Jack Thompson V. Penny Arcade
You may know Penny Arcade as the occasionally funny gamer comic strip that also raises money for charity so as to raise the public's collective opinion of people that play video games. You may know Jack Thompson as a frothy lunatic that refers to Grand Theft Auto as a "murder simulator" and occasionally threatens to donate money to charity so as to make people that play video games look bad.
Well, they're fighting a little war. Last week, Thompson challenged game companies to create a game to his specifications, which amounts to some kind of ridiculous revenge fantasy: A boy kills somebody after being "trained" by a video game "murder simulator," which drives his father to go on a rampage, starting with the murders of game developers and their families, and then their lawyers, and then everyone at E3. If a game company built this weird little fanfic, Thompson would donate ten grand to the charity of Take Two Entertainments chairman Paul Eibeler's choice.
Of course, this is silly, as video games cost millions of dollars to create.
Penny Arcade pointed out that ten grand is nothing compared to the half a million they've raised over the last two years by way of their holiday-related charity event, Child's Play. Being sort of a dick, Gabe (aka Mike Krahulik), artist of Penny Arcade, emailed Thompson and essentially told him that, well, ten grand's a drop in the bucket.
At which time Jack Thompson called him on the phone to yell at him.
Since then, Thompson's threatened to have the police raid Penny Arcade for "harassment," (be warned, however, that link's to a LiveJournal, and I'm certain those aren't held to the same Strict Journalistic Standards that a three-man weblog is) though he provided The Man with an incorrect URL, retracted his offer to donate money anywhere, stating that the whole thing was "satire," and Penny Arcade has announced that they're donating ten thousand dollars to the charity they think Paul Eibeler would want it to go to.
This won't stop being funny for a couple days. Keep a look out for more.
(PS: This may well end in our first legal threat. Here's hoping.)
Well, they're fighting a little war. Last week, Thompson challenged game companies to create a game to his specifications, which amounts to some kind of ridiculous revenge fantasy: A boy kills somebody after being "trained" by a video game "murder simulator," which drives his father to go on a rampage, starting with the murders of game developers and their families, and then their lawyers, and then everyone at E3. If a game company built this weird little fanfic, Thompson would donate ten grand to the charity of Take Two Entertainments chairman Paul Eibeler's choice.
Of course, this is silly, as video games cost millions of dollars to create.
Penny Arcade pointed out that ten grand is nothing compared to the half a million they've raised over the last two years by way of their holiday-related charity event, Child's Play. Being sort of a dick, Gabe (aka Mike Krahulik), artist of Penny Arcade, emailed Thompson and essentially told him that, well, ten grand's a drop in the bucket.
At which time Jack Thompson called him on the phone to yell at him.
Since then, Thompson's threatened to have the police raid Penny Arcade for "harassment," (be warned, however, that link's to a LiveJournal, and I'm certain those aren't held to the same Strict Journalistic Standards that a three-man weblog is) though he provided The Man with an incorrect URL, retracted his offer to donate money anywhere, stating that the whole thing was "satire," and Penny Arcade has announced that they're donating ten thousand dollars to the charity they think Paul Eibeler would want it to go to.
This won't stop being funny for a couple days. Keep a look out for more.
(PS: This may well end in our first legal threat. Here's hoping.)
posted by Jon at 1:17 PM
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