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Whoah, I forgot that I even entered this.  Seeing my name in the thread title was a nice surprise in the morning!

I'll start one as soon as inspiration strikes!

Thanks, Ashen!

Just be careful your girlfriend doesn't learn to do it to you!  My girlfriend read one book on hypnosis and now I'm married!

Yes, Halo trained that kid how to shoot a real sniper rifle... it certainly had nothing to do with the kid's military trained sniper father who actually killed most of those people when the two went on their little killing spree...  Definitely Halo's fault.

Largo, your rant is a very nice summary of everything that's happenned so far.  Or at least the most interesting parts.  Well done.  And good luck on your flash dealie.

[Liberals, like you, love to label things and then think that the labeling has accomplished something. If that had been the case, then Churchill's calling Hitler a Nazi would have ended the war. But no, people like me had to get into the trenches and stop the Nazis. And there were always those tut-tutting back home about what a nasty business it is to stop the bad people, and can't we all just "get along."]

Just wanted to share a few bits:

You may have heard that the National Institute of Media and the Family has decided to publicly distance itself from Mr. Thompson's antics.  Well here are the two letters that Jack fired back.  Here's my favorite quote:

Liberals, like you, love to label things and then think that the labeling has accomplished something. If that had been the case, then Churchill's calling Hitler a Nazi would have ended the war. But no, people like me had to get into the trenches and stop the Nazis. And there were always those tut-tutting back home about what a nasty business it is to stop the bad people, and can't we all just "get along."

I'm not even sure where to start with that quote!

Also, thanks to his run in with Penny Arcade, the Florida Bar Association has been flooded with requests for his disbarrment.  The requests point out his un-lawyerly behavior (Yes, I made that word up) and make very good cases.  This may be very interesting.

Link: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051019-5458.html

[you]

You're doing research now?  Just to insult this guy?  Dude, why expend so much energy hating on one particular game?  Especially one that you have never, and will never, play because it will never be released?  Unless cesarbittar slept with your girlfriend or something, you need to chill out.

Don't be so insulted just because you're not in that small fraction of the gaming community targeted by this game.  There's absolutely no reason to launch a personal vendetta against this game.  The games that you enjoy aren't the only games that have merit.  The only thing that your arguments are proving is that you're a bit of a jerk.

I can see how you would like to believe that the things this guy writes and says are fake, but they are not.  He wrote that modest proposal and then retracted it, calling it merely a "parody" and also calling all of the people on the internet who started posting it everywhere "idiots" for not realizing how funny he is.   And regarding $10,000 dollars he promised to give to charity if someone followed through on his challenge, as the Penny Arcade guys put it so perfectly: "we must conclude that his financial offer was also satire, some new breed of satire apparently that I'm sure is just hilarious to people in need."

But this is also the guy who actually went up to Janet Reno at a public debate during his 1988 political campaign against Florida Attorney General Janet Reno (who would later go on to become Attorney General of the United States), which consisted of calling her a closet lesbian who was afflicted by various mental disorders and being blackmailed by the mob, and actually handed her a piece of paper that read:

I, Janet Reno, am a
[ ] Homosexual
[ ] Bisexual
[ ] Heterosexual

and demanded that she check one of the boxes. 

The guy is certifiable.

I agree with what some people are saying.  The guy deserves to be ignored.  Getting into an uproar only plays into his insane hands.  However, the nutbar is getting on CNN, 60 minutes, FOX News, any media source he can get his face on, and spreading the crazy to the general population -- the generally ignorant, believe-whatever-the-media-tells-us, population!  Someone needs to get onto a soapbox that's at least as high as his and let the world know that this man deserves no ones ear.  He's about as credible as the voices in my head.

Ha ha!  Forget that idea.  Jack Thompson rescinded his offer.

http://www.joystiq.com/entry/1234000743063662/

Who's joking?  Every song in that game rocks.  I just wish I knew the name of the artist who performs them...

Any song in "Britney's Dance Beat."

Kinoko, try the wasabi chips, they're excellent!  Also, green tea chips rock.

Isn't it weird how this thread called "Peanus butter" has changed into a thread about global potato chip flavors?

Heh.  That would be B-DASH by the Tongari Kids
http://news.com.com/Mario+techno+beats+bounce+up+the+charts/2100-1043_3-5737361.html?part=rssag=5737361&subj=news

I'm not much of a shutter-bug.  I always forget to whip out my camera when I come across funny Engrish, but here's the bar that my co-workers and I went to after a conference in Kobe.



in case you can't make it out (it was dark), it says "Neo Japanese Fooding Bar."

MMMMmmmmmm.

[edit because I just remembered it was Kobe, not Kyoto... as if anyone cares or will notice this...]

Heh heh.  This is exactly how they pronounce it here too.  It's very funny.  I still double-take everytime someone says "peanus butter."

And esper, regarding the terrible but hilarious Engrish on clothing:  My sister who is in High School flew over here to visit me and went nuts buying tons of shirts with ridiculous English.  I always have a good laugh, especially when English teachers at my school wear stuff like this.

I vote Rui.  If he's going to hell, he might as well win this competion first.  And it's an interesting and unique story.

As for Bloodrayne, be glad you never played it... It was nearly complete crap.

But the movie's gonna rule!  How could it not, with such an experienced and talented director?

The main character, The Stranger, had a trenchcoat that flapped as you turned with real-time physics. The light that he could mount to the end of his guns had such realism that you could forget it was a game (4), and the monsters actually looked like they were getting shot where you were shooting them, including different animations for the different types of weapons you were using against them. It had realistic blood spatter.

This is kind of the point I was trying to make.  When realistic physics are plausible, they're used not to improve gameplay, but to add bells and whistles to the graphics and a few more bullet points to the back of the box.

However, this does kind of highlight a good counter point to my argument:  While a moving cape and blood spatter don't add directly to the gameplay, they do add that "cool" factor that can make the game just that much more fun to play, and isn't the enjoyment of the player the ultimate goal?

That being said, even if the physics don't add to the gameplay, they can cut down game development time and costs.  Would you rather spend time in a 3d animation program animating the cape's many different possible movements, or would you rather just let the physics system calculate all of that real-time? 

Regardless, I conclude: physics, yay!  But physics cards, nay!  Because it's just another expensive thing that makes my crappy system unable to play all the latest games.

Thank god for 2d adventure games!

Heh.  That was a good laugh.

Yes, the synching seems spot-on here.  It is a very nice remake of the Brady intro and would make a very funny start to a game.

The one suggestion I would make would be to not allow the edges of the pictures to touch the edge of the screen/window.  Leave a little black border along the outside.  It seems to me like that would be a bit more pleasing to the eye.  As it is, it looks just a touch awkward.

Nice stuff!  I can't wait to see it with little faces looking up and down at the other faces!

Errr... sorry I mis-commented on your comment.  I don't believe he could sucessfully sue, and I know he can't sue without looking like a complete tool.

And I knew some other people would certainly have the idea to make this game.  But Jack, being the lawyer that he is, could easily weasel his way around that one by quoting his proposal:

...if any video game company will create, manufacture, distribute, and sell a video game in 2006 like the following...

the game may have to be made, manufactured, distributed, and sold in 2006.  Also, this game wasn't really manufactured, which is why I propose using cafePress.

Finally, these guys did a great rush job here, and the game is probably very funny, but I doubt that they get across the point that they should be expressing here.

Heh.  It's still pretty funny that a game has already been made.  I wonder what Jack was smoking when he wrote and mailed that proposal... what a nutter.

I second... or sixth... or whatever... this competition.  Sounds very fun.

1) I would not worry about someone acting out the events from a point and click adventure.  And as modgeulator said, he can't sue us for making the game he told us to make.

2) As nik mentioned, $10,000 is not going to bankrupt the guy.  He probably won't even feel it.  BUT, it's a bruise to his very swollen ego.  The point is to point out his ignorance and idiocy.

3) When writing this game (and you know what, I volunteer to do it if no one else is into it) we have to make sure to keep it smart and clean.  You can't prove someone wrong just by insulting him, you CAN prove someone wrong by pointing out all the flaws in his argument.  But we don't need to result to mud-slinging and name calling.  Facts and parody, that's where it's at.

4) That ctrl-alt-del comic was hilarious.

[EDIT: Jack calls this "Satire" and has cancelled his offer]

EDIT: Jack calls this "Satire" and has cancelled his offer

Jack Thompson, in case you don't know, is a lawyer who has been pushing around money and laws in America because he has some personal vendetta against video games.  He riles up the government about violent and sexual imagery in games and proposes censorship and legal penalties.

Now, the nutter has proposed that the game industry publishes a game in which the main character is the father of a boy who was killed by another boy imitating his favorite video game.  The father then goes on a rampage across America, brutally murdering game executives of companies that make violent video games.

Jack claims that if a game company makes and sells a game that follows his proposal, he will donate 10,000 dollars to charity.

In his head, he is proving that the game companies know that gamers are influenced by the games they play and will act out the scenarios in real life.  He seems to believe that, the game companies will not make a game in which game execs are killed because gamers may act out the scenario in real life.

The fact is, game companies would never make a game like this because it would make a terrible game and no one would buy it. 

Regardless, Jack will claim that the fact that the game companies won't make the game proves his point that games make people more violent.

Here's the rub: Jack's proposal states challenges ANY game company to make this game, and reading his proposal, it's completely possible that one of us could make this game and sell it via cafePress or something, making a monkey out of Mr. Thompson.  Not to mention that simply making and offering to sell this game would get you instant media notoriety and probably a lot of novelty sales.

I believe that one could make this game to his specifications in AGS and, through the story, mock people who blame the easiest thing (video games) while ignoring the harder (but more likely to be valid) issues such as poor parenting, economic status, mental illness, etc.

Here's the full text of his ridiculous proposal that he mailed out to a number of game execs:

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." The Golden Rule

This writer has been saying for seven years that violent video games can be "murder simulators" that incite as well as train some obsessive teen players to be violent.

I've been on 60 Minutes and in Reader's Digest this year explaining how an Alabama teen, with no criminal record, shot two policemen and a dispatcher in their heads and fled in a police car--a scenario he rehearsed for hundreds of hours on Take-Two/Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto video games.

I have sat with boys in jail cells, their lives over because of murder convictions, after they, with no history of violence, have killed innocents while in a dreamlike state. Said one cop who investigated such a murder in Grand Rapids, Michigan: "The killing was like an extension of the game."

The video game industry, through its lawyers, its spokesmen, and its head lobbyist, Doug Lowenstein, the president of the Entertainment Software Association, all say it is utter nonsense to suggest that what is dumped into a kid's head hour after hour, day after day, year after year, could possibly have behavioral consequences. Cigarette ads can persuade kids to smoke, but interactive simulators in which these same kids punch, hack, bludgeon, and maim affect not a wit their attitudes and behaviors, notwithstanding the findings of the American Psychological Association, published in August 2005.

The video game industry says Sticks and stones can break my bones, but games can never hurt me. Fine. I have a modest proposal for the video game industry. I'll write a check for $10,000 to the favorite charity of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc's chairman, Paul Eibeler - a man Bernard Goldberg ranks as #43 in his book 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America - if any video game company will create, manufacture, distribute, and sell a video game in 2006 like the following:

Osaki Kim is the father of a high school boy beaten to death with a baseball bat by a 14-year-old gamer. The killer obsessively played a violent video game in which one of the favored ways of killing is with a bat. The opening scene, before the interactive game play begins, is the Los Angeles courtroom in which the killer is sentenced "only" to life in prison after the judge and the jury have heard experts explain the connection between the game and the murder.

Osaki Kim (O.K.) exits the courtroom swearing revenge upon the video game industry whom he is convinced contributed to his son's murder. "Vengeance is mine, I will repay" he says. And boy, is O.K. not kidding.

O.K. is provided in his virtual reality playpen a panoply of weapons: machetes, Uzis, revolvers, shotguns, sniper rifles, Molotov cocktails, you name it. Even baseball bats. Especially baseball bats.

O.K. first hops a plane from LAX to New York to reach the Long Island home of the CEO of the company (Take This) that made the murder simulator on which his son's killer trained. O.K. gets "justice" by taking out this female CEO, whose name is Paula Eibel, along with her husband and kids. "An eye for an eye," says O.K., as he urinates onto the severed brain stems of the Eibel family victims, just as you do on the decapitated cops in the real video game Postal2.

O.K. then works his way, methodically back to LA by car, but on his way makes a stop at the Philadelphia law firm of Blank, Stare and goes floor by floor to wipe out the lawyers who protect Take This in its wrongful death law suits. "So sue me" O.K. spits, with singer Jackson Brown's 1980's hit Lawyers in Love blaring.

With the FBI now after him, O.K. keeps moving westward, shooting up high-tech video arcades called GameWerks. "Game over," O.K. laughs.

Of course, O.K. makes the obligatory runs to virtual versions of brick and mortar retailers Best Buy, Circuit City, Target, and Wal-Mart to steal supplies and bludgeon store managers and cash register clerks. "You should have checked kids' IDs!"

O.K. pushes on to Los Angeles. He must get there by May 10, 2006. That is the beginning of "E3" -- the Electronic Entertainment Expo -- the Super Bowl of the video game industry. O.K. must get to E3 to massacre all the video game industry execs with one final, monstrously delicious rampage.

How about it, video game industry? I've got the check and you've got the tech. It's all a fantasy, right? No harm can come from such a game, right? Go ahead, video game moguls. Target yourselves as you target others. I dare you.

Jack Thompson is a Miami lawyer who has for 18 years been involved in efforts to stop the marketing of adult entertainment to minors.

I don't personally have the time right now to work on such a project, but I want to challenge anyone in the community to make such a game, even if it completely sucks.  You can probably make a bit of money off of it as well!  Just an idea I wanted to throw out there.