US JUDGE Ronald Friedman has decided that the Rockstar game, Bully, can be sold in the shops. Friedman said the game was pretty violent but not as violent as stuff shown every night on the telly. Vociferous lawyer Jack Thompson had wanted the game banned from being sold to minors, labelling it a "Columbine simulator". He siad as much to a court in Florida. The game, which will be released later this week in the UK under the title Canis Canem Edit, Latin for Dog Eat Dog, will have a teen-only rating in the US and a 15 rating in the UK. The judge sat down with an employee of publisher Take Two to decide how violent the game is. This miffed Thompson as he thought the employee would hoodwink the judge by showing him non-violent action. But the judge has made his mind up. "There's a lot of violence," he said, "a whole lot. Less than we see on television every night." ยต the Inquirer
Wow, that's retarded. A colombine simulator?? Your character doesn't go on murdering rampages, nor is he even the bully (as the title might suggest); he's supposed to be the one who stands up to the bullies and such, according to the overview. game site here * Does anyone know why it has a totally different title in the UK? I don't get why they'd do that. "Bully" is pretty self-explanatory but why would they think that this other latin title will be more appealing to UK people? This game looks pretty good btw. Too bad it's on PS2 =\
Jack Thompson is a fucking retard. IF he was right, there'd be many, many more people shooting up schools, beating people, etc. He has a very narrow view, and wants to blame video games for all of the violence. If you look at school shootings, should we be more concerned on how a 16 year old got a hold of semi- and fully-automatic weapons? Now, I'm not saying they were not influenced at all by the games, but there were much clearer issues than playing a video game. The facts are Jack Thompson has an agenda: video games are the epitome of evil and will corrupt the youth of America. If that's true, why doesn't Japan have these problems? You don't hear about some Japanese student going postal, and they play video games more than Americans. Oh, wait, never mind that fact. Oh, and JT may be in contempt of court for smarting off to the judge over the verdict in Florida.
I hate it too when people try to press rulings on topics they totally don't understand. As people have said Bully is by no means a Colombine Shooter. Aside from not having any guns at all in the game it's not even violent. There's no blood, there's no death. It's rated T for Teen. This is not GTA in a school, it's simply shares the same developer and openended signature style.
What are you referring to here? - And is this guy someone who has raised this kind of noise b4? This is the first time I've heard of him but you speak as if this is his regular thing.
Well, he tried to get the courts in Florida to block the sale of Bully and demanded that he get a copy from Rockstar. The judge sided with Rockstar/Take-Two, and when the verdict was handed down, Thompson smarted off along the lines of 'hey, this isn't finished." He's a dick, basically. Jack Thompson is a lawyer that thinks video games (the violent ones) are the biggest threat to Americans and corrupts everyone. It's a crusade for him and he ignores the mounds of evidence stating that video games are not the cause of such things as school shootings. If he were right, most of us here would have gone psycho, shot people up and be dead or sitting in a prison cell. The best evidence they have is a casual link between violent video games and violent actions. There is no proven evidence that video games cause violence, which is what Thompson is asserting. Now, it's not to say there is no influence, but you cannot directly link tragedies like Colombine to video games. Again, should a bigger concern be on how a 16-year-old obtained an automatic submachine gun in the first place, not if he was playing Quake?
I can't believe how easy it is for people to get hold of firearms in America, we have very tight rules here about guns. Despite that we still have a problem with youth violence in some of the poorer/run down estates.
Well, the types of guns that the shooters at Colombine got were either illegal entirely, or required a special license and an age requirement of 21. It's not a matter of the law--they broke it--they illegally obtained those guns, so a more restrictive law wouldn't have done a whole lot. Back to Thompson: I just saw on Gamespot that he's going after Midway for the latest Mortal Kombat game. Why? Well, it's because you can Kustom Kreate your fighter, and someone made up a JT character. This was not an unlockable character, mind you. A gamer made the character up, and JT is going after Midway. This is like holding Smith & Wesson accountable for all murders committed with a S&W gun, at best. At worst, it's a complete joke. Yes, Jack Thompson is anal retentive and the type of lawyer that makes every one else look like a saint.
