News > Jack Thompson Bully court case - verdict on hold
October 12, 2006
Content taken from Destructoid:
“Never in the history of gaming has a judge ever asked to review a game before it’s release — and that is going to happen here tomorrow”. These are words spoken but a few feet from me as Jack Thompson walked away from a satisfying session against Take-Two and Walmart, which are scheduled to release the game on Tuesday and begin shipping it on Monday night. There is more to this, and I will transcribe four pages of notes as soon as I can with further updates below, but in the end here are the two possible outcomes:
(A) If the judge finds the game acceptable, life goes on and it ships. At this point Jack Thompson will have access to finally play the game and decide whether or not the content in the game is worth pursuit. He said “I’ll drop the whole thing” if he feels his allegations were mistaken, but presumes the worse for various factors which I’ll describe in later updates.
(B) If the judge does find the game offensive — and he’s willing to sit with a Take-Two employee and direct him through open-ended missions for over the 100 hours of gameplay, he will file a temporary restaining order which will prevent the sale of the game to minors.
Bully aside, the elephant in the room was the ESRB who took a whipping from both sides of the courtroom for “its vague and flawed rating methodologies” which only take into account blood and gore. Now, since you’re reading Destructoid, you’re surely fishing for some entertainment value to stem from my reporting. The boobie in the courtroom was not Jack, but a little man in the defendant’s council (whom we’ll spare naming) who’s various robot-like comment produced embarrassing barrel laughs on a few occassions. Here’s my favorite: when the topic of force feedback was discussed in relation of heads been crushed by cars, he stood up and said offered “LIKE A SPEED BUMP!”. Smooth buddy, smooth.
The other notable highlight of the session did come from Mr. Thompson, who produced a gigantic home made industrial strength wooden slingshot that looked capable of exploding somebody’s head in half with the right projectile. It was made of wood and rubber, so he was able to sneak it past metal detectors unnoticed which even took the judge by surprise. It was a moment right out of court TV, but an effective one. If there was any chuckles that a slingshot could be a lethal weapon, they were silenced.
Defendant Take-Two is sending a player capable of finishing the game and guiding Judge Friedman through the most violent portions of the game (otherwise known as “the good stuff” — which was repeated various times in the case) along with a Playstation 2 and video equipment. When the defense asked that formal paperwork and bonding were to be provided for this request the judge snapped back and said “Do you know how long that would take? The game would have shipped by then” and in the middle of a mumble he cut them off and silenced the room with “NOT A CHANCE IN THIS WORLD”.
Tomorrow’s meeting will be in the judge’s chambers, unfortunately closed to the press (and humble bloggers) but both council are allowed to attend, but not comment or interrupt the session. But here’s the twist — New York airports might be closed or difficult to transport the employee to Miami due to a helicopter crash in Manhattan that may make security impossible. What we truly have here is a race against time, among other complexities not yet outlined in this summary. But I’ll tell you this, it was very exciting to watch it unfold and totally worth the $24 in parking.
