So I see Jack Thompson, Ace Attorney, has garnered at lot of online attention over the last week or so. It’s hard to ignore him, after all. He’s that kid who makes fun of you on the playground and whines and calls you a doodyhead if you try to argue with him. He’s the high schooler hall monitor who decides he has as much power over what happens as any of the administrators. And what amazes me the most, is that somehow, despite being a grown man, is also the internet user that shows up on Livejournals and webcomics based off of gaming and posts for absolutely no other reason than to troll.
He’s annoying, we’re all in agreement there.
During this debate, however, I’ve been seeing a lot of people want to compare Thompson to Fredic Wertham. (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fredric_Wertham ) Well ... he is no where NEAR that bad. Wertham was just as certifiably insane, but charismatic and intelligent-sounding enough to get popular opinion on his side. There were actually mass comic book burnings in the 50's, something that the vast majority of America now would consider unthinkable! (Not to say that such things can't possibly happen in our forward-thinking America, but is a really, really fringe culture thing.) Thompson thankfully isn't that dangerous to force such issues to become some kind of national crisis.
At least not yet.
HOWEVER ... And I know it's going to displease the majority of people who have been following this ... We can't let the video game industry continue to respond to people like Thompson with little more than "It's not our fault and not our problem! Let the parents do their job!" The industry MUST take some kind of responsibility, but NOT because violence is their fault. The simple fact of the matter is, people from Thompson to suburbia do think that the video game industry just doesn't care. Industry giants need to go to lawmakers and say "We're aware that a lot of people have questions about our integrity. What can we do to help make this right?" If nothing is done, then there is always the possibility that more bills like the one in California will be passed as the government thinks it's THEIR sole job to protect America's children. There is always the possibility that someone not unlike Thompson but wholly competent will appear and actually get a majority to his side. However, if the gaming industry takes on the problem now, in a much, much more verbal and proactive fashion, then no one will be able to say that the government should step in. If the gaming community supports this decision with open arms, then no one can accuse gamers of being a delinquent subculture bent on defying any progress in favor of their “koreness.”
It's a rough thing to think about. "Well, what if never making games above an E rating is what the government wants?" Well, what if that's NOT the case? Maybe most people will be happy to simply know that it'll be harder for minors to get games above T, and maybe most parents will be happy enough being properly told what the ESRB is there for and what it means. There's always that chance, you know. Much like Thompson is wrong about most gamers being mouth-breathingly retarded, gamers shouldn’t assume the same about mainstream America.
To return briefly to the matter of Fredric Wertham, I suppose most of you don't know the whole story? Because there’s more than just “Wertham wrote a book that made a lot of people angry so the government censored comics.” Wertham's book Seduction of the Innocent was extremely influential on the voting populace, yes, but it was NOT the government who formed the Comics Code Authority. It was comic companies themselves. The government told the industry at the time that they were sick of the comic makers simply laughing off allegations that comics caused violence. If the comic book makers didn't finally pay attention to what the public was up in arms about (regardless of actual blame), then the government would do it FOR them by shutting the whole operation down. All of them.
So the Comics Code was hastily put together, and pressure came from all sides for all of the companies to follow its absurdly strict and yet vague guidelines--and in an extremely short amount of time. Those that couldn't comply immediately were shut down. The only reason that Mad exists now is because they quickly changed their format to magazine instead of comic.
What is the point of this? Simple. Comics have NEVER had a boom in America quite like it did between World War II and the Wertham controversy grew to its head. Not one. There have been bubbles of success; and right now the amount of selection one can have as far as themes and genres is larger than ever before ... however, nothing has been able to equal what would have been if the industry hadn't been forced to castrate themselves. Japan and Europe can safely say that comics are just something people do, people of all ages and classes. America still can't, and it’s been over 50 years now.
Right now video games are being produced in a huge number of genres and appealing to all age groups. Unfortunately, that freedom is under threat. It's under threat from people like Thompson, yes ... but it's under just as much threat from sheer apathy and pretension. Gamers cannot continue to simply shout "And why aren't the parents doing their job?!" Because no one has offered them reason to not be afraid for their children. We have to accept that what seems like common sense to us simply doesn't apply to everyone.
The whole reason I began writing this is that I’m a comic artist struggling to make money in an industry that’s very hard to get into. I don’t want to see what happened to the American comics industry happen to the video game industry as well. Write your congressman, sure. Keep writing to Jack Thompson, why not? Getting him riled up is pretty funny. But do more! Start writing the big video game publishers, the independents—anybody! Let them know that if we plan on keeping intellectual freedom it needs to be clear to mainstream America that we’d all be worse off for it if it’s gone! And more than that, let the publishers know that it’s not just up to them, and that the gaming community is behind them the whole way!
Game on, friends. Game. On.
--JL Jones
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