The Fun Bucket

Were you waiting to see how long Jack Thompson could hold out before jumping back on the bandwagon of people that think Grand Theft Auto is ruining the minds of children everywhere? The wait is over. Jack’s back.

As reported by Ars Technica via GamePolitics, Thompson has already written a letter to the US Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, R. Alexander Acosta, demanding legal action against Take Two Interactive as well as Microsoft and Sony for allowing the game to be available on their system to minors and retailers for selling the game to minors. If you’d rather read it from Jack himself:

Indictments should be returned against Take Two corporately and its Chairman, Strauss Zelnick, along with other Take Two officers. Indictment should also be against Sony and Microsoft which are making this pornographic game available to minors, and openly so, on their PS3 and Xbox systems.

Further, indictments should be handed down against Wal-Mart, Best Buy, GameStop, and all other retailers distributing this game to minors at their retail stores, openly, to kids who are only seventeen.

Apparently we should just lock everyone up. I thought there were these things called “ratings” - call me crazy - assigned by these boards like the ESRB that show what age groups games are appropriate for. Maybe I dreamed that or something. I guess it’s much easier just to prosecute everyone and censor media even more than it. After all, only children play video games, right Jack? He also mentioned that Grand Theft Auto IV is the gravest assault upon children in this country since polio and tops it off with some other friendly words about his favorite game.

We now have vaccines for that virus… The ‘vaccine’ that must be administered by the United States government to deal with this virtual virus of violence and sexual depravity is criminal prosecutions of those who have conspired to do this. If you doubt me, look at the aforementioned streaming audio/video. It will make you sick.”

The aforementioned streaming video is a video from IGN, “Ladies of Liberty City”. I’ll let you find that one yourself, it’s not exactly safe for work. According to Ars Technica, “The video strips the game of all context and merely shows scenes of sexual content and violence, one after the other. In fact, it can be hard to watch for that reason, and it’s a rather numbing experience. The game’s lead character, Niko, drives up to prostitutes, honks the horn, then shoots them. You see a simulated sex act, only to have Niko run the hooker over afterwards with his car. The video shows graphic lap dances featuring one, and then two, girls. The language is even worse, including—and excuse the stars, “F*** the s*** out of it, you nasty f******.”

Great going IGN at giving the media and Jack Thompson some ammunition with a convenient video showcasing the game’s worst content. I’m sure this won’t be the last thing we hear from Jack and you can rest assured that I’ll be all over his future comments too. NeonFire out.