The ScooterBlog

I realize that words have great strength, so I’ll say this word with conviction … I hate what Jack Thompson is doing with video games and lawsuits.

The latest salco? The Columbus sniper, Charles McCoy, is being implicated along with the makers of The Getaway, Dead To Rights, and Grand Theft Auto (yep, he’s piling on Take 2 again, big shocker here). Apparently when McCoy left to Vegas where he was caught, he had a PS2
with him and these games, so ol Jack can prove that if Charles didn’t play these games, the one person who died in the sniper shootings would be alive today.

If he can connect these pieces and find 12 morons to buy it, then he should be selling oceanfront property in North Dakota … namely Bismarck … in January!

My takes are these.

1) This isn’t a case of a kid being influenced. Granted, apparently Charles McCoy has mental problems, but is it Take 2’s responsibility, and Namco’s, and others, to screen their buyers for mental issues before they buy a game? Not so much to me, and if you suggest it is, you begin
to crawl into an unrealistic paradigm, one that can’t be fairly judged.

2) Jack should at least single out the games where it is criminals doing the shooting. Dead To Rights has a renegade cop avenging the death of his father, not nearly the level of pointless violence (although the game has it) for no reason that GTA offers.

3) In the end, this kind of lawsuit only furthers a behavior that I detest … that blame is a dish best passed around the table until you stick someone with it. The courts, and lawsuits in general, are there to properly attach blame to where it needs to be, and this doesn’t do that.

If suddenly, entertainment is responsible for people’s actions, then the slippery slope that leads us down in incredibly dangerous, and in the end, is tantamount to censorship to an amazing extreme. I don’t like that path.

No, Jack’s not always wrong. He’s right about the Hot Coffee mod, Take 2 left the industry hanging on that one. But, these “cash grabs” sicken me, completely.