Jack Thompson's Modest Proposal gives me an idea.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Note to the mods: I have no idea where this post should really go, so I picked MPSIMS by default.

Jack Thompson is a taint on the American legal profession. I mean that in the anatomical sense: the area between the testicles and anus. He recently sent this to members of the press:

I’d first like to point out that Charles Manson was inspired to do his thing by a song about a playground slide, and David Berkowitz killed because he thought his neighbor’s dog told him to; but nobody sued the Beatles or the AKC.

Anyway, this is my idea: Someone should make this insane game… in Zork-style “Interactive Fiction”.



You are in the home of "Take This" CEO Paula Eibel.  She is standing in front of you, demanding to know what you're doing in her house.  Obvious exits are NORTH, SOUTH, and DENNIS.

>DECAPITATE PAULA

Whack! You take her head clean off.

>URINATE ON BRAINSTEM

I don't know how to do that.

>PISS ON PONS

Or else you could make a game in ZZT, in splendiferous gory ASCII. “Lawyers in Love” could even beep through the computer speaker.

Jack’s challenge does require that the game be made, distributed, and sold by a “company”. A game of this type could easily fit on a 3.5" floppy and sell for, say, 50 cents plus shipping. If anyone reading this does want to pull this off, I pledge to help in any capacity I can. I have roughly zero code mojo (I have honestly screwed up “Hello, World!” in more than one language), but I can proofread, edit, and playtest.

It’s a long shot, but I’d like to see it happen just to watch the weasel squirm.

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I must be certifiable–I love your text-based game idea. It’s so retro, and the non-visualness of it allows the imagination to provide the video. I think the market is ready for this. It can be easily done in Pascal or, hell, BASIC.

3

I don’t think 10 grand is enough to cover the development of a game.
But I do think a game where a gamer goes to a video game company and takes out the who make the annoying things in games like stupid puzzles about pushing around fifty crates to get them in the exact position. Or the makers of Half-Life 2. I mean, who the hecks imagins a future where you have a gravity gun, you have teleportation, you have a suit that heals you, but you don’t have a flashlight that is worth a damn? I’d like to hunt the guy who designed the flashlight for that game.

4

Heck, a fully 3d version of something like this could probably be cobbled together on the cheap using the Torque game engine. The text-based version could be done quickly & inexpensively. TM, take your proposition over to someplace like gamasutra or gamedev.net - the folks over there may be one step ahead of you :wink:

Of course, I suspect ole JT would weasel out of it if an independent developer wrote the game - he did say “any video game company.”

5

I like the modest proposal. Well, the concept, anyway. The phrasing is rather tedious. If the games aren’t doing any harm, why shouldn’t the game designers make themselves the victim in the game?

6

I think someone should make a game about killing Jack Thompson…'cause then maybe someone will. (kidding :D)

–FCOD

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Because nobody would want to buy it? Game developers are very unlike street gangs, US marines, or extra-terrestrial cyborgs in that they live a lifestyle that not a lot of people are particularly interested in emulating. Aside from the “get paid to play videogames” angle, anyway, which is not all it’s cracked up to be.

It was pointed out on another board that your average, professional-quality video game costs about $20,000 a day to produce, twice what Mad Jack Thompson is offering to give to charity. Any company taking him up on his modest proposal would stand to lose millions of dollars. Of course, in that twisted little meatball Jack likes to refer to as his brain, the real reason developers won’t take him up on his offer is they’re all terrified of unleashing a torrent of gamer violence on themselves. Because they all know, deep down, that their games really are making people kill each other, they just won’t admit it. :rolleyes:

8

Cute idea; but the big difference between even the goriest commercial game and the Modest Proposal is targeting specific real-life people as opposed to annonymous characters. If someone released Jihad!, a videogame where you played as an Islamic terrorist on a mission to assassinate George W. Bush, I’m sure the Feds would have a shit attack.

9

Here is Penny-Arcade’s take on it.

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You rang? :eek:

Where’s my “Petition to make whiney congressmen play violent video games”?

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Update:

Somebody did this. Jack Thompson backpedaled. Penny Arcade donated the $10,000 in Jack Thompson’s name. Gotta love those PA boys!

Cites:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/news.php?date=2005-10-17

–FCOD

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Dude, If their hearts were in it, they could make it work. But of course since Thompson is asking them to hang themselves…

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Oh, don’t be silly. No one who makes games is the slightest bit worried about people commiting murder because they played a video game. That’s because the people who make video games have either 1) actually played video games, or 2) are not totally insane. Sometimes, both. Jack Thompson, on the other hand, is neither, which is why he thinks his idiotic proposal is some sort of rhetorical masterstroke. It’s not, though. If a game like this gets made, it will be because they think it will sell. If they don’t think it will sell, then they won’t make it. Simple as that. Concerns about real life violence will not enter into it, because such concerns have no basis in reality.

14

Yup. When I was at Red Storm we released a game that included the Red Storm offices as a multiplayer shooter level. If it hadn’t been too much extra work we would have included character models of the developers as well. We thought shooting up our workplace was FUNNY.

15

I find it amusing that he has become an object of ridicule, and even more amusing that the National Institute on Media and the Family has distanced themselves from him.

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Come to think of it, Postal 2 also has a single-player segment taking place at the offices where the Postal games are made, complete with employees of the company (don’t know if they’re based on real people or not. They may well be.), AND an armed attack on the building by crazed anti-video game protestors. Can’t believe I forgot that part…

17

As the Ctrl+Alt+Del people said: “Don’t fuck with us.” Bravo.

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Beauty. Hopefully, this will tag him as the nutcase he is, and he won’t get any more airtime on CNN.

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He faxed a letter to the Seatlle PD yesterday asking them to make Penny Arcade stop harrassing him. He must be quite a lawyer. :smiley: You can see the letter on their site (I mirrored a copy here if they’re down again.

I think this quote from Tycho says it all:

This has been fun to watch. :smiley: