Jack Thompson

Jack Thompson was a U.S. attorney based in Miami, and best known for his outspoken views against video games. Before his "crusade" against video games, he focused most of his attention on rap music. He first received national attention when he publicly protested Miami-based rap group 2 Live Crew (notable for their 1989 album, As Nasty As They Wanna Be, and their single from it, "Me So Horny") and the 1992 song, "Cop Killer", by Body Count (led by rapper Ice T).

Thompson's most frequent target was Rockstar Games and its parent company, Take Two Interactive, because of his dislike of the Grand Theft Auto series, developed and published by Rockstar and Take Two, respectively. Rockstar had taken out an injunction against Thompson preventing him from attempting to block distribution of its games (which he had, of course, broken repeatedly). Other companies that had dealt with Thompson's focus include id Software (makers of Doom), Microsoft (over Halo), Sony (for simply having the platform on which Grand Theft Auto has been most successful), Nintendo (for having Manhunt 2 on the Wii), Wendy's (for selling Wii toys consisting of Super Mario, Excite Truck and Wii Sports because it was supporting the system that Manhunt 2 would be on), Penny Arcade (see below), various video gaming publications (for disagreeing with him), the US Department of Defense (due to the "Unholy Alliance" between them and violent games) and Wikipedia (he threatened to sue because he thought his Wikipedia page was 'a work of fiction'). VG Cats creator Scott Ramsoomair also had an encounter with Thompson shortly after openly mocking him in one strip.

To keep up with his wacky antics, the video game blog Destructoid keeps a nice index of new stories about him. The Florida Bar Association began procedures to have him disbarred (i.e. de-lawyered) in February 2007, essentially because he was making a mockery of the entire legal process and behaving like a douche, which Thompson desperately tried to stall (including stating that disbarring him goes against his religious beliefs; and an illustrated filing that resembles a cross between Zero Punctuation and Time Cube, complete with Nazi analogies that are hilarious coming from someone who supports censorship). Perhaps the most hilarious of these is the bit where he tried to point out the "conflict of interest" that apparently existed with one of judges being close friends with the head of a Florida gay news website that links to gay porn... by filing gay porn with the court records. That endeared him to the judges.

He also wrote a letter addressed to the mother of Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Take-Two, suggesting, among other things, that rather than raise him as a boy scout, as Strauss characterized himself, she raised him as a Hitler Youth, and suggested she have a gamer show her the latest Grand Theft Auto game, but noted she might have difficulty finding one who hadn't killed yet.

Surprisingly, one thing Thompson doesn't have trouble with is Mass Effect. He's said that "the guy who shot his mouth off about it had no idea what the Hell he was talking about" and that "this contrived controversy is absolutely ridiculous". We can hear your brains breaking from over here. Maybe it's because the controversy was about the sex scene in the game, not violence... except for the fact that Thompson has previously raised a fuss over sexual content in everything from The Sims 2 to Bully. That would have been the perfect advert for Mass Effect: "a game so good even Jack Thompson wouldn't slag it off".

Perhaps the most well-documented story relating to Jack Thompson came when he dared the video game industry to make his dream a reality. In "A Modest Video Game Proposal" (the title a spin on A Modest Proposal, an 18th century satirical pamphlet which addressed the abuse/neglect of the Irish people by the British Empire; no doubt Jonathan Swift spun in his grave when Thompson named his proposal as such), a man's son is killed by another kid who played nothing but violent video games. You, as the father, are tasked with killing everyone in the video game industry, from video game execs down to the poor schmucks working part-time at video game stores. Thompson also promised to donate $10,000 to the charity of Take Two chairman Paul Eibeler's choice. Thompson then saw his entire fit of satire blow up in his face when — GASP! — people took him up on his proposal. Games such as I'm OK — A Murder Simulator fit the bill to a T, but when presented with it, Thompson decided he'd rather not cough up the money anyway, claiming he meant it as satirical and not seriously. Thankfully, Penny Arcade stepped in, and donated the aforementioned ten grand to the ESA Foundation (which is what Eibeler would have wanted); the memo line on the check read, "For Jack Thompson Because Jack Thompson Won't." While his original refusal to pay the money was perhaps reasonable (as it supposedly wasn't meant seriously), what Thompson did next wasn't: In response to the donation, Thompson sent a fax to the Seattle police department — or rather, everyone except the Seattle police department, for reasons only Jack knows — complaining that Penny Arcade was conducting criminal harassment against him. Yes, that's right, because they donated 10,000 smackers to a charity. If all this is Thompson's idea of satire, then Jon Stewart's job is safe.

On June 4, 2008, Jack Thompson was recommended for Enhanced Disbarment by the Bar. Predictably, Thompson made a general ass of himself at the proceedings. (See article Template:Http://www.gamespot.com/news/6192091.html.) As of September 25 (Ironic, since that's Halo 3's 1 Year Anniversary), Thompson has been permanently disbarred. And There Was Much Rejoicing. (In the past 300 years, in America, there have been a grand total of fewer than forty disbarments...a very prestigious dishonour).

He recently filed a lawsuit against the social networking site Facebook.