Darth Fracas:

Beat me to it. You have to admire the stupidity of a man who blames the gaming industry for Best Buy's lack of enforcement in sales. I wonder if he asked his son to try to buy an R rated movie there too. Unlikely I would wager as that might damage his straw-man argument.

Actually Dennis, in all seriousness, this is the least newsworthy piece in a long while, and really just seems like a Jack Thompson attention seeking press release. I don't object to hearing about the raving nutter, but is getting his son to buy a computer game from a shop really news?

Right now, I'm just waiting for Jack to show up and try to tear holes in the way that the article is written, or something.

The kid managed to buy an M-rated game due to the fact that a clerk making $6.75/hr didn't give a damn. Gee, what a total shocker. Sorry, but when I have to deal with bitchy customers for 8 hours a day for slave wages, I stop caring, too.

I'd like to see hard numbers, though. Honestly, I love to know how many times Jack has had his child do this in the hopes that it will succeed. The fact he got though once is meaningless without knowing how many times he failed. I do feel kinda sorry for his son, though. He has become a pawn in his father's search for self-glorification and headline-seeking. Sorry, kid.

By sending your child into the store to buy a game couldn't one infer that that can be constituted as Parental Consent to buy the game thus negating the 'if you're under 18 you can't buy the game' mentality? Maybe I'm confused, just like Mr. Thompson and that poor man here in Virginia working for the pilot.

Yea the eb games and gamestop is getting strict on it now since they card me when i buy m rated games and hell i talk to boht of the guys in there that work there often

Said it before, I'll say it again. Someone needs to call child protective services on this jackass before he fucks his kid up any further.

And fuck you, Jack, you pathetic excuse for a parent.

@LokiBNE

You should remember, the reason that the ESRB rating system exists is NOT as a form of enforcment. The reason the ESRB and ratings system exists is to give parents a tool to help them decide what games they should and should not buy; it's meant as a form of advice not as a form of regulation. Unless it's in their policy that allowing a minor to buy the game is grounds for instant termination, i think Best Buy would only give her a cut in her pay as punishment, instead of firing her. (not considering any possible past negative or positive marks she might have had)... if it is in their policy that she should get fired, then it is her own fault; the policy is something that every job should enforce...

I'd definitely contribute of my limited resources to a Save Alysia and the Store Manager campaign.

It's infuriating to me that Mr. Thompson would put these two persons, whether innocent or not, at risk for their employment. But that's ol' Jack Thompson. A selfish, uncaring, and solely self-interested individual. The mere fact that he would so unhesitatingly involve his minor child in his childish "sting" operations says it all.

But, as already pointed out by I'm a Shrink on other threads here, Jack Thompson suffers from a narcissistic personality disorder. And a hallmark of that disorder is a willingness to use others (even if that means bringing about their professional or financial ruin) to achieve selfish ends. And Jack's been consistently doing just that (i.e., trying to ruin people) for the last 20 years. Think of all the Alysias that, over the last 20 years, he's cost a source of meager income by which they were putting a roof over their heads and food on their tables).

It's just one of the reasons I believe he should be disbared and never again allowed to practice law. Yes, because he's an incompetent bufoon who couldn't lawyer his way outta wet paper bag, he's no real threat to the gaming industry. But that doesn't mean he's not a threat to others.

But I take comfort and solace in my knowledge that, sooner or later, everybody gets what's coming to them. And Jack's got a lot coming to him.

I think the question we all have to ask here is "Did he bring the game back or is he even now training to kill 'big daddy'?"

DUN DUN DAAAAAAAAN!

Yippee! It's time to tear Jackie boy a new oneee..

John Bruce, did it ever occur to you that you are just as bad as that punk who sold your kid the 17+?

Yeah, you heard me you dumb Nazi. The morals of someone who lets their child buy a game for mature adults are beyond me. Oh, and one more thing: That doesn't have any reasonable connection with Strauss Zednick. Fucker..

@BlackIce, Leftie:

Godwin's Law.

Dennis, you had better tell me if that's who I think it is.

AWWWW...you found him first! Was wondering when jack-o would get around to popping up.

@Johnny:

Online, his son isn't buying it, Jack is.

Sure, a kid can snag dad's wallet sometime, copy down the CC#, expiration date, and CVV and use it. He can also snag the car keys and go for a drive, or get the gun safe key and go shooting.

The card IS the identity, that's what the card companies say, despite Jack's novel theories. The actual user is immaterial to the merchant's responsibility, except of course that they get stiffed with the chargeback.

@ Mr. Thompson

I take it you are uninterested in my proposal (considering you declined to comment on it at all). That is unfortunately, but not unexpected.

@JDKJ:

I think you ought to file a complaint with the bar regarding this behavior. That way, the bar can decide if the behavior in mind is acceptable or not for one of its attorneys. If I lived within 1000 miles of Mr. Thompson and were capable of attending a hearing (should one be required), I would do it myself.

@Tobias

I just wanted to tell you fyi that trying to talk to Thompson civilly has been done. A couple of years back a group of gamers got together and wrote a letter to Thompson apologizing on behalf of the gaming community for the way he had been treated and inviting him to engage in a constructive conversation with gamers on how to fix the problems that are supposedly the basis for his concerns.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowers_for_Jack

Naturally Thompson was not receptive. He has made it perfectly clear that he is not interested in any problem solving methods that include cooperation or compromise.

I'm not delusional enough to believe that Jack will ever respond with evidence to support his "training" claim. Nor do I think he will ever listen to a comparison he SHOULD be able to understand. Nevertheless:

Jack, getting any kind of combat training out of ANY video game is equivalent to getting a law degree from watching Judge Judy on television.

@JDKJ:

First, I think the fallacy in your thinking is that I expected Mr. Thompson to respond to me. I did not. I did think it would benefit both the gaming community and (especially) his own faltering image. But as they say, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.

Also, I think you, like Mr. Thompson (note that I have never addressed him in the shallow, pedantic way he has addressed others), are caught in an "us vs. them" mentality. In the world of politics (because lets face it, this is a VERY political issue), there is no black and white, no us and them, no right and wrong. There are only worldviews and paradigms.

From my experiences, I would argue that there is no way to cause someone else to experience a paradigm shift, short of an immediate tragedy or a massive war. What can change, however, is how we respond to our paradigms.

For example, it is clear that Mr. Thompson has some degree of cognitive dissonance on the subject of free speech: his own speech should be protected, but violence games should be restricted. I believe that through discourse with his ideological 'opponents,' he might be able to reconcile these seemingly irreconcilable values into something of benefit to society. There again, he might not.

Oh, and as BlackIce noted, I know my way around the worlds of debate, philosophy, religion and epistemology VERY well. :) A college education and substantial public speaking experience can do wonders.

"This should get things hopping. I’m going to take Strauss Zelnick out with this."

because we all know best buy is a subsidiary of take two.

So, anyone wanna place bets on how many unsucessful attempts there are for every purchase? You kind of get the impression this is some twisted family pasttime or something, there's no way he would have tried this stunt (apparently unsuccessfully) when Bully came out...

I think Bioshock will become the New 'gta'

@Strauss Zelnick/T2:

Isn't Mr. Thompson, by publicly criticizing the product distribution methods of T2 and one of its retailers, once again breaching the terms of the T2-Thompson settlement agreement? I confidently predicted that T2 would quickly bring legal action to enforce the terms of that settlement. You're not going to disappoint me, are you, Mr. Zelnick? And make me eat crow? Say it isn't so.

The only one I feel bad for is that poor kid.

GP: Ditto...

So did Thompson give his son his credit card to buy it?

hmm isnt that what they call bad parenting?

or wait did he allow his son at 15 to get a credit card then force his son to buy Bioshock?

hmm isnt that bad parenting too?

Man I would hate to be jack thompson son or any relative of him.

but dad I wanted to go place ball with my friends school

No, your going to go to best buy and see if we can get u an M rated game

Dad we did that yesterday and the day before and day before that, I wanna go play ball

No son, we are going to keep trying till we catch them in the act.

@Vigi:

That's cool. Maybe T2 needs the echo. They seem somehow less than willing to sic Blank Rome on Mr. Thompson.

Maybe I should buy one share of their stock and then urge them along.

Scratch my second-to-last paragraph. I didn't read the very end of the article.

Yep, he's still thinking all retailers in existence are part of the game industry. Jack wouldn't get past the first five questions of 'Millionaire.'

I have to ask the obvious... how do you prove that his son bought the game and not Thompson himself? I can hear him now saying that his son used the credit card under his name but Jack is authorized to use that card because Jack is the one who had to have gotten the card for his kid.

Let's bear in mind that Thompson claiming "X" occurred is usually a sufficient reason to assume "X" didn't occurr. And, unless Jack stood beside his son and was an eye- and ear-witness to the transaction, then all he's got is a whole lot of hearsay evidence from a 15-year-old as to what actually transpired during the claimed transaction.

Mini Thompson: "It happened the way I said it happened. Trust me."

Apples falling from trees.

Jack probably had his son wearing a wire and everything. This guy is nuts. I agree with everyone else. He has no understanding of statistics and needs to give this a rest. I don't think that Alysia even works for Take Two. ;)

We can add Thompson the Younger and poor Alysia (with the pierced right eyebrow) to Jack's growing list of individuals he absolutely has to subpoena.

I guess Thompson forgot that The Warriors was a movie before it was a video game, so Western Civilization should have already collapsed going by his logic.

Anyway, all this proves is that Thompson is an asshole, and a horrible parent who only uses his son as a prop in his little petty grudge with the gaming industry. Thompson, leave your son alone and stop forcing him to do crap like this. God, he deserves a far better parent than you, but I guess his mother can't be around to take care of him quite so much since she has work her ass off to support your dumb crazy ass for the most part.

Jack Thompson you allowed your son to purchase an M rated game.

Therefore by your own definitions you are a bad parent, so please stop trying to tell other people how to live.

He'd better let the kid play the game after all that.

It hit me like a brick last week when I was baby sitting my nephews(9, 11, 15) and both the 11 and 15 year old could understand by a large degree the war in Iraq. If a child can take and grasp the idea of war, death, hate, poverty and basic political views, I think they can understand the graphic violence of a video game.

I remember when I was 16, I drove my car to Target, reached into my wallet, grabbed the 60 bucks I earned working my part-time job, and was told I could not buy GTA: Vice City. I was able to drive my half ton missile 4 miles, use money I made working in a place where I could cause much harm to someone at my whim, but I cannot comprehend shooting a virtual hooker. This world is funny sometimes.

Shameful Mr Thompson. Dragging your son into your misguided magniloquent misadventures. Poor kid probably WANTS to play BioShock! Too bad daddy's mendacious.

*shakes head* man i just logged on the computer to see if there were any new stories up on Gp and i get to read this.....Now the whole Moron Thompson getting Junior to buy a m rated game really doesnt suprise me at all...he did the same thing with warriors and with san andreas or vice city i believe and it wouldnt suprise me if the idiot got his son to buy saints row also (or did that game not make jack anal)

Personally all this crap is getting stupid and i look at it as some places are going to card and some places arent...I was carded for vice city for my 23 birthday i think it was....of course my mom was the one buying me the game and once i showed the guy my id he kind of laughed and said he was sorry...

Honestly This Thompson crap is getting annoying and its becoming a waist of time...jack we all know that you hate take two and rockstar and are set on "destroying them" but honestly the fact that you used your own son to push your agenda makes you a Creep and a Scumbag and I hope to god the florida bar rips up your law license and your forced to work at burger king.....

grow the hell up already and try acting your age and not acting like some pathetic 8 year old who does nothing but cry and complain....

For someone who insults us on here quite often your just pathetic and have nothing better to do and im sure your going to rot in hell......

take a hike your not wanted around here

Jack Thompson cares about children and wants to protect them from exposure to harm. That's why he sends his 15-year-old child unescorted into a public retail space potentially rife with pedeophiles and child-abductors.

anybody wanna take a guess on when we will get a post that says "enjoy losing your rockstar games kiddies"

Considering John Bruce's exploitation of the tragedies of other individuals, families, and communities, it wouldn't be a total surprise that he would exploit his own child in such a manner.

HOWEVER...

I'd like to see the FACTUAL evidence of John Bruce's claims. Knowing John Bruce's penchance for misinformation, deceit, and outright lying, I, quite frankly, believe that any such comments in his so-called press release to be lacking anything closely related to the Truth, The WHOLE Truth, And Nothing But The Truth.

I can, after all, walk around in a Best Buy, or any other store, look for the most negatively stereotyped individual I can find (note the pierced eyebrow comment), look at their nametag or ask them their name, then later accuse them of any number of acts. Or, even better, stop by their register, Parent and son together, ask a few questions, then make a comment to the son that "I'm going to check something out" and the son make a purchase from the cashier, while a Parent has already been seen with them, and the cashier assume that it must be ok. Or even better, the Parent say "let him get whatever he wants", thereby setting up a situation that only APPEARS one way, while it could be preceived another way. In other words, based on John Bruce's past actions, not merely entrapment, but actually FAKED entrapment. That is, he sets up the situation with him present, he walks away, his son makes the purchase, he asks for a security recording of the event, and only presents the purchase, not the initial meeting.

Again, based on his past actions, this would not be beyond his "morals" to do.

Oh, and based on his prior acts, it wouldn't surprise me if there were actually numerous misses before he had an actual "hit". But, as usual, he doesn't report his misses (you notice he shut up about Robida and the kid from Riverton, among others).

Now, here is another kicker:
Suppose it DID go down as he claims. Suppose further that he did this on his own, with no authority (DA, Police, etc) support). And I hope Mark Standridge or another legal eagle (other than someone corrupt like John Bruce) is reading this to put my assumptions right. Isn't someone who commits a "crime" in the name of "protecting others" without the legal support of a DA or police still guilty of commiting a crime? Ok, this sale wasn't a crime at the time. However, if we go by John Bruce's assertion that Parents are endangering their children by letting them have rated M games, and he knowingly sent his child to buy one, for whatever his excuses were, without authority support, isn't he responsible for endangering his child? I'm saying this on a similar basis as someone who says "I found child porn on a website. I bought it get evidence to give to the police" but since the police didn't ask the person to, some such individuals have been charged with having child porn. I may not have eloquently said all that, but do you see what I'm getting at?

Nightwng2000
NW2K Software

Could you clarify if it's known weather the young master bought it on his own, or if it was part of another sting set up by his sire?

It's a good thing that video games are Jack's current fixation and no longer is it pornography because sending a 15-year-old to purchase a copy of Hustler magazine and then not let him keep and use it smacks of cruel and unusual punishment.

You know i've been thinking lately that maybe the reason jacky boy hates Rockstar and take two is maybe he never was able to beat gta 3......

Oh My God! This is just golden, pure comedy gold! He send his son into a Best Buy and tells him to get Bioshock. Then blames 2K and T2 for allowing him to buy it. How much more a** backwards can a person get? In all seriousness i do feel bad for the clerk who got caught up in all this. Is 2 years really all that important? I'm sure a 15 y/o who hasn't been living under a rock all his/her life has seen worse than whats in Bioshock on T.V or read in a book or something. So I can understand why the clerk didn't care if she sold it to him or not.

well remember jack is only doing it to "protect the children"


Hey maybe we will get lucky and he'll make a post saying that he wants every "child" in here to post there name address and phone number so he can confiscate our rockstar games"


He's done it once

@hilaryduffgta:

As a matter of well-established credit policies at all financial institutions, a 15-year-old can't be on the hook personally for any credit card or any credit card transactions. Somewhere behind the minor's credit card transaction, there has to be an adult who's on the hook. And that's the unstated reasoning behind the FTC's reliance on credit cards as an age-verifier: sooner or later, the transaction should come to the attention of an adult (assuming the adult's paying attention to their monthly statements).

Shouldn't we report him to child welfare for using his son like this?

So apparently Thompson has been using his son in these sting operations for a long time now.

I can think of a whole lot of things I'd rather do than get driven to different retail outlets all day long, being used as a pawn in my father's harebrained moral crusade.

The thing I find strange is that she asked him for ID, and he said he didn't have it. Does JT junior not carry around some form of identification? If so, he outright lied to the clerk.

John Boy sinks to a new low. No wait, it is the same low as always.

HA HA HA HA! I don't care what the story is about, but that picture just makes me laugh.

well seeing as how insane jack is he probably doesnt want his son having an id cause well what happens if some crazed gamer finds it??????

after all remember in jt's eyes all gamers are maniacs who can and will kill people

I wonder what Thompson will do whe his son turns 17. Probably start kidnapping kids for the purpose of making them buy M rated games.
"gasp"

Taking down Zelnick is an unrealistic goal for this scenario. You can't blame him for the incompetence of a single employee you clearly didn't value her job. All it'll take is a bit of media coverage and the employee will probably get axed, though usually if a manager catches you doing this you get a slap on the wrist the first time. Sacking the manager is iffy but I wouldn't doubt it. Connecting the dots and taking out Zelnick is like using a minor buying liquor as a way to take down Molson. You can't sue a company for making something underage people might want to buy.

"HE CAN START HIS OWN BLOODY BLOG!"

Yeah, he was harping about jackandgoliath.com for quite some time back in the LJ days, why hasn't he done anything with that yet?

I mean, he's had the domain for a year and a half now.

I'm with VenomCarnage, I about split my rib over that photo ... mini-me JT... bwahahahahahha

She asked for ID, he said he had none, but the true question is did she ask how old he was and did he tell her his actual age or did he lie about it. Because I for one can only hold the store so responsible for selling it to him if he lied, seeing as it is a voluntary system, unlike alcohol and porn. But most importantly it wasn't the game makers who sold it to the kid, it was a retailer.

I have stated in the past that at least in my area the best place to go to buy games underage is Best Buy because they just don't care. The least likely to sell it to you will be the game stores like EB Games and Game Stop, because they fire their employees on the spot if they are found to be selling M rated games to people under 18.

Jack: Son?

Son: Yeah?

Jack: I've been thinking, maybe I've been a bit too harsh on your game restrictions.

Son: You mean threatening to castrate meand throw boiled holy water on me if you catch me even looking at a video game ad?

Jack: Ha ha, yeah. Good times.

Son: Awesome! I've been wanting to play Tony Hawk since forever!

Jack: No, you're a big boy now. I was thinking something more along the lines of Bioshock.

Son: AWESOME! It sounds like a doctor game!

Cut to the drive home from Best Buy.

Son: Thanks Dad. I.... I love you.

Jack: I'm sorry, did you say something? Damn camera phones. Every time I try I try to stop recording it speed dials Doug Lowstein, Dennis, and about three gay sex lines. Funny, I only remember adding two.

Son: W-wha?

Jack: Nothing. Give me the game.

Son: But you said-

Jack: SHUT UP AND GIVE ME THE GAME OR I'LL BRAND YOU WITH THE CROSS AGAIN! THIS IS MY CRUSADE DAMMIT! MY LEGACY!

Oh wow Dennis, you still got it - I about snorted milk up my nose when I saw that headline, Anyone take a guess on how long it takes the Grand High Douche himself to show up?

I assume that Thompson's offspring goes to a private boarding school, or is home schooled. That's going to be the only way he gets fully brainwashed...

On the topic though, so if I go in a store and buy 300 on dvd, which is rated R, when I'm only fifteen and without parents it's okay, but your fifteen and you buy a M rated game God Forbid! Stop the fucking presses.

This is just me, but it's gotten to the point that, whenever Jack claims anything, I outright ignore it. He is a shameless liar, plain and simple. He lied that Janet Reno was a lesbian blackmailed by the mob. He lied that that one judge in Utah I believe called him up completely wasted. I think he is simply lying about this. Really, does he have the slightest iota of credibility?

Poor, poor kid..

Roflmao God I love that movie......You know i think what jack needs is a vacation to castle anthrax

Can you imagine Jack's son growing up and feeling used and manipulated for his dad's cause? He will look back on his entire childhood as a tool of his father's fixation with the sale of M-rated games to minors and he will promptly start working for Take Two when he hits his angst-laden rebellion phase.

This wouldn't be an unprecedented reversal of a child's rebellion against the parent's cause; author William J. Murray became the chairman of the Religious Freedom Coalition (a conservative Christian organization) after a childhood as the son of Madalyn Murray O'Hair, the founder of American Atheists. Perhaps Jack's son will even author a memoir entitled "In Harm's Way."

Hey, something occurred to me...Wasn't there something about JT's kid having a credit card earlier? What if he used that to buy the game, hence, in a sense, serving as an ID?

Dunno, just putting out possibilities onto the table. For the sake of argument.

Although I don't know the exact details of it, could this potential PR disaster for Jack have ramifications on the T2 settlement?

@A-wel Cruiz
Could not agree any more.

Thompson did have his own website, stopkill.org, and some hacker bombarded it into denial of service. I'm sure the same thing would happen to any attempt on his part at setting up a blogsite.

I think Jack was the person who got carded and was able to make the purchase just so he can make up this story. I wonder what the clerk will be thinking if or when she reads the article. I feel sorry for her and for Jack's son.

@KTP
LOL!

Why doesn't Jack send his son to see an R-rated movie? Even over here in California, few movie theaters care to actually enfore the "nobody under 17" policy.

Oh, wait, I forgot. The MPAA is less evil because movies are too established to be plausibly identified as "omg EEVIL!"