It has been more than 3 months since we last heard from Jack Thompson, the infamous attorney with self-imposed crusade against videogames.
Unfortunately for Mr. Thompson, no 'controversial' games has been released in the past few months. With games like GTA, it was possible to claim that "Games are teaching kids to kill police officers and prostitutes", but what happens when you have nothing but standard fps games set in fictional universe?
Jack Thompson has the answer: Simply, look outside the game itself!!
Here is Jack Thompson's latest complaint letter filed to the Federal Trade Commission against Biosock:
"Take-Two is aggressively marketing its newest Mature-rated video game to kids under 17 years of age... On this Friday's night's 8 pm Eastern time airing of WWE's wrestling program "Smackdown," there were repeated ads for Take-Two/Rockstar Game's Mature-rated, incredibly violent BioShock... [MegaGames note: Rockstar has nothing to do with Bioshock. The game is developed by 2K Boston/2K Australia (previously known as Irrational Games)]
A check of the demographics of the audience of that program reveals that teens under 17 years of age watch that program in huge numbers", said Thompson's letter.
In other words, it is ok for teenagers to watch half naked men engaging in real acts of violence and "smackdown" but they shouldn't see an advertisement for a violent videogame. Or at least, that's what our hilarious attorney believes.
The complaint letter continues: "Remarkably, the video game industry is running ads for games like BioShock on teen-intensive television programs while at the same time its industry-captured "watchdog," the ESRB, is running a self-congratulatory ad campaign to assure parents that the video game ratings system is working and that the industry can be trusted not to target their kids with these Mature-rated games. It is all a lie, as the BioShock ads prove.
This rampant fraudulent trade practice is precisely what "Big Tobacco" did with its "Joe Camel" and other teen-targeting ads, while at the same time lying to Congress that it was not marketing its adult product to kids."
This whole article can be summarized in a single sentence: "Jack Thompson is an attention addict". MegaGames policy prohibits me from using more 'appropriate' words than "addict", but you can figure out a better substitute.
Bioshock, expected to be game of the year 2007, will be released for Xbox 360 and Windows PC on 21/8/2007 in North America and 24/8/2007 in Europe and Australia. Asian release is scheduled for 14/9/2007. Be sure to visit the screens tab for some spectacular Bioshock screenshots.
