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Jack Thompson sends 15-year old son to buy BioShock from Best Buy |
Listed in: Wii, PS3, PSP, Nintendo DS, Xbox 360, PC Gaming Tags: Best Buy, ESRB, Jack Thompson, PS2
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Anti-violent video games lawyer Jack Thompson doesn't spend his free time educating parents about M-rated games. Instead, he sends his own 15-year old son in a mission to get a copy of Take-Two's BioShock (Xbox 360, PC ) something that should be in the hands of adults. Back when the child was 10, he also made him purchase Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.
According to the email Thompson sent Joystiq, the ace attorney is trying to prove that "hyperviolent and sex-themed Manhunt 2 (Wii, PSP, PS2) and Grand Theft Auto IV (Xbox 360, PS3) will be widely sold to kids of all ages despite promises by Take-Two, the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), and major retailers."
Thompson also demands to fire the Best Buy's store manager and the female clerk who sold the game to his son. "The entire video game age rating system is a fraud perpetrated upon American families from sea to shining sea," he said after using his own child to demonstrate such fraud.
Via Joystiq
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Nah, it's just because Bioshock is that good.
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Mr. Tompson broke the law THE SAME as the employee did by sending his son to go get it. He should be charged as well. Was this done on his own or was it set up with the local authorities? Local authorities or a judge can authorise such an operation but a lawyer IS NOT AN AUTHORITY. Any prosecutor in this situation would use the two wrongs don't make a right tactic against anybody else. Mr. Thompson broke the law. He should loose his f'ing license.
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Game stores don't have to do ***** about ratings. esrb is a private company and has nothing to do with the law.
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/wrist
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Jack Thompson comes in and sees that his kid just bought some new awesome M+ rated game. WHO TAUGHT YOU TO GET THIS!?! I LEARNED IT FROM YOU DAD! YOU SHOWED ME HOW!
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Also, weird thought, what poor blind lady mated with this "thing" I mean look at him, I'm serious when I say blind, she would have had to been. Either that or it's son was made in a Laboratory.
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crap like this shouldnt happen
if I want to buy my kid GTA so be it but he should not be able to himself (as I did buy him gta lcs for psp)
but in any case she shoudlnt be fired for it its a mistake shrugs it happens just be nice if it did not
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So after this one encounter at one store with one clerk he's ready to lump all stores and all clerks into a category of "They'll sell anything to anyone."
Well sure, that makes sense...we all know by now that everyone can be judged based on the actions of a few. Just ask the Muslims (thanks, Bin Laden), the Iraqis (thanks, Hussein), the Germans (thanks Hitler), and even the Americans (thanks Bush and McVeigh).
I'm going to go ahead and nominate this guy for Biggest Douche in the Universe award...just in case no one has mentioned it yet.
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"58% are ages 18-49"
So over half the viewers are over 17. When is WWE even on TV anyway? Shouldn't kids be in bed by then?
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This guy is exactly what is wrong with the rating system for games. Instead of trying to find ways to fix it so that a kid wont be able to purchase M rated games, he wants to get rid of any kind of violence in games. This is a shotgun approach to resolving an issue. I say we leave it to the parents to decide what their kid should be playing. I mean, lets say the kid even gets away with purchasing an M rated game... what kind of a parent doesnt know whats in their kids console? Your telling me a parent never sees whats on the TV screen when their kid is sitting there for hours playing?
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It's true, the rating system is flawed and places that sell games don't educate their clerks well enough. It's not hard for game retailers to just tell their sales people to ask for identification or to have a parent to buy a certain game.
While Jack Thompson takes these things just a bit too far, and might just be only after his own agenda, this problem is pretty real.
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"Violence and blood is fine as long as there's no nudity"
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The "mission" is only a cover up, he loves to play violent games!
Go go thompson.
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no offense to all you kids, but though i might be willing to buy some of these games for my kids, i want to have some amount of control over which ones they can purchase. its reasonable for a parent to want that, grow up and you'll understand.
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Imagine selling such games to 5 year olds or even earlier? Kids have been playing gory games since the first known violent computer games (hence Mortal Kombat, Doom I/II, etc.). I see nothing wrong with children playing violent games, as long they know how to distinguish between fantasy and reality. To tell ya the truth, I been playing bloody games since childhood (which I bet many of ya have).
How about selling a game to a 40-year old dude who can't distinguish between fantasy and reality? If such a person did that because of violent games, age has nothing to do with it. Its the matter of person's maturity and being able to distinguish whats real and whats fake. I'm 19 right now, but have been playing violent games since about 7.
Remember folks, its the maturity and being able to distinguish the differences that matters, not age.
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-___-;;
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Anyway, I don't care, it's just about game sellers policies... I don't care if they update it, it should be better this way anyway, just like walmart stopped selling guns to underaged, lol. Anyway, I'm AO rated so I can play whatever I want.
And right now, the ESBR is sued non-stop (or accused of something) so the rating should get lower by the time (I mean, a cartoon is more violent then a movie? wtf).
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Well, he may be a creep, but he did manage to prove his point, for once.
That being said, I don't think that such media being exposed to someone over 12-13 is such a big deal. I originate from India and I have seen movies with quite a large amount of violence even when I was very young (I guess they were not very serious about the ratings system over there at that time), and yet the ONLY violence I've committed so far is taking part in a State-level Martial Arts competition when I was in University.
To summarize, my opinion, based upon personal experience is that, unless there is a latent (or blatant) tendency to indulge in violence, some exposure to violent media does not really affect the psyche of even young people. This tendency is there from birth, as no child is born with a "tabula rasa" (or clean slate).
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what he meant was, the amount of children watching WWE. But then again, tv and movies shall never fit in the category of videogames, thus having less limitations, which I truly don't yet understand why.
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enough said
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