In case nobody knows what the title means, I’ll explain. First, you need to know the players involved. Penny Arcade is a video game-related webcomic and news site. It’s one of the most popular and consistantly funny and punctual webcomics out there. In addition, they host an annual toy drive called Child’s Play which benefits children’s hospitals around the country. Jack Thompson is a Florida lawyer who, in recent years, has taken up numerous cases against violent video games. His most recent legal adventure is against Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. He claims that the game trained a young man to kill two police officers (which I think is a pretty big stretch) among other things which you can read about in the wikipedia entry.
The story: It’s in the wikipedia entry, but for those that want don’t want to read it, the long and short of it is that Thompson wrote an open letter to the gaming community challenging them to design and sell a video game which is about a father of a son killed by video games killing video game makers (read that sentence again to make sure you follow it correctly.) He added the stipulation that if someone did do this, he’d give $10,000 to the charity of Take Two chairman Paul Eibeler’s choice. Thompson didn’t expect someone to actually do it, but someone did. And all of a sudden, we have a fufilled challenge, but no money. The reason? Because the challenge was a “satire”. Thompson claims his challenge was a parody of Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, which is an 18th centry satire which says that Irish families should eat their children.
Now, my take on this whole thing: I don’t know what this guy’s problem is. He made the challenge, which is fair enough. It’s an odd challenge to say the least, and it’s one that a normal person wouldn’t make. (I mean, c’mon… I’d challenge my friends to say embarrasing things to people and do ridiculous things for a laugh, but what Thompson proposed is on-its-face disturbing.) But if he wants to make a challenge to the video game makers community, it’s fine by me. But, he tried to make them look bad by offering the charity donation on top of this. I guess the intention was to make it look like video gamers don’t care about charity or people in need (which reminds me of the movie Head of State where Chris Rock’s character is the subject of a smear campaign ad in which is opponent points out that he went to an anti-cancer convention, whereas Rock’s character did not, which leads to the really obvious conclusion that Mays Gilliam is “For Cancer”.) What Thompson didn’t count on was a group of game modders actually taking him up on the challenge. Thompson quickly pointed out that “it was a satire” and proceeded to NOT donate any money. Penny Arcade cartoonist Mike Krahulik (whose alter ego is Gabe) then proceeded to show up Thompson by donating the promised $10,000 to The Entertainment Software Association Foundation on behalf of Jack Thompson. Thompson then responded by contacting the Seattle Police complaining that he’s being harrassed (the letter was so poorly constructed, it would’ve been better constructed by the idiots who troll the Rajah.com forums. As another aside: he got the URL of Penny Arcade wrong in the letter. Hasty much?)
I have no idea what’s goin on now. You’d best go to some other sites (such as PA) to get yourself up to date. The bottom line is that Penny Arcade is fucking awesome in all regards and you should go to their store and “buy their Goddamn stuff!” because they surely deserve our patronage.