Satire city: Kill, kill, kill

Last month, satire as we know it ended. The ability to joke at other's expenses died with a whisper out in California with the stroke of a pen. Why, you may ask? Because California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed bill AB1179 into law. That bill will make it illegal to rent "violent video games" to children. This includes game that features "the range of options available to a player includes killing, maiming, dismembering or sexually assaulting an image of a human being." This blanket statement involves basically any game which features human-like opponents, including those already marked for teen or adult audiences. \nThink about it. Arnold Schwarzenegger, star of "Commando," "Predator" and the "Terminator" film series now thinks it's a bad idea to expose children to make-believe violence. Unless, of course, they're "Terminator"-related video games. It's the end of the line for humor right there.\nEvery so often, politicians and family groups get up in arms (no pun intended) about the violent content in video games. In order to score political points with more socially conservative voters, these politicians stamp over the First Amendment in order to appear electable to their constituents. And after almost every battle, they wind up looking like fools by the video game industry. The video game industry and its fans are a well-oiled machine ready to fight for their products. In the end, those that attacked the supposed problem of video game violence look worse than when they started.\nTake, for instance, the recent case of lawyer Jack Thompson. As video game rights activists know, Jack Thompson is a noted anti-video game violence advocate who often goes to extreme lengths of lunacy to get his point across. Earlier this year, Thompson bet the industry that they would not make his idea for a video game, one that involved a bizarre sick murder fantasy of a father who "knows" his son's murderer was inspired by video games. Thompson's "A Modest Video Game Proposal" for the designers was to create a game in which said character goes on a brutal killing spree of video game makers, fans, salespeople and the lawyers who defended the victim's killer. If his game was made, Thompson promised he would donate $10,000 to a charity of the game designers' choosing.\nSo they did. The team of Grand Theft Auto modifiers called the Flying Hellfish created Thompson's sicko fantasy (including a massacre at E3, a yearly gaming convention). Their end of the bargain fulfilled, they asked Thompson to donate the money he promised. But when asked to live up to his end of the bargain, Thompson bailed.\nIn a sudden change of heart, Thompson refused, claiming the entire proposal was supposed to be taken as satire, like its namesake. He weaseled his way out by claiming that the technicality that a "real" video game designer did not create it. Therefore, no donation. Hearing about this, the popular video game-centric Web comic Penny Arcade decided to donate the money in Thompson's name. The company also started selling "I Hate Jack Thompson" merchandise. Thompson became enraged and threatened the site, calling it a "little extortion factory." He called the Seattle police and tried to get Penny Arcade creators Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins arrested. As of press time, Thompson is looking rather foolish and the Penny Arcade crew seems to be out of the legal woods.\nSo what does all this mean? Thompson claimed he was using satire to point out the foibles of the video game industry but only after he was caught not standing up to his word. And as the Arnold Schwarzenegger story at the beginning of this piece highlighted, satire is indeed dead, so we can't use that defense.\nAs of 2004, the video game industry is worth nearly $10 billion. That same year, the domestic box office gross for movies was only $9 billion (www.filmrot.com/articles/news/005365.php). The two mediums are on almost even footing, attracting the same demographics. Yet why all the controversy? Despite the stereotypes, there is a wide variety of video games out there, from bloody hackfests to mentally stimulating puzzles. But as long as people like Thompson keep viewing gamers as sub-literate, barely controllable killers, we're going to repeat this cycle over and over again. Instead of any real debate, it'll just be a continuous satire of one.