Miami attorney Jack Thompson’s no stranger to controversy. The legal eagle’s past campaigns include focusing national attention on the sales to minors of 2 Live Crew's music, the distribution of Ice-T and Body Count’s song “Cop Killer” by Time Warner, and the Paducah, Kentucky school shootings.
Now, the outspoken Thompson has turned his attention to video games. He regularly lobbies against the proliferation of titles like "GTA: San Andreas" and files lawsuits against game publishers on behalf of families allegedly harmed by the content.
Scott Steinberg talks with the crusading attorney on his views of the gaming industry in this GGL exclusive:
SCOTT STEINBERG: As someone who’s previously been active in the fight against other entertainment mediums, why go on the offensive against videogames, and why now?
JACK THOMPSON: A bit of personal history. Around the time the spate of school shootings in America started, I contacted the attorney in charge of the case. As a result of my experience with the Body Count fracas, I asked if I could be a witness at trial testifying to Time-Warner’s history with violent content. He asked me to be co-council.
Videogames (Doom in particular) were one of three entertainment categories we attacked. We in effect predicted Columbine a week before it happened. [Shooters] Klebold and Harris were directly influenced by the game. The scientific evidence is overwhelming that teenagers particularly are prone for neurological reasons to copycat the violence they see in these games.
For 18 years, I’ve been involved in efforts to prevent the entertainment industry from marketing adult-rated material to kids. The videogame business just happens to have some of the most egregious examples.
Q: Is it safe to say you find all first-person shooters reprehensible?
A: No one in their right mind would say every kid who plays these games is going to turn into a stone-cold killer. But research shows there’s a pattern of acting out amongst children who play them, from aggressive speech to forcible behavior, aggressive attitudes, violence… That’s a convincing enough argument against them, as far as I’m concerned.
Q: So such titles present a clear and present danger to the public?
A: That depends on a person’s exposure to them. Someone who begins playing Halo 2 when they’re younger will be more susceptible to violent impulses than someone who starts playing when they’re, say, 17 years old. The amount of time a person spends with them is also a factor; it’s the kids playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas 12 hours a day versus 10 minutes you’ve got to be wary of. They’re at a substantially greater risk of acting out in an aggressive manner, as is someone who’s a victim of a bully. It’s analogous to say that everyone who smokes won’t develop lung cancer. But that’s not to say that smoking doesn’t cause lung cancer.
Q: How do you feel about organizations such as the Global Gaming League?
A: It’s unfortunate, because studies out of Harvard show that until age 25, the brain is a work in progress. Until then, more and more mental processes inspired by these games get shifted to the frontal lobes, where differentiation between reality and fantasy occurs. You have 12 and 13 year-olds who play these games obsessively. By definition, teenagers have undeveloped brains. If they experience extreme emotions like anger or fear associated with a game that they’ve been playing for hours on end, and you call out these emotions in the real world, it brings to mind the images associated with the game. There’s a risk associated with that. Any commercial activity, including an organized series of tournaments, which glorifies these gaming activities (even if it’s restricted to those of appropriate age) can have extreme public safety consequences.
Q: High-profile gamers such as Fatal1ty are now becoming celebrities of a sort. You truly see a danger in that?
A: Yes. I think the whole videogame industry is geared towards encouraging those as young as possible, particularly males, to play these games as early in life as possible. It creates a lifestyle heavily centered on violent gaming. Any celebrity endorsement that glamorizes such activities is a risk to kids, as it’s inspiring to them in the same way Tony Hawk inspired an entire generation to skateboard.
Q: So a guy who’s got his own motherboard is really a menace to society?
A: Celebrity endorsements increase sales. And as sales increase, the minimum age of people consuming certain products decrease. I’m a conservative Republican. And not the type like George Bush, mind you, who believes in original sin unless it emanates from a corporate boardroom. The real failing is that in the American marketplace, you’ve got capitalism unrestrained by virtue or common sense. Gaming competitions and associated celebrities contribute to the overall problem.
Q: You see something wrong with professional gaming then?
A: My personal preference would be that kids and teenagers would spend their time doing other things than engaging in pixilated violence. It’s inferable that I’m not a gamer, and feel that there are some negatives that come along with the pastime. I’d rather children do something else with their time.
Q: The presumption being that there’s nothing healthy to be seen in viewing gaming as a sport?
A: No, not any more so than the promotion of gambling as a sport is healthy. There’s a presumption that gambling is something unhealthy to be engaged in. I feel the same way about first-person shooting. I happen to be a Christian. I have a certain view of the world and human nature, that you’ve got a finite amount of time in your life and so you should spend it wisely. You are what you consume. You have to be careful not only what you put in your mouth, but what you put in your head, because it can hurt you.
Q: Recently, you’ve lashed out at other titles such as Killer 7 and The Warriors. Do tell…
A: The Warriors I find particularly problematic given the film’s history. In 1979, Paramount Pictures made the movie. There was so much copycat violence, Paramount stopped advertising it and told theater owners they could stop showing it.
Take 2’s had quite a summer. [Laughs] The trailers I’ve seen of the game are even more violent, easily surpassing what was shown in the film. But the title I’m most concerned about besides the Grand Theft Auto games is Bully…
Q: Speaking of, why that one in particular?
A: It’s obvious looking at the game that it’s a Columbine simulator. I’m not talking about the level of violence. The problem is that it has in its content the very things the Secret Service and FBI found were the same common denominators in the Columbine killings. In effect, Klebold and Harris became uber-bullies, capable of killing. It’s the same dynamic, where the rage of the oppressed turned into the rage of a killer. Here you have a game that allows young people (I can’t imagine any adults buying it) to rehearse, at least virtually, violence against individual classmates and teachers.
Q: What are your feelings towards Take 2 as a company?
A: They’ve decided to carve out a niche as the bad boys of the videogame industry. They’ve been successful in that regard. Here’s a company that was fined almost $9 million for fraudulent accounting practices. Then they said they didn’t put sexually explicit material in GTA: San Andreas. They got called out on Hot Coffee by Hillary Clinton and the entire United States House of Representatives.
They think they can outlast the critics and survive all these legal problems and make more money than anybody. I think they’re wrong. If you play chicken with Congress and the FTC, you paint a bulls-eye on your back so big you’re asking to be taken down, which I think will eventually happen, whether I or others do it. But I must tell you, my intent is to see to it that in five years, they don’t even exist.
Q: Do you view that as not only a legal, but also moral imperative?
A: I feel like it’s something I’m supposed to be involved in. To semi-quote Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now, I love the smell of red ink in the morning. Take 2 had a very bad third quarter and a lot of it was because of the Hot Coffee scandal. I prepped Hillary Clinton before her news conference. So I guess it feels like a moral imperative. I’m having a lot of fun fighting these clowns. With enemies like this, you don’t need any friends.
Q: Mind elaborating?
A: Go to their website,
www.rockstargames.com. If you click on the Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories link and look at the top of the page, you’ll see they’ve put together a fake email by “Citizens United Negating Technology” (cunt, for short). It’s written by fictitious leader JT.
They even created a website: www.
http://www.citizensunitednegatingtechnology.org/
This is at a point in time when they’re involved in a lawsuit in Alabama [concerning 18 year-old Devin Moore, who shot and killed three officers, then compared life to a videogame upon capture]. They’re busy trying to persuade the court that I should be silenced, because they claim they can’t get a fair trial. They’re also going around saying I’m a sexual pervert.
But they’re the ones who, if you go to the website, have designed a website for “Citizens United Negating Technology for Life and People’s Safety” (the organization’s full name). In case you missed it, that’s “cunt flaps,” as in a woman’s labia.
Q: Cute. Moving along, you recently claimed victory in the fight against Bully, citing the product’s delay until 2006 as the result of your lobbying. Why so?
A: Take 2 claims publicly it was delayed for creative reasons. But if you were a betting man, you’d make a lot of money wagering whatever the company says is untrue. This was a game they unveiled as one of their biggest releases of 2005. They’ve had 5 to 6 months since E3 to work out any problems.
People point out rightly that games are delayed all the time. But there was no reason for this one to be. Look at the situation.
Take 2 is bleeding red ink. When you play the controversy game, you want to have a certain amount of controversy, but not so much that it becomes counterproductive.
You’ve got the House of Representatives deciding by a vote of 355 to 21 people to support an FTC probe into San Andreas… They can’t even get a margin like that to agree that it was even a hurricane that hit New Orleans. Now the ESRB is going after all companies to find out if there’s any content hidden in existing or upcoming games that should’ve been revealed, but wasn’t.
I think what happened was they were about to release the game… and no one can tell me that this game that had been submitted to the ESRB for rating wasn’t finished. I think they just decided that maybe folks such as Hillary Clinton and I would eventually give up and not bother to point out how much of a threat Bully is. That maybe now wasn’t the right time to launch it.
Q: How do you feel about the California legislature’s recent passage of Assembly Bill 1179, which aims to fine retailers who sell violent videogames to minors and sticker all such titles with warning labels? It’s got quite a few gamers up in arms.
A: Here’s the problem. The gaming industry has made a terrible mistake. If they want to be mad, they ought to be mad at Take 2 and [ESA president] Doug Lowenstein. These people simply don’t get that the American people, regardless of political party, identify minors as a protected class of people.
What the ESA and ESRB have done is refused to apply logic to their ratings; in the UK and New Zealand, it’s illegal to sell the darn things to underage shoppers. But here, for example, whenever a state passes a law that says OK, these ratings are going to mean something, these organizations step in and say children have a constitutional right to consume this stuff.
I don’t think the bill would’ve had a chance to pass or be signed into law by The Governator [sic] if the Hot Coffee scandal hadn’t happened. I really don’t. I think that thing just changed the whole dynamic. Gamers ought to be upset with Take 2. They made it possible for Leland Yee along with Hillary Clinton and me and every other wacko (according to their standards) to show that these people are deceptive, liars. And that we have to fight to do something about it.
It’s unfortunate. Even I believe government is best left out of most things except for fighting wars. It’s too bad the industry has fought the laws we need ever since they created the rating system. The flouting of these rules by Hal Halpin, the IEMA, and retailers in general has made this possible. Sure, gamers are annoyed. But that’s a good thing; because we’ve taken away from certain people something that they shouldn’t have.
Q: A lot of critics cite that movies and music operate under similarly self-regulated systems. Why choose to pick on gaming above all else?
A: Because you’ve got the most PR stupid industry of them all in gaming. I wrote a letter months ago pointing out that the videogame industry, if it wanted to get out from under governmental scrutiny, should probably fire Doug Lowenstein.
This guy is the worst thing that ever happened to the industry. He acts like a thug! The crew at 60 Minutes told me he threw a tantrum and made threats against them when CBS told him they were going to run a story about our wrongful death lawsuit in Alabama.
To not listen to parents’ legitimate concerns… it’s amazing.
Q: How heated has the situation become for you personally?
A: Put it this way. I got a call the other day from a woman in Evanston, Indiana because her son threatened to kill me.
Q: That’s frightening to say the least. But you really intend to see this through to the bitter end, don’t you?
A: Certainly. Games, because they’re interactive, and the level of violence is so high and senseless, present a direct danger to children. The good guys don’t always win. Violence in these titles therefore isn’t a necessary evil; it’s just necessary. These products are dangerous. And someone has to do something about them.
09-23-2005, 03:31 PM
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