Culture Clash

(March 2006)

You Don't Know, Jack

Thanks for all you do

Dear Jack Thompson,

Please don't dismiss this as a gag of some sort just because it's coming from someone with ties to the game industry. I mean it from the heart. Instead of my usual column, I'm taking a page out of your book and writing an open letter, because I want to thank you for your efforts against video games. We owe you. You may not know that your tireless work has had a hugely positive impact on our industry. You've done so much for the business, and you've taught us a lot along the way. You just don't know how good you've been to all of us, so I'm going to tell you.

You boost our bottom line. You get bushels of mainstream press coverage for some of our games – free advertising for us. My only request is that you and your cohorts try to be a little less scattershot in your efforts to raise awareness of our product, because sometimes you dramatically increase the sales of our more forgettable titles at the expense of good ones. 25 to Life, Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure and Kuma|War are all bad games. Left to their own devices, they'd have died quiet deaths at retail, but relentless treatment of their offensive nature has really moved some units. If crap games perform well at retail, studios and publishers will continue to produce them. Moreover, the hefty media attention means gamers will be more aware of, and therefore more likely to purchase, the bad games… leaving intelligent and innovative ones to sit on shelves. So I'd rather you did an interview on CNN about Shadow of the Colossus or Darwinia , two games in which stuff is killed but about which you never complain.

You keep us on-message. Several weeks ago, a profoundly lonely, unhappy young man who enjoyed video games committed suicide. Everyone in the shocked gaming and development community expressed overwhelming sympathy and support for the stricken family and friends, letting them know that they, their loss and their loved one were collectively in our thoughts. You cut through all the sentimental twaddle, though; your response just implied that he was going to burn in hell. This inspirational message of condolence kept things in perspective in a way that our outpouring of compassion just couldn't equal.

You help sick kids. When Penny Arcade bailed you out by giving the $10,000 to charity that you were supposed to, you called them an “extortion factory” and tried to have them busted, but it didn't work out quite as you'd planned. Here's a site run by two hooligans who have nothing, really, to offer the world – except the hundreds of thousands Child's Play has raised for hospitalized kids. It wasn't enough for PA that they had their fingers more firmly on the pulse of this industry than anyone else; they wanted to do some good as well. And thanks to your tireless awareness-raising, 2005 was the biggest year ever for Child's Play. A whole bunch of sick children have new murder simulators to enjoy, because of you.

You call attention to inane litigation. Sacrificing yourself to raise awareness of a nonsensical and frivolous lawsuit was one of the most decent and altruistic acts I've observed. Your raving in front of Judge Moore's bench may have cost you your license to practice law in Alabama and the respect of your peers, but it was good news for the game industry. The attention the suit is getting because of you will deflate the sails of other would-be plaintiffs, since this case is even more patently absurd than most lawsuits in which a psychopath tries to blame video games for his lunacy. Thanks to you, people will begin to realize that suing the games industry because some people are evil is like the David Berkowitz suing Pet Land for turning him into the Son of Sam.

You wrote a book that proves games are okay. Out of Harm's Way , which today sank to 468,388 th on the Amazon sales list, is basically a 234-page memoir about your conversion to Christianity. While it makes for an interesting read, it's unlikely to convince anyone who's on the fence about the supposed threat posed by video games. I understand that you had to fill those 234 pages of a book that's ostensibly about how games are bad with something. But since even a court of law has acknowledged that there's no real evidence games are harmful, there's no book there. Meanwhile, lots (and lots, and lots, and lots, and lots, and that's just with a single keyword search) of much thicker books have been written about how games are good for you – in moderation, of course.

I know many gamers and developers think that you're bad for business. But I for one am grateful to you. In fact, you're one of the best things that has ever happened to it, at least from a financial perspective. And you've done us no lasting harm. Anti-game legislation is collapsing all over the United States. Games of indefensibly poor taste are everywhere. Your relentless bleating is like a mandate, encouraging studios to make the most appalling games possible. This is actually the only bad thing you've done to us – that's right, you're stifling innovation and flooding the market with the very games you claim to loathe.

Thank you, Jack Thompson. The few examples given above are just a taste of the good that your publicity-slurping antics do for the games industry. And I'm grateful not just for the help you've given us (and the harm you've done your own side), but for you yourself, for the way you prosecute this war of yours. If you weren't the spearhead of the anti-video game movement, someone else would have to be. And that someone else might be charismatic, rational, well-spoken and deft with the press. Instead we got you, and you've done more for us than all the PR firms in the world could have.

Sincerely,

Matthew Sakey