In an open letter to a load of US journalists, Thompson outlined the game concept and offered to donate $10,000 to the charity of Paul Eibeler’s choice (Paul Eibeler being the chairman of Take Two) if someone actually goes ahead and develops it.
The game’s main character is one Osaki Kim, the father of a high school student who was beaten to death by a 14 year old with a baseball bat. The murderer also happened to be into videogames, naturally, and had been obsessively playing one in which you kill people with - yep, a baseball bat.
I don’t see what he’s trying to do. It’s like he’s trying to shock the industry… but really he’s just making himself look like a hypocritical idiot.
That being said, it wouldn’t really be a fun game. If you are fighting civilians and non-combatants… well, they don’t really fight back, so there’s no opportunity for escalating difficulty.
Thompson’s letter ends: “How about it, videogame industry? I’ve got the check and you’ve got the tech. It’s all a fantasy, right? No harm can come from such a game, right? Go ahead, videogame moguls. Target yourselves as you target others. I dare you.”
Sure, Jack… you could have this game made. How well did Postal and Postal 2 sell? Are they considered mainstream?
You can make violent porn films, too, but that doesn’t mean that all film is worthless.
How long until some bored college students do a mod exactly as ol’ Jack describes, then try to collect on behalf of their “Beer for the Needy” charity?
Heck, just do a Flash game, take the check, and endorse it over to the legal team that’s suing California over the law preventing the sale of violent games to kids. :)
I would love to see the Postal guys make a mod of their own game to meet the challenge, thus using JT as a lever for free publicity for their godawful crap.
Ah, but you’d be fighting non-combatant videogames players who’d obviously therefore be trained to a military level in all forms of violent expression. All equations balance in the crazy domain.
You may have seen Jack’s proposal mentioned on various news sites. He’s offering 10 grand to charity if a game developer makes a game based on his insane proposal.
So I got his email address and I went ahead and sent Jack a note this morning:
10 grand is pretty weak man. Through our charity www.childsplaycharity.org gamers have given over half a million dollars in toys and cash to children’s hospitals all over the country.
I’ll let you know if he responds.
The fact is when we kick off Child’s Play 2005 on November 1st we’ll be going global. We’ll be delivering videogames and toys to children’s hospitals all over the world now. I don’t think there’s any better response to Jack’s insane ramblings than that. Maybe Jack would like to donate his 10 grand to Child’s Play, that could buy a lot of Game Boys.
… an hour later …
My email sig had my phone number in it. Jack actually just called and screamed at me for a couple minutes. He said if I email him again I will “regret it”. What a violent man.
I dunno, the game concept sounds like it could be fun. Just throw in tons of gamer jokes like having John Romero presenting Daikatana 2 at E3 with a street date of 2015. Weapons like nerf-bats, stuff like that.
