GameCore Mailbag Freak Out

GameCore is a weekly column by CBSNews.com's William Vitka, Chad Chamberlain and Joey Arak that focuses on gamers and gaming.

We've gotten a massive response to the GameSpeak series, and we wish we could publish all of them, but we can't, at least not all at once. We promise another Mailbag Freak Out.

This space is here so that readers can share their thoughts, we urge people to email.

…Recently on the Ctrl Alt Delete forums a thread began where Jack Thompson was sent an e-mail, invited to join on a frank and civilized debate, as these board members were hoping to hear more concrete and conclusive evidence from his side. Their request was well written, and very polite, these people clearly wanted to have an intelligent discussion with this guy, or at the very least in some cases be provided with a link of some sort where they could find information pertaining to his point of view.

In response these board members either received an automated message saying "your favorite industry is going to be exposed on 60 minutes sunday night". However some replies that appeared later in the forums that apparently occurred before the automated messages were quite disturbing. Such as the following relies:

"My website and email are for people who have been harmed by the games, not for people who have nothing better to do than rant at me. Stop playing the games and get a life." or "My website and email are for people harmed by these games, not for people the moral equivalent of Saddam Hussein. If you want to rant about this, go to a GTAVC chat room. Either stop sending me emails like this or pay the consequences. jesuslovesyou, dude, Ps: No you're beyond help, so bugger off" and "I asked you to stop hassling me. You have not. You were warned. You don't think you need help, so ---- off".

These people honestly wanted to hear the "details" of what this guy had to say, and instead he fought back with childish name-calling. Saying that video gamers have morals equivalent to that of Saddam is sick, and slander I might add. He's a lawyer (or so he claims) he should no better. At the very least if he didn't want to accept their invitation he could have just declined in a peaceful manner rather than calling everyone a fascist. Mr. Thompson obviously does not really care about his quest, and is only in it for the money. If he did have any passion for this matter he would have shown the gamers the same courtesy they showed him, even though they dislike him. I think because of this forum, we now have a clear understanding of just how bad video games are if the gamers are more responsible than the accuser.

Thank you for reading this letter, I'm sorry if it was fairly long winded but his despicable responses need to be known to the public before he tries to pollute their minds further.

PS: If you want you can view the entire thread here

-Sacraptor

First off, Jack Thompson is the typical out of touch right-wing ass that they use to fight video games.

The man that went off and killed several people at his church got me thinking. It is said one reason that he did it was that he was upset by a sermon, will religion be blamed? Of course not. (Although it is one of the biggest killers in history) But if the police so much as find a game boy in his house someone will blame video games.

I am a teenager and I own an Xbox, if I went and killed someone in a dark alley with a plastic bag they would say that I have Manhunt before even looking at my game collection.

Games are just the current scapegoat if anyone does anything wrong.

-Toby Wallace

Dear Mr. Vitka,

I recently happened upon your article about video game violence with Tim Buckley. The subject of video game violence and its effect on our young people is something near and dear to my heart, for 2 reasons. Reason 1 is that I am an avid gamer. I have been gaming for 30+ years now. Reason 2 is because I'm a parent and now a grandparent.

Once a person knows that I'm a gamer and a grandmother, one of the first questions asked is "Are you going to let your grandson play video games?" Without hesitation I can say "Yes of course!". But that's not to say I didn't monitor what my children played, I certainly did! And this is one of the issues with parents today that needs to be addressed.

Parents today are so busy in their lives that they look for shortcuts. When you come home exhausted from work and know that there is housework waiting for you, isn't it easier to just say yes to your child when they ask to play a video game. Out of sight, out of mind?

Without going into a diatribe, I think that parents are a lot more to blame for the action of their children than a game. Parents allow them to play it, don't watch what they are playing, and at times even buy the games. If a child asked to watch a movie a parent would probably say yes. Then the next question would be to ask what the movie is. If it wasn't something they were familiar they would either want to watch a part of it or at least read the package. If they saw that it was inappropriate for that age, they wouldn't let them watch it nor would they buy it. Can't parents apply this same logic to games?

So yes my rant is about parents and not the actual games. Do I think some games could tone it down and still be great works? Yes absolutely. But as long as there is a mature audience that wants that type of game, it will always be there. So the next step is for the parents to do their job. It's the job they signed on for the minute they decided to bring a life into this world. So if your not doing your job, stop pointing the finger at someone else.

Sincerely,
Cheryl Webster (TheMom)

Mr. Vitka,

As an avid gamer and one of the co-founders of a site that dedicated to statistics for online Halo 2 gaming (CarnageStats.com), I wanted to applaud you for approaching this subject from a direction that is not typical for the media. Claude Errera seemed the ideal candidate for his interview. He is obviously well informed and being a parent/gamer, he has a useful insight into how violence in games would affect children.

I too am a father. The games I typically play, like Halo, are not the ones that I let my daughter (10 yrs) play unsupervised.

I especially find Jack Thompson's quote, "I submit that the video game generation is coming of age." particularly amusing. I have owned a console since I was 4 and was playing games prior to that in the arcade.

I am the video game generation, and yes I am coming of age. That age being 27 this year. An age group very common to gamers. The majority of the "violent" games that are out right now are targeted towards my demographic. The 18-34 year old males seem to be just a little older than the 15-16 year olds that make such big news (such as Columbine).

There wasn't such rampant school shootings in the early to mid nineties when my "video game" generation was in school. Are video games more violent? I don't see that they could be.

Take Mortal Kombat for example. This game was extremely popular when I was in school in the early nineties and this franchise has always been known for its explicit gore. Back then, the media blamed everything on music. I think you will see the media's attention move elsewhere as more and more gamers get to the age where the nightly news caters to them.

Again, great article. This was the first time I had seen your column, but I will now be anxiously awaiting to see what other topics you cover.

-Kelly Merrell
www.CarnageStats.com

This set of articles is really interesting to follow. Violence has always been a hot topic in the gaming industry for as long as I have been a gamer. (Which is going on, oh, more than thirteen years.) Having seen a myriad of opinions on this, from the hardlining people that believe that any child who plays violent video games can be directly linked to violent behaviors to those who believe that the violent nature is inherent in the kids to begin with and that the games are just a catalyst to start of the reaction that will lead them down the road to destructive behavior, its interesting to see it revived again full force and that the opinions haven't changed all that much.

What I would like to see somewhere along the line of these interviews is the correlation this has to girl gamers. Most of the violent crimes that are attributed to video games seem to be committed by boys. Never do you see that the violent games cause girls to go berserk and kill people. While girl gamers that are hardcore enough to play the games touted as violent are few and far between, they do exist. Which poses the question as to the truth of placing the blame on the games. One would think that the games would have the same effect on either of the sexes that play them, yet strangely you never hear of girl gamers going psycho and killing people at school because they played too much GTA. Is this still the standard belief that girls don't play video games so that people don't apply video games as an excuse for the violence, or is this more of a proof that the blame isn't exactly where its supposed to be?

I'm far from knowledgeable on these facts, except for the fact that I am a girl gamer, and the other girl gamers that I know have never demonstrated any tendencies towards violence, or if they had, it was prior to when they began gaming anyway, so that the games were more of an outlet for the violence instead of actually committing acts. I'd be very interested if you found a girl gamer to speak out about this and its impact on us as a minority in the industry, as well as any information correlating the violence committed by guy gamers vs. violence committed by girl gamers.

Thanks for the time, and the intent of the articles you've been compiling. New perspectives on an age-old argument are always nice, and if the gender gap manages to get closed this time around as well, hell, I'll be pleased as punch.

~Analise Bradford, girl gamer since 1992

Nice interview with Jack Thompson. I tried interviewing him for an article I was writing last month but he wasn't nearly as helpful or gracious with me. Vague threats and insults were all I got out of him, but I told him my story was for Gamershell.com, so go figure.

Shaun McCormack

Messrs. Vitka and Chamberlain:

My name is Frankie Griffen, and I am a student at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. On March 4th, after reading your article about Jack Thompson, I visited his site http://www.stopkill.com, which you linked to in your article. After reading what the site had to say, I sent Mr. Thompson an e-mail, and asked for his thoughts and insight. He responded with "because you're an idiot." WTF? This man is leading some sort of insane crusade against video games, and this is how he treats someone who asks legitimate questions about what he is doing?

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By William Vitka and Chad Chamberlain By William Vitka and Chad Chamberlain