News > Jack Thompson's Got A Posse
June 12, 2007
JT has a settlement with Take Two so he can't openly denounce their games so much anymore, but that hasn't stopped him from sending a well-placed letter or two to get somebody else to do his dirty work. JT's new accomplice? Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum. He appears to be focusing entirely on the Wii version due to the fact that players will execute kills by performing the hand motions, effectively teaching them how to kill.
I can see it now, in the decade following the release of Manhunt 2 children all across Florida will be turned into tiny killing machines, lieing in wait, stealthily, only to leap out at the last second and perform any of a number of killing moves including the old plastic-bag-across-the-face trick. I mean, seriously? Are we supposed to be afraid that children are going to learn how to put us into a headlock and finish us off with improvised weapons? Also, who the hell lets their kids play Manhunt?
At any rate, the legislation is going to happen, even though games are still protected by the first amendment. It's my expectation that this meaningless process will continue until enough videogame players have grown up such that videogames are seen as a medium like any other, with products for various niches, including children and adults. Still, why is the simple correlation so hard to grasp here? Nobody legislates to get a movie cancelled if it's violent, or to ban books from being sold in stores. Until videogames are no longer perceived as being the exclusive domain of children, we're stuck with this plague of endless attacks.
- Brian Schulman
