Aliens in the Desert

More about your buddy and mine, Jack Thompson:
Jack Thompson is Right!
This is a good read, and very insightful and true.

I also wanted to comment on the fact that I read over Jack Thompson’s exact proposal for his $10,000 game deal. I do respect the statement made by the Penny Arcade boys offering up $10,000 in Jack’s name, but the game they are offering up as having fulfilled Jack’s proposal doesn’t cut the mustard. Here’s the exact wording:

I’ll write a check for $10,000 to the favorite charity of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc’s chairman, Paul Eibeler - a man Bernard Goldberg ranks as #43 in his book 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America - if any video game company will create, manufacture, distribute, and sell a video game in 2006 like the following:

The GTA mod featuring Jack and the other games that have come out of this proposal do not fit with this description. This is clearly aimed at the major video game companies, not independent developers. And none of these games are currently for “sale”. So although it’s awesome (and humerous) that $10,000 is being donated to the ESA in Jack’s name, it’s not quite fair to cry “foul” or “hypocrisy” here.

The gaming industry can use a shot of reality now and again. If we don’t take the time to occasionally look around and question what it is we are doing, someone else WILL do it for us. Reacting as if games and the industry are above reproach is being just as blind, idiotic and self-serving as a certain unpopular attorney.