A Modest Video Game Proposal

On October 10th, 2005, Jack Thompson set up a challenge for the video games industry. This challenge, titled "A Modest Video Game Proposal", consists of creating and distributing a game, in which Paul Eibeler, CEO of Take-Two Interactive – one of Thompson's favourite targets – is to be killed in a disturbingly violent manner. Thompson stated that he would donate $10.000 to Eibeler's favourite charity organisation this game would be made [1].

After several hobby developers and modders accepted Thompson's challenge [2], Thompson was quick to point out that his proposal was merely meant satirical, which lead to the question wether his promised donation was meant satirical as well:

A team of GTA modders called the Fighting Hellfish has created a San Andreas mod for the PC that Jack Thompson could have designed—that is, if he included himself as the vengeful father he proposed earlier, on a murderous rampage through the video-game industry. And there you have the story of JT and his Banman alter ego in Defamation of Character: A Jack Thompson Murder Simulator.

But that’s not all: not only is he unsatisfied with the mod, he claims his earlier proposal was merely intended as satire, to “highlight the patent hypocrisy and recklessness exhibited by the video game industry’s willingness to target cops, women, homosexuals, and other groups with some of their violent games.” (So the $10K offer to charity was satire, too?)

[source: Joystiq]

It was only a matter of time until a mod team took Jack Thompson's disgusting revenge fantasy and made it flesh - and, just as I suggested, it was deemed insufficient.

Thompson now claims that his repellent suggestion was "satire," and we must conclude that his financial offer was also satire, some new breed of satire apparently that I'm sure is just hilarious to people in need.

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 Eibeler'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.

[source: Penny Arcade]

In a letter faxed to Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske (left), Thompson says, in part, "A Seattle business by the name of Penny Arcade... employs certain personnel who have decided to commence and orchestrate criminal harassment of me by various means... This company has done this because I dared to go on CBS's 60 Minutes in March and again in July to explain a wrongful death lawsuit I have brought on behalf of two police officers and a police dispatcher in Fayette, Alabama, who were shot in the head and killed by Devin Moore who obsessively trained on Grand Theft Auto: Vice City to kill them."

"As you may know, this incredibly violent Rockstar Games product is actually a 'cop-killing' murder simulator. There are a bunch of computer geeks out there who think that the video game industry has a constitutional right to paint a bullseye on your back and on your officers' backs... That is what this criminal harassment of me by Penny Arcade is all about. They're even selling an 'I Hate Jack Thompson' t-shirt, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. These idiots have been so careless as to post on their www.pennyarcade.com web site what they are doing regarding the harassment of me."

"I look forward to working with your fine Police Department to shut this little extortion factory down and/or arrest some of its employees."

[source: Gamepolitcs]

[1] Advanced Media Network – Attorney Proposes Violent Game
[2] Wikipedia – Jack Thompson (attorney), "A Modest Video Game Proposal"