Jack Thompson's Return
How a Game's Demo is Bringing Back One of Video Games Biggest Villains
Recently, demo footage for the new game UNRECORD was making the rounds on social media.
In the game, you play as a police officer with a body cam as he works a case. In the demo footage, he’s clearing out an abandoned building and shooting some bad guys. This subject, plus the realistic graphics, plus the gameplay has caused some people to dub the game “copoganda” or pro-police propaganda. People have also complained the game is too realistic. The realism and police officer subject might desensitize people to real world violence.
Now, where have I heard that before.
Right.
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DOOM, Grand Theft Auto, and other games with questionable subject were the target of a moral panic and crusade in the 80s-2000s. The moral crusaders claimed that games like GTA and DOOM would turn your children into violent criminals. Grand Theft Auto would turn your children to drugs and gang activity. DOOM would turn your kids into school shooters. That’s what people like Jack Thompson claimed. For those unaware, Jack Thompson was a Florida Lawyer who led a legal and legislative battle against video games. He has since been disbarred and cast from the public eye.
The idea that violent video games cause violent behavior has long since been debunked. There’s no way UNRECORD will magically break that assertion. There have also been cops as protagonists in games since forever. We still don’t know the story, the subject, or how the game will treat those things.
Granted, the current political climate isn’t the best for this game right now. But you can’t really pick a time when it was a “good political climate” to release a game, especially one with violence. Pick a year in gaming history, and you’ll find a game with topical or controversial themes.
When Jack Thompson was disbarred and cast from the public eye, gamers and others believed he was something they wouldn’t have to deal with again. We proved video games don’t cause school shooters, gang violence, or drug use. We thought we would never see arguments like that again.
Thompson hasn’t been the last moral critic of video games, and I guess it’s something we will always deal with. Other types of media like music and movies proved that.
It’s aggravating though to rehash and argue something again. To see controversies play out again and again without anyone having learned their lesson. People believed that my generation and I would be less prone to moral panics and trying to alter media based on perceived ethical corruption. Jack Thompson was old, a relic of the earlier satanic panic. The younger generations would be more accepting of media that pushed the envelope. We were wrong.
Maybe moral panics and crusades against that which crosses a line are always with us. There will always be something a bit too rough around the edges to be acceptable and people there to rail against it.
History doesn’t repeat, but it does often rhyme.
Hi there. I’m Michael Vincent Hawthorne, writer at the Midnight Variety Hour. As a writer I care pretty deeply about artistic expression and pushing the bounds of media. Feel free to subscribe. I’m some what active on notes and I try to write a new piece about once a week.