I found this little tid bit of info in the boston herald today at school. i'll quote the funny bit.

"bostons hookers are divided over whether the MBTA should be running ads on trains for a videogame in which players kill and rob ladies of the night. "i think it's horrible" said sage, a boston area prostitute contacted through hre craigslist.org ad, about teens seeing Grand theft auto vice city storys ads. "It's just ridiculious out here nowadays. just the violence among teenagers.""

Ok, so if i read this paragraph correct. Having ads for a video game that "might" be bad is some sort of horrable deed. But on the other hand, having prostitutes in real life that CAN be bad for you is ok. *X-files theme song kicks in.*

He Who Shall Not Be Named still has a court date at some point for his contempt hearing, I thought? The judge's recusal doesn't at all mean he's off the hook, just that he has to worry about it later. I suspect when a date is finally set for that we'll hear more about it.

In other news, x(wai)x is right - if you don't like a product's advertising, you don't take their money and don't display the offending ad. Simple as that.
And the mention of money makes me wonder - do the concerned community leaders have a plan for generating $114K to replace the MBTA's lost ad revenues? Running a mass transit system isn't cheap. I agree that it is in the community's right to object to certain ads, but think of the cost benefit analysis. Is it worth depriving a rather useful public transit system of that much money simply because a tasteful ad is for a product you don't want?
I recall the uproar over Sony's PSP White campaign - you know, the 'racist' one. Maybe it was overtly racist, maybe not, but the ones who thought it was racist, well, I saw where they were coming from. That ad did in my opinion push the boundaries of taste. Compare that scenario to this one which just shows the game's box art. There's nothing to object to, other than the fact that video games, and specifically GTA, are demonized by politicians and the media. Maybe the community is allowed to have the game pulled But it's a sad state of affair if a few knee-jerk finger points can so easily snowball to where it limits a company's options.

And so another anti videogame campaign fails...

Who would have seen THAT comming :p

oh yes, because we all know how many children take the subway by themselves and get brainwashed by advertising now don't we.

He's afraid that wanted criminals will just board the subway and ride it around for days at a time as the police hilariously and ineffectually chase it around for days at a time, often killing themselves in their zeal to catch the criminals, until the police ultimately get bored and the heat's off.

It worked for me all the time in GTA3.

'Grand Theft Rolling Stock'... possibly the most boring game ever written after 'Interactive Paint Drying.'.

'Someone stole a Train Ted!'
'Oh look, a Dead-Man activator here at the main control desk!'

...Game Over.

I just went through the "commercial free childhood" website and boy does it suck. I found a few interesting things, like how they drastically need a visit by the grammar police. I mean they use the word "healthful"


They are like the PTC, but even less cool (I didn't know that was possible until today)

"oh yes, because we all know how many children take the subway by themselves"

Actually, in Boston, an extremely large number of children take the T. If you're going to object to something, try to make your objection at least factually accurate ;)

An MBTA response cited First Amendment concerns about regulating ad content:

As offensive as anyone may find the product being advertised, it’s not the MBTA’s role to regulate any products, whether they are movies, music, websites, books, or video games.

I'm not necessarily agreeing with the anti-videogame people here, but isn't that kind of a shoddy defense? A company most certainly can decide what ads it will and will not run.

Hello MBTA? Bicardi ads? You are setting a dangerous precedent where a government organization is advocating censorship. That seems almost illegal. If anything, you have a conflict of interest that needs to be stopped as it may adversely affect government revenue.

So your wasting money to have a sign removed? What a fucking waster

Also, we haven't heard anything about Thompson in weeks. Why give him attention now? Just let him stay in the irrelevance where he belongs.

But really, it would be great if the (near) last we ever heard of him was that one Destructoid article. It would end things on a nice note at least.

Menino's also going to send Sony a bill for the time police spent quelling a near-riot at the Sony Style store in Boston:

http://gaygamer.net/index.php?id=2006

@vansau
He's being a total douche about this whole thing. He felt that Sony should be held accountable for the riots and violence that happened at various retailers. There was this big question being asked on all the radio stations around here:

"Should Sony be held responsible?" Like this was some really difficult question to answer. Well here's the answer, NO! SONY IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR PEOPLE BEING RETARDED!

Robb makes an exceptionally good point.

Drunk driving contributes to thousands more deaths each year than video games, but we see ads for beer and vodka all over the place. Should we ban those too?

Put it in perspective, Mayor. :P

Re: The riots in Boston. I'm somewhat more sympathetic to Boston's case in this matter, based on my understanding of things. My understanding being: They're specifically talking about a riot that happened at a Sony store, that occured because Sony took no efforts to ensure the launch happened in an orderly fashion and likely made things worse in how they handled things. They aren't suing Sony for releasing the PS3 in general. They're suing Sony because the Sony store staff handled the launch in a way that might have incited a riot. I wish I had more specific information on hand, sorry all.
The point being, stupidity does play a role, and the PS3, in existing, does not play a role; the question is whether the staff of Boston's Sony store played a role. I'd say it's tough to prove that the staff deliberately incited a riot, but it's at least an interesting argument.

@psychotix: It's not the action but the logic behind it. You raise a good point, and Boston's argument is a bit more valid since there's some 'community leaders' and not just a bunch of politicians, but the whole thing still just smacks of leaping on a hot-button issue and targeting a scapegoat.
I think it is picking on games, the way it's phrased... but, to some degree, the community is allowed to do that if they're that convinced that games are in fact such a threat.

What about the massacere that happend in your town in the 1700's mayor. THose were surley caused by video games. Cause you know... THose redcoats sure liked gta.

They bring up that GTA prostitution thing again, I see. Funny. The game never tells you that you of the magical restorative powers of a moment in a dark alley. As I recall, the manual doesn't tell you that you who has the healing touch either. In fact, the only reason I knww you can crawl the kerb in GTA is because an anti-gaming rant told me about it.

History then repeated itself by them telling me you could seduce a guy in Bully. Irony is not dead.

I just checked. The man that went crazy's name was Jacob Robida. He was crazy and there was no evidence that he played any violent video games at all. Jack Thompson was just trying to make waves like the trouble maker he is.

But ads from books have been removed from billboards, subways and all sorts of places because the books were distasteful.

Hell OJ's new book isn't even going to hit the market because it's distasteful.

But let me guess games get a free ride in everything right... because I'm mean we're gamers!

@psychotix

Do you really think we would support the pulling of book ads because the BOOKS are distasteful (and not the ads)?

When will people finally see that violent video games decrease violence? They don't increase it. Violent video games never hurt anyone and politicians have to stop attacking games because of violent content.

The problem isn't so much that the ads have been pulled - they're allowed to, after all - but the reasoning behind it.

"It is both cynical and irresponsible for the MBTA to advertise a violent video game at a time of increased concerns about youth violence in Boston… promoting such violent video games undermines the MBTA’s own efforts to address youth violence…"

You can replace "violent video game" with "alcohol" or "cigarettes" or "pornography" and the sentiment is identical. They are saying that an ad for a violent game goes against the city's efforts to cut violence. In that they are right, and they look good (and possibly do good) in removing the ads. They just want to present a clean image. Fair play to them.

The issue I take is the casual implication that the ads are meant for kids. If they had removed the word "youth" entirely then it would just be removing an ad that they felt was casting the system in a negative light.

This is a tough call. Many people bring up good points. Psychotix has stated that people can pull ads for anything and have done so all theh time. This is true. It may not be right, but it is true. The question is, how many "distasteful" ads are we willing to censor in the name of good taste?

Kyouryuu noted that drunk driving contributes to far more deaths than video games by any strecth of the imagination. Let's be honest, in a given month there are probably more drunk driving related deaths, just in Boston that there have been murders even vaguely contributed to video games worldwide in the last ten years. So, let's ban the advertisement of alcohol while we are at it. (This is pure conjecture by the way, feel free to counter my statements here, but please note I realize this maybe exaggerated, just a little.) Then again, doesn't a society have the right to choose what they find acceptable?

Matthew also brought up the fact that the whole idea here is based on protecting children. If you haven't figured it out yet, I hate this idea in general. It's a foolish and irresponsible way to look at the world. By making everything safe for children, you make the world dull, gray, boring. A world where there was no decent "adult" challenge would probably lead to massive suicides (joking... kinda). If everything was: "Can you spot the blue dot?"; how many of us would even half want to wake up, go to work, or turn on the TV? Come on say it with me: Protect your child, don't protect me!

In the end, my feelings on these are probably best summed up in capitalist economics. If I don't like, I won't buy it. If I don't buy it, the company that makes it won't make any money. If they don't make any money, they will stop making it. Sadly, there was a great economist who died recently. He emphasized the preservation and extension of individual freedom. He believed in the goodness of the common man, I suppose. His name was Milton Friedman (sound's familar, wonder if they are brothers or something). Sorry to make a mention of this, but I believe he would be a strong advocate of video game friendly legislation (or lack thereof) if he were still alive. I've read a little about him and have a great deal of respect for the man.

Here is a link to the Wikipedia source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman