Jack Thompson's modest video game proposal:

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." The Golden Rule

This writer has been saying for seven years that violent video games can be "murder simulators" that incite as well as train some obsessive teen players to be violent.

I've been on 60 Minutes and in Reader's Digest this year explaining how an Alabama teen, with no criminal record, shot two policemen and a dispatcher in their heads and fled in a police car--a scenario he rehearsed for hundreds of hours on Take-Two/Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto video games.

I have sat with boys in jail cells, their lives over because of murder convictions, after they, with no history of violence, have killed innocents while in a dreamlike state. Said one cop who investigated such a murder in Grand Rapids, Michigan: "The killing was like an extension of the game."

The video game industry, through its lawyers, its spokesmen, and its head lobbyist, Doug Lowenstein, the president of the Entertainment Software Association, all say it is utter nonsense to suggest that what is dumped into a kid's head hour after hour, day after day, year after year, could possibly have behavioral consequences. Cigarette ads can persuade kids to smoke, but interactive simulators in which these same kids punch, hack, bludgeon, and maim affect not a wit their attitudes and behaviors, notwithstanding the findings of the American Psychological Association, published in August 2005.

The video game industry says Sticks and stones can break my bones, but games can never hurt me. Fine. I have a modest proposal for the video game industry. I'll write a check for $10,000 to the favorite charity of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc's chairman, Paul Eibeler - a man Bernard Goldberg ranks as #43 in his book 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America - if any video game company will create, manufacture, distribute, and sell a video game in 2006 like the following:

Osaki Kim is the father of a high school boy beaten to death with a baseball bat by a 14-year-old gamer. The killer obsessively played a violent video game in which one of the favored ways of killing is with a bat. The opening scene, before the interactive game play begins, is the Los Angeles courtroom in which the killer is sentenced "only" to life in prison after the judge and the jury have heard experts explain the connection between the game and the murder.

Osaki Kim (O.K.) exits the courtroom swearing revenge upon the video game industry whom he is convinced contributed to his son's murder. "Vengeance is mine, I will repay" he says. And boy, is O.K. not kidding.

O.K. is provided in his virtual reality playpen a panoply of weapons: machetes, Uzis, revolvers, shotguns, sniper rifles, Molotov cocktails, you name it. Even baseball bats. Especially baseball bats.

O.K. first hops a plane from LAX to New York to reach the Long Island home of the CEO of the company (Take This) that made the murder simulator on which his son's killer trained. O.K. gets "justice" by taking out this female CEO, whose name is Paula Eibel, along with her husband and kids. "An eye for an eye," says O.K., as he urinates onto the severed brain stems of the Eibel family victims, just as you do on the decapitated cops in the real video game Postal2.

O.K. then works his way, methodically back to LA by car, but on his way makes a stop at the Philadelphia law firm of Blank, Stare and goes floor by floor to wipe out the lawyers who protect Take This in its wrongful death law suits. "So sue me" O.K. spits, with singer Jackson Brown's 1980's hit Lawyers in Love blaring.

With the FBI now after him, O.K. keeps moving westward, shooting up high-tech video arcades called GameWerks. "Game over," O.K. laughs.

Of course, O.K. makes the obligatory runs to virtual versions of brick and mortar retailers Best Buy, Circuit City, Target, and Wal-Mart to steal supplies and bludgeon store managers and cash register clerks. "You should have checked kids' IDs!"

O.K. pushes on to Los Angeles. He must get there by May 10, 2006. That is the beginning of "E3" -- the Electronic Entertainment Expo -- the Super Bowl of the video game industry. O.K. must get to E3 to massacre all the video game industry execs with one final, monstrously delicious rampage.

How about it, video game industry? I've got the check and you've got the tech. It's all a fantasy, right? No harm can come from such a game, right? Go ahead, video game moguls. Target yourselves as you target others. I dare you.

<embed id="VideoPlayback" style="width:400px;height:326px" flashvars="" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=2393624938319591789&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"> </embed>

Of course Thompson didn't make good on his promise...

Let's try that link again. Hope it works this time.

<a href='http://www.plime.com/redir.p?http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2393624938319591789' class='plime' target='_blank' rel='nofollow'><b>flash video</b></a>

Edit: OK, it didn't, but at least you can click on it and watch the video...

You have to put the link in between [ video ] [ /video] brackets. Without the spaces, of course. I took the liberty of fixing it in your comment.

Clearly, you are made of awesome. Thanks!

And - it looks like your upvote moved me to level 14... after I have no idea how long at 13! (That's what happens when you lurk more than post.) :)

This game is really fun, and people making it for free is very amusing. I feel like the guy proposing this game shouldn't sully the term "Modest Proposal" with his silly anti-gaming propaganda, but it all ended up making a fun and ridiculously violent game, so I guess I shouldn't complain.

I actually thought it was kind of fitting, given the previous "Modest Proposal" (in which Jonathon Swift satirically proposed that the Irish sell their babies as food to help improve the economy).



Thompson's proposal boils down to "make a game about killing people who make games" - a metaphorically cannibalistic effort.

(Oh no - I just used up all of my syllables for the day!)

I just feel that Jonathan Swifts idea was much more original and made more sense to me. This other guys idea was very critical of games inciting violence which I have never seen any proof of them actually doing.