking a mouse button at anyone. That would be the only training he would have received from Counter-Strike.


"What are the chances of you losing your ‘lawyer’ status with this upcoming hearing, and if that did happen, what would you do next?

I may lose it, and then I will get it back in my federal civil rights trial. I’m not worried about it. I’ll become a weekly contributor to your site."

That's actually not all that bad of an idea. Let the highest court in the land see how unprofessional you are to put that last nail into your coffin.


"What happened to your 5pm deadline for Rockstar last week? Did that happen?

It came and went. I have some surprises for them they have even thought of yet."

And are any of these ideas, unlike all your other threats towards Rockstar going to be fruitful in the slightest? Your track record with them so far is total failure on your part.

"Oh, come on. Any chance of a clue to what’s coming Rockstar’s way so I’ve got something amazing to put in the headline?

Nope, but you’ll be the first to know. GamePolitics will be in court by then, so I shan’t bother them with the news ;]"

And just what does Dennis have to do with your unprofessionalism?

@VenomandCarnage

I've counted 30 Nazi's on the web so far. He just jacked it past 32.

And don't you dare get me with Godwin's Law.

Well, I may be godless(I am an atheist), but I'm certainly not a pissant.

This is one of the few places where I can find "real" news about the gaming industry and the political goings on behind it.

The thing is Mr. Thompson, you are the bully, a liar, and more unscrupulous than any other politician or person I know of. The quicker you are the Florida Bar deals with you, the better.

@Kentonio:

Twat isn't exactly a glowing compliment over here either.

I posted this on GT, I figured I'd post it here too...

I’m a regular poster and reader at GP and I came to read this out of curiosity. Jack Thompson may be a committed individual (who should be committed but I digress), but it doesn’t change the fact that he’s still an asshole, still unprofessional and still has no grasp of the law.

He likes to say that all he wants is to keep Mature games out of the hands of underage children and agrees that adults ought to be allowed to play violent games. Fine! That’s what we want, too. The problem is his methods say otherwise and his actions have contradicted his statements numerous times. His recent attempt to declare Halo 3 a public nuisance is a prime example of this. Public nuisance laws state something is a threat to the community IN GENERAL. Not just to children. And public nuisanace laws do not specifically target retailers, and neither did his filing. We’ve heard so many politicians and other public figures saying they want to “protect the children” so much that we know by now that it’s simply a smokescreen for censorship and this is what JT hides behind.

You know, you have a bad habit, which I am going to educate you out of, in assuming that what you have read I have said is really what I have said.

And that pretty much says it all about him right there. Like any insufferably self-righteous bible-thumper, he thinks he knows better than any of us. He’s so convinced of it that he’s incapable of acknowledging his own ignorance, as was evidenced by his inability to see where his earlier comment about Mongolia could be construed as racist. Evene when Sueng Hui Cho’s roommates, who lived with him and knew him better than JT ever would, said they never saw him play video games, he dismissed it saying, “They don’t know what they’re talking about” (which is pretty much his catchphrase for anyone who presents him with evidence contrary to his statements).

It’s that condesecnding and patronizing attitude that we have realized after numerous attempts has made it impossible for us to have any reasonable dialogue with him. And beleive us, we’ve tried. Once we realized he wasn’t interested in any kind of dialogue with us and just wanted to convince us of the rightness of his position (as so many religious fanatics do) did we abandon any attempts at compromise, figuring the only way to deal with him was to aggressively counter him every time he opens his mouth, and will continue to do so till his dying day.

I find it amusing and insulting at the same time he refers to us as “Godless,” which is just really a way for Christians of his stripe to marginalize and demonize others who hold a system of beliefs different from his own. Of course in his mind he believes it’s justified as with every other outlandish statement and action he makes. He doesn’t seem to realize that there are many Christian gamers on GP too. Or if he does, he discounts them as not being true Christians because they don’t subscribe to his brand of Christianity which he considers “true.” Anything he says and does is justified as long as it’s in the name of his faith. Again, this is the mindset of a fanatic. Thompson likes to compare us gamers to the likes of the Taliban and Muslim terrorists, but he actually has more in common with them in terms of their ideaology and motivations than he would like to admit.

What he doesn’t realize is that faith and one’s profession do not necessarily mix, and his failure to understand that is why he is facing a trial before the Florida State Supreme Court that could result in the loss of his ability to practice law. He’s not worried about it? Fine. I have no doubt that even without it he’ll find some other way to harrass us. I wouldn’t expect a little thing like that to shut someone like him up for good. But at least he won’t be able to be cited as a professional “expert” on anything and use the law like a blunt instrument. And I wouldn’t be so quick to bet his Civil Rights trial would turn out in his favor either. He’s made too many enemies and the list of his actions to egregious to ignore.

And finally he leaves with another one of his hallmarks: veiled threats of things to come. I was threatened like this by him personally a year ago. I called his bluff saying, “Make my day, asshole,” and I haven’t heard from him since. More individuals and companies would be wise to do that and not cave in. He’s like the boy who cried wolf. We’ve gotten used to taking everything he says now with a very large grain of salt and our attitude now is that we’ll believe it when we see it. And even when he does make good on a threat, it usually turns out to be the equivalent of a wet firecracker having little to no impact, and we laugh at his pathetic attempts.

Gabe and Tycho of Penny Arcade said it best: he’s the angry old man yelling from his front porch, only his front porch now has a connection to the internet. We at least take comfort knowing that if this is the person leading the charge against video games, he’s ultimately ineffective, and that we’ll outlive him.

Jack Thompson really is a stereotyping jackass lowlife crazy moron -_- .

@myrpok "I don’t what gT to become ’serious’. It’s fucking hilarious and I hope it stays that way. Just don’t cry or apologize if people get upset. THAT’S when -you- become an uppety fucker."

you're right, of course. thank you!

...and thanks to GamePolitics for the kind words!

@DavCube:

DJs were using it. So it's not that big of a shocker.

-P

@Gamedev.

Seconded. Your post will not be in vain.

@DCOW

Yea thats right I see noone else doing something as stupid as trying to get Video games banned,only you Jack....

About Jack only wanting to prevent minors from obtaining mature-rated games. See, in his so-called "logic", only children (or perverts, drug addicts, or other scum of the Earth) play Video Games. So, by blocking the sales of violent (read: any) Video Games completely, he's only blocking it from children, because "real" adults don't play Video Games.

He doesn't want to prevent Adults from getting Video Games. He just doesn't want them sold at any store, street corner, over the phone or on the Internet. He wants no advertising for them in any newspaper, magazine, on the radio or TV, in theaters, billboards, on busses/taxies or other public transportation, or on the Internet. That way, it keeps these games out of the hands of children. And once again, in his mind "real adults" don't play Video Games. So, therefore, he's completely self-justified that his actions are 100% correct and true.

@ Xlorep DarkHelm

Exactly. If and when any of his boneheaded 'proposals' actually came to pass, he'd gawk at the rate that the game is still be sold and rant at how mature games were still getting into kids' hands, even if they weren't, because he doesn't do any sort of research.

you all realize that Jack Thompson is nothing but a highschool reject who was never loved, and is trying to do absolutely anything for attention. He's 1 of the cases that if we literally all ignore him, he'll just go away. He continues to do what he does, because he loves and crave the attention.

"lemming-like gamer robots"

cool, i just love lemmings, great game!

Jack is a punk.

Jack is a hypocrite.

Jack is a bully.

I type these words in a lot of my posts about this guy because they really represent what he is.

It looks like he jumped on the gT/GP mini-fued/misunderstanding-thing and reached out to gT for this interview. Where else could he have an open forum to attack this site?

Yet again, truth and reason escape Jack Thompson.

I wish I could live my life spouting lies and making up allegations, and just keep on going even when they are proven wrong.

It will be interesting to me to see how friendly JT and gT become. He has finally found his home.

Further, the 'Twat' portion of the site's name... Isn't that a little porno-related? Is Jack a closet porn addict?

Here in England (where I believe the gT lads come from as well), twat is used primarily as an insult/derogatory term, like calling someone a dick or suchlike.

Hey, gT... Enjoy Jack while he is on your side. As soon as you do something he deems wrong, you become his enemy.

From gT:
"There are some points we didn’t push; mainly because we felt we’d read Jack’s feelings on that subject countless times before and saw no point in going over old ground. We don’t call him on some of his answers as you might expect, because we would have simply wound up going round in circles."

Translation:
"There are some points we didn’t push; mainly because we wanted Jack in our corner so we weren't alone defending our ridiculous claim against GP's readers and posters. We also need readers, and what better way to drudge up readers than to pick on someone else? We don’t call him on some of his answers as you might expect, because that would be too responsible and fair."

Oh, golly... this is true comedy!

gT - What better way to make a name for yourself, huh? The old adage, "Any press is good press" must be the linchpin of your marketing strategy. Amazing.

So..

Despite Dennis destroying his claim that he makes money from reporting on Him JUST YESTERDAY, he still prattles on about it as if it's the gospel truth and that it was NEVER disproven.

What's more, OF COURSE it doesn't even need proof, or any sort of grounds on which to suspect it! After all, Jack's number one enemy is the Truth (next to common sense, that is)!

*Sing-song voice* Someone's in deniiiiial.

When you first posted gT's existence here, I must admit I was curious to see if they were going to be a new, relevant blog to follow. After reading through their first few posts, I can't say I feel that way anymore. Let them be the fox news of game blogs, let them misrepresent facts, call people names, and present inflamitory stories. They only make GP better by comparison, and further boost GP's relevance to the community

@ jds

Well, Jack Thompson is a gay porn distributor, so it would be assumed by someone reading the article about the judge criticizing Thompson for filing gay porn with the court that Thompson is a closet porn addict and a textbook closet-case self-loather who can't be comfortable with his own sexuality.

And I agree everything he says about us is referring to himself more than anything.

The Metropolitian Moron of Miami is nothing more than an attention whore whose 15 minutes of fame expired five years ago.

Jack "Gay Porn Distributor" Thompson should practice what he preaches: Grow up and get a life, and while he's at it, he should get a new cause, since his has been lost since 1999.

@BearDogg,

1997, if I remember correctly ;)

Godless? Hardly, I worship 5 of them, well two Gods and three Godesses.

Mr. Thompson, it is a sad statement of both your arguement and your intelligence to result to name calling. It shows that you truely have nothing to contribute to any dialog that would benefit anyone other than your own ego. You have consistently shown that you care for nothing other than your own fame. Aparantly not even your own son, as your recent "stings" show you have no problem exploiting him for your own agenda.

A general remark as to the style of this post:

just read smth about a study researchers did on how to refute false statements by listing them together with the refutations. The result basically was that by repeating the original bullshit, it is given more credibility since people who are not deep into the topic after a while just remember that they read this stuff in a serious context.

So maybe drop rehashing Thompson's excretions and simply write down your point down. While his statements can be deduced from your replies, they do not get the support of actual spelling out on this website.

Jacky-boy, you do a good gob demonizing yourself. You don't need help.

Wow..if we're Godless Pissants, what does this make you? One that sends porn to a Judge. Call for an impeachment of the Attorney General of Utah, just becuase he didn't support YOUR bill.

Dammit Thompson. For once in your life, GROW THE [censored] UP!!

- Warren