Defending violent video games, Medal of Honor edition

Why disbarred lawyer and activist Jack Thompson and his ilk are wrong about Medal of Honor, and why he must not be allowed to succeed.

Yet again, a video game has stirred up controversy, and yet again, a bevy of crusaders have come out to try to convince parents of the world that if you let your children play violent video games, you might as well move to the woods to minimize the damage that they will inevitably do when they snap and decide that a murdering spree is in order.

With the new Medal of Honor game due out in October, there are two distinct groups of protesters aligned against it, one is legitimate, the other is not. The first has an issue with the game’s multiplayer modes, which automatically assign one group of players as U.S. Special Forces, and the other as the Taliban. The protesters see it as disrespectful. The other group are essentially the hangers on. If the first group were a piece of legislation, the second group would be a rider. They are the Jack Thompson’s of the world that also think the Taliban’s inclusion is disrespectful, but they go way beyond that.  Way, way beyond that.  Thompson and his ilk are honestly claiming that this video game will make people want to join the Taliban.  Medal of Honor might end up being a great game, but I doubt it will be good enough to make people join a group of religious zealots determined to kill people.  If it is, I will definitely give it a 10 out of 10.

I want to make a clear distinction here — I am not arguing whether or not it is disrespectful to include playable Taliban characters in EA’s Medal of Honor. I understand the respect issue, and it is a problem with no solutions and several opinions. What I do take issue with is that Thompson (and he is not alone) is claiming that besides the asinine fact that in his mind the game will turn a generation of American children into religious fanatics hellbent on joining the jihad, he believes that regardless of whether or not you play as the Taliban or as the U.S., the game is actually bad for society in general, and he feels the same towards all first-person shooter-style games. “Murder simulators,” he calls them.  Not only is Thompson wrong, he is a dangerous fool that has long since moved passed reason and has veered into something much darker.

There is also an upcoming Supreme Court case that should be heard in October. The case is to determine whether or not video games with a mature ranking should be held to the same standards as pornography, which would severely punish retailers for selling mature games to underage customers. The law originated in California, but has never been enacted due to legal challenges. The courts have so far found in favor of the video game industry, but expect several forces to align on both sides of this argument when the case is heard.

Ladies and gentlemen, Jack Thompson

It is nothing new. Something is happening that you don’t like, and you find someone to blame. It is human nature. Nothing brings this out more than a tragedy, and finding a scapegoat has become the “go to” option for many. When this happens, and this happens often, there is always the crusader in the wings, the person that sees the tragedy as being in line with his or her philosophy. Rather than feeling ghoulish for capitalizing on the event, they wrap themselves in a righteous blanket that defies and reflects any and all criticism as “insensitive.”  Thompson is a perfect example of this.

A Florida lawyer, Thompson first came to fame in 1988 when he challenged incumbent Janet Reno for the Dade County State Attorney General seat. Thompson began his campaign by attempting to cast Reno as a lesbian. When the two met face to face, Reno put her hand on his shoulder and told him “I’m only interested in virile men. That’s why I am not attracted to you.” Thompson then filed a police report against Reno for battery for having touched him, thus beginning the first of many instances that are simply difficult to read and then still take the man seriously.

To discredit Thompson is easy. He makes it ok to hate, as long as it is in a “good cause,” and he sees the world in black and white, which means that an actual dialog with the man is impossible. There is nothing more dangerous than a person who believes they are fighting for the fate of the future and is unwilling to see past their own prejudices.

If you need one example to define the character of Thompson, mere hours after the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings, before the killer was known, Thompson predicted that the killer would have trained himself on the game Counter-Strike. Seung-Hui Cho was soon identified as the man responsible, and a search warrant discovered that Cho did not have any video games of any kind, and that while he had briefly played Counter-Strike in high school, it had been more than four years since he had played. In fact, Cho rarely played any video games, and according to an official Virginia state panel, none of the games he did play were violent.

Despite that, Thompson refused to give up the idea and stated “this is not rocket science. When a kid who has never killed anyone in his life goes on a rampage and looks like the Terminator, he’s a video gamer.”

He then sent a letter directly to Bill Gates, blaming him for the Virginia Tech massacre. “Mr. Gates, your company is potentially legally liable (for) the harm done at Virginia Tech. Your game, a killing simulator, according to the news that used to be in the Post, trained him to enjoy killing and how to kill.” Although Microsoft published the game on the Xbox, Gates’ company has no actual connection to Counter-Strike.

And that is just one of many examples of Thompson’s character. He is a reactionary that is quick to spout off, he is homophobic and has frequently attacked the notion of gay equality, and just to be a well-rounded despicable human being, he is a racist.  He once described Sony’s rise in the video game world as “Pearl Harbor 2.”

He once claimed that “nobody shoots anybody in the face unless you’re a hit man or a video gamer.” These are not the words of a reasonable man.  But while Thompson might be the most well known video game opponent, he is not the only one, and many of his arguments are shared by others.