Aliens in the Desert

I was reading this article on Game Girl Advance when it hit me…”Hey, I saw Jack Thompson in Urban Dead! I think he was claiming that NecroTech was inspired by violent video games!”

Sure enough, Jack Thompson is bunked down in the same mall as I am, spouting his anti-video game philosphies and occasionally wandering out to slaughter un-suspecting zombies.

Now, I think this is a pretty interesting political statement by Mr. Psuedo-Thompson. I mean, people also have names that poke fun at GW and Cheney, but no one really pays attention to those guys. But since Thompson isn’t exactly a house-hold source of mockery, it may be that the players of these zombie hunters who are crowded together for safety in this fictional mall only snicker at first at the obviously tongue-in-cheek video game comments. But when they later see the real Jack Thompson’s name in the news, it will stick with them and resonate. They’ll think “Hey, I know that guy! He’s real?” Maybe they’ll be intrigued and do some quick and dirty online research.

Maybe that’s exactly what Psuedo-Thompson has in mind. A brilliant campaign to educate random gamers about the mind-set of the real Thompson. Or maybe, as a friend of mine suggested, he’s just a troll.

On a related side-note, I want to offer a huge round of applause to the guys at Penny Arcade for chronicling their adventures with Mr. Thompson and putting their money where his mouth is. Apparently, as a “satire” he offered $10,000 to a charity of Paul Eibeler’s (president of Take Two Interactive)choice should someone put together a game where members of the video game industry were the targets of extreme violence. And of course, some modders took him up on this (duh). Thompson didn’t cough up, so Penny Arcade coughed up for him — donating $10,000 in his name to the Entertainment Association Software Foundation. Awesome. To me this is such a phenomenally poignant statement. You can read their tales here.

Some more resources:
Jack’s one page web-site.
His proposal for a violent game, re-printed on GameCube Advanced.
Wikipedia is full of knowledge on the man.
Get the mod!