Rockstar Games is busy working on the next installment of their hugely popular Grand Theft Auto (GTA) video game franchise. GTA IV is scheduled for release sometime early 2008. The GTA franchise has been, unfairly so, I believe, in the news for quite for a while for being too violent. Some people are going even so far as to claim that the game is a murder simulator training otherwise healthy human beings to be murderers.
One of the most vocal critics of the GTA games is one Jack “Jackhole” Thompson, all around douchebag. To fully explain his douchebaggery would take far too long, so I’m just going to refer anyone interested to Google. The evidence is everywhere. For kicks start by reading up on Janet Reno and Jack Thompson. If nothing, you’ll get a good laugh out of it.
Jackhole’s latest crusade against GTA and Take Two Interactive, the publisher of the game, takes him to yet another threat of a lawsuit or as if Jachole puts it “govern yourself accordingly, or else”. Yes, that does sound exactly like a schoolyard threat. Kinda makes you wonder who gets to call themselves a lawyer in this country, doesn’t it?
Jackhole is claiming that a character in the game is actually him, and since the game has the player kill this character in one of the missions of the game, Rockstar Games is “targeting” him for murder.
As usual, Jackhole’s arguments are full of holes.
It appears that the only resemblance to Jackhole this fictional in-game character has is that they both are lawyers. Well, in as much as a fictional character can be a lawyer. But I suppose since Jackhole is about to lose his bar association membership, he’s also soon going to be a fictional lawyer. So I guess there is some similarity here.
The in-game character doesn’t bear any physical resemblance to Jackhole, is named Goldberg (not Thompson), lives in New York (not Miami) and is a Second Amendment expert (not a First Amendment idiot like Jackhole). There simply isn’t any similarities between the in-game character and Jackhole anywhere else than in Jackhole’s delusional mind.
That has never, of course, stopped Jackhole from going after anyone. So he’s threatening Take Two Interactive with an unspecified legal threat unless the scenes of this in-game character’s killing are removed from the game. Take Two has until 5pm September 21st 2007 to remove the scenes. Or else.
Yes. He really says “or else”.
Anyway, the absolute best part of Jackhole’s little hissy fit is that he’s done the exact same thing he’s accusing Rockstar Games for. Except that he actually referred to a real person. Pot, meet kettle, he’s black.
In October 10th 2005 Jackhole wrote a video game script he called a Modest Video Game Proposal. In the “script” he’s depicting a murder of a person named Paula Eibel, a CEO for a video game company “Take This”. In 2005 Take Two Interactive had Paul Eibeler as the CEO.
So, if he gets to sue Take Two over a fictional character that has no resemblance to him, he should really talk to a real lawyer because his ass should be in a court room for the same reason sometime soon after he “wins” against Take Two. His “script”, after all, leaves absolutely no doubt whatsoever whom he’s murdering in it.
-TPP
