The Never-Ending Story: Jack Thompson Weighs in on Mass Effect

The Mass Effect saga is never-ending, and it still has several conflicts yet to resolve. Today's a big celebration for me as well, given that I'm just now mentioning Jack Thompson for the first of what will surely be a thousand times on this blog, given its subject. In case you're not aware, Jack Thompson is a Florida attorney who's likely the biggest enemy of gaming ever, given his many (failed) lawsuits to supress gaming, particularly anything to do with Grand Theft Auto. He recently arose from his coffin to comment on Grand Theft Auto IV as its release date was finally announced, and today he took a surprising position on the Mass Effect controversy.

Through email correspondence with Brian Crecente at Kotaku, it has been revealed that Jack Thompson is sort of defending Mass Effect. The emails are really brief, as you can read from that link above, but Jack says that "The guy [Cooper Lawrence or the original conservative blogger guy?] who shot his mouth off about it had no idea what the Hell he was talking about." He then adds "This contrived controversy is absolutely ridiculous." This took the socks off of Brian Crecente and the rest of the gaming world, just the fact that Jack makes sense on this issue.

In much less surprising news, Hal Halpin of the ECA has sent a letter to FOX demanding that they recant on the many errors in their broadcast. Yup, he would do that, wouldn't he? Barely even news. Sorry to end things on that note.

Studying Studies: 25 Things Games Have Been "Proven" to Do

Here is a nice master list of video game studies and research, archived by their general conclusions. As you'll see, the studies very often contradict one another. This is organized to be as ironic as possible, by the way, not by date or something useful like that.

Video Games:

• Force children to imitate games negatively
• Damage brain functions, affecting emotional control
• Increase emotional arousal and decrease self-control brain activity
• Raise the risk of aggressive behavior
• Increase aggressive thoughts, but not behavior
• Can make you drive more aggressively
• Teach both aggression and more useful things
• Have absolutely nothing to do with aggression
• Make only aggressive kids more aggressive
• Make only angry people more aggressive
• Do not cause youth violence
• Can be healthy for some children, even violent games
• Are less emotionally involving than film and television, meaning violence is less upsetting and immersion in the world is actually less complete
• Improve visuospatial cognition (better understand what you're looking at, basically)
• Increase equality in spatial skills between men and women
• Give you less time to study
  
• Cause minor drops in time for reading and homework
• Have great educational value
• Lower your school grades (or at least your perception of them)
• Teach tolerance of the vast diversity online
• Make you less likely to own a pet
• Could cure acrophobia
• Fulfill your psychological needs
• Give you a sense of freedom and accomplishment
• Can treat ADHD

Be sure to visit those links for real details, but those are all the headline-worthy conclusions those studies showed. I suspect I'll expand this list in the future or make another post with just a list, because just comparing the conclusions side-by-side is mind-boggling.

I've Got to Admit, It's Getting Better: Cooper Lawrence Apologizes!

We Win! Hooray! Huzzah! Cooper Lawrence said she misspoke and now that she's "seen the game and seen the sex scenes it’s kind of a joke." In a good way, I swear. Just read the New York Times article for all the real information. I'm just here to rejoice, basically. Otherwise, everything on the Mass Effect story is still the same, with FOX offering EA a chance on TV, and EA still not sure whether they should accept or not.

Hooray again, whoo!

All Together Now: 1/22/08 - 1/25/08

I'm going to officially get into the stride of the All Together Now posts right here, right now. They're going to aggregate my news from the previous week, and they'll be posted every Friday, 'cause I've got stuff to do on Fridays. Here you are:


1/23/08 - Webgamania examined V-Tech Rampage and less seriously considered the controversy surrounding Presidential Paintball.

I explained and examined the Sierra Club's 1% "couch potato" tax on televisions and video games.

1/24/08 - The gamer revenge against Cooper Lawrence for her FOX News appearance suddenly struck. I pretended not to condone such behavior, I think.


Yeah, not really so much in two days, but I've got to get into the rhythm. Which reminds me, I've got to find Gitaroo Man at one of these Gamestops...

Sail the ship... chop the tree... skip the rope... look at me!

Mass Effect Story Update: The Cult of Perfection Given a Tarnished Record

Just quickly, I'm going to go over the more recent news on the FOX News coverage of Mass Effect I mentioned in my first All Together Now post earlier. I think you'll all be amused if you haven't heard of this yet.

Firstly, Jeff Brown from EA set FOX straight better than Geoff Keighley did in letter form (not like they'll show it on air, but oh well). You can read that letter here, because I've got to get on to the really exciting bit.

Cooper Lawrence, as I stated in my fun fact of the day, is likely even more hated than Jack Thompson among politically-active gamers right now due to her part in the same FOX News story. As you can observe in the video linked there, she laughed at the idea of having actually played the game, but represented Geoff Keighley's opposition and was given most of the speaking time. Therefore, the Amazon page of the book she promoted through that broadcast has:

• Nine 5-star reviews
• Zero 4-star reviews
• Two 3-star reviews
• Forty-Six 2-star reviews
• and 386 1-star reviews

Divine intervention, or more likely, gamers giving her a taste of her own medicine. Here's a nice quote:

"I'm also quite disappointed that Mrs. Lawrence would use sex appeal (the cover) to sell her book. Whether she realizes it or not there are a lot of kids in book stores today that will see this and get the wrong impression.

Image means a lot Mrs. Lawrence, and you are damaging the youth of America."

That was perhaps the nicest of the reviews I found, some of which were a bit over the top, but I think that one was pitch perfect. This just made me feel like the Internet is a wonderful place all over again this morning. I hope you feel the same way.

Also, be sure to look at the tags customers have associated with the book. The entire list is very entertaining, including "bigot", "hipocrisy", and some phrases I'm unprepared to tarnish my site with at this time.

Update Update: An anonymous source at FOX claims that they have now invited EA onto the network themselves. I'd much rather they just apologize than try to fight with more lies, but we'll see what happens.

Hallelujah, praise the lord! Divine Intervention!

You Have a Kid, I'll Tax his Name, You like Xbox, I'll Tax Your Game

The Sierra Club is proposing a 1% sales tax on televisions and video games similar to the Wisconsin tax proposed a while ago. This law would be in effect in New Mexico if passed, but a similar proposal in that same state has apparently been shot down before, though I can't find that specific instance. The tax would be set out to "tax part of the problem to fund the solution", with the funds of approximately 4 million dollars going to get children outside and families out to state parks.

As was the situation with the Wisconsin proposal, where the tax was going to fund reform to the youth judiciary system, the cause is fine with me. Still, the idea of a sales tax on video games is spreading, and it's a dangerous idea. The Wisconsin proposal seemed to link video games with youth crime, even if it wasn't meant to. This proposal is more justifiable in its link, that being video games to children not getting enough outside activity, but the tax doesn't need to suddenly spread to every state. Chances are the proposal won't gain any ground, but the idea will likely spread to other states now.

small update: The Electronics Consumer Association has now responded to the couch potato tax idea, and unsurprisingly, they're against it. They say "it's unconstitutional to target video games with a special tax that would unduly burden gamers, leaving out other forms of entertainment media like movies, music and books. This proposed tax would also stifle trade and disproportionately impact generations X and Y, who are increasingly becoming more politically aware and vocal." There you have it.

'Cause I'm the Taxman

Webgamania: Controversial Webgames

Webgamania- When people who don't play online games actually care what's in webgames, due to something controversial they include. Do not confuse with Webgaymania, which is entirely different and need not be discussed here.

The most famous instance of Webgamania is V-Tech Rampage, apparently the 4th most evil game ever, according to GamesRadar. Basically, you control the killer in the Virginia Tech Massacre. As a joke, the creator claimed that he would only remove the game after he had received $2,000 in donations, with an extra $1,000 necessary for an apology. According to him, he didn't receive any money. Anyway, the game was clearly controversial, and got a lot more attention because of that, and still is, because I'm writing about it. I'm not linking to it, but I'm going to play it to see what the big deal is about. Until I'm done, content yourself with this much less significant controversy:

Presidential Paintball is the newest in a series of controversial election mini-games. Why? Jesus, I don't know. I mean, you're theoretically shooting other candidates in the White House, but if you play the game you'll realize it's just a stupid, easy game. It's really tame and it's a game about paintball. That's two steps of reality away from actually shooting a candidate. If it were a game where you really killed or even hurt the candidates, then that'd be bad I guess, but you're just hitting them with paintballs. Get over yourselves, Smoking Gun. At least it's not in controversy just because it doesn't include Ron Paul. Seriously, Ron Paul supporters need to stop sending hate mail, it ruined his image for me.

Okay, I'm done playing V-Tech Rampage. (I actually wrote that horrible paragraph on the other game a while ago and never used it, but I really did play V-Tech Rampage after copying it and pasting it here.) Jesus, that's pretty screwed up. Though completely irrelevant, the game is pretty mediocre. It's very short and not that interesting as a pure game, which I consider very necessary to defend a controversial one. The game really goes over the top in the third level, the actual massacre. The stuff they say while you're shooting the people is, uh, let's just say really bad. I don't think I can really defend that game, though it's definitely exercising free speech to an insane degree. I wouldn't suggest they take the game down from newgrounds, but rather just let everyone direct all complaints to the game's author himself. To continue to use simple language, the game's pretty screwed up.


I feel somewhat dirty now after that