There was a time some 20 years ago when MySpace was the biggest social network in the world, flip phones were the pinnacle of mobile technology, and a whole lot of people believed that video game violence was going to bring down society.
Nobody believed that harder than Jack Thompson, a now-disbarred U.S. attorney. Thompson spent years trying to blame the gaming industry for every violent offense that he was aware of happening in the rough vicinity of a controller.
Thompson’s anti-video game crusade
The scope of Thompson’s war on video games was long enough to fill a book. In fact, it already did, one written by the man himself.
But rather than reading through his 256-page manifesto, a much quicker way to understand the gist of what he stood for is to look at what he did in 2007. The year when his crusade against video games was at its most bizarre and dramatic, but also nearing the beginning of its end.
Manhunt 2? Sir, this is a Wendy’s
That year, Thompson took on Rockstar’s Manhunt 2, which led him to attempt halting a Nintendo Wii promotion at Wendy’s. Thompson claimed it would feed violent tendencies to America’s youth, one fast food combo meal at a time.
By that point, Wendy’s merely announced it would soon start bundling some toys themed after Nintendo games with its limited-time Wii Kids Meals.
Thompson argued this was unacceptable because the then-upcoming Manhunt 2—which he saw as the embodiment of violent video games teaching youth how to kill—was confirmed to be coming to the Wii.
Its mere existence on Nintendo’s console made Wendy’s promotion inappropriate for children, the attorney said in a letter addressed to the fast-food giant’s leadership.
Thompson also claimed that a “dear friend” of his was a long-time close coworker of Wendy’s founder Dave Thomas. He cited this connection as the reason he knew Thomas “never would have tolerated the use of Wendy’s good name” for promoting a platform featuring a violent game like Manhunt 2.
Thomas couldn’t confirm this, as he had been dead for five years at the time. The Wendy’s Wii promotion went on as planned.
The “killling simulator” letter to Bill Gates
This was all happening mere weeks after the Virginia Tech massacre, the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, in which Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 students and faculty staffers.
Before Cho was even identified as the perpetrator, Thompson predicted on Fox News that the gunman trained on Counter-Strike, citing a Washington Post report claiming the shooter enjoyed violent video games in high school.
While the Post removed that claim shortly thereafter and no video games were found in Cho’s college room, Thompson still decided to pen a letter to Bill Gates, writing that Microsoft was “potentially legally liable” for the Virginia Tech shooting. His reasoning was that Microsoft published the “killing simulator” Counter-Strike on Xbox, which taught Cho to “enjoy killing and how to kill.”
This wasn’t the first time that Thompson wrote to Gates. He also did so in 2005, when he informed him he has 54 days “to stop the release of Bully on Xbox.”
Did Thompson’s crusade leave a mark?
Neither of those letters had an effect on any publishing plans, much like the rest of Thompson’s war on video games. But what his crusade did do was bring attention to the fact that the depiction of violence in games was getting more realistic. This might have influenced future discussions over content regulation, age ratings, and the like.
Bully, Manhunt 2, and all the other video games Thompson blamed for real-world violence over the years released just fine, and there’s no conclusive evidence to suggest his actions hurt their sales.
With not a single major win, Thompson’s video game crusade started dying down not long after his bizarre Wendy’s letter—primarily because some much more real issues started demanding his attention.
One of them was the disbarment proceedings that were filed against him by The Florida Bar, citing gross misconduct in a variety of cases. Following a lengthy investigation, the Florida Supreme Court recommended permanent disbarment for him in 2008.
In 2009, Thompson dismissed his disbarment as “legal nullities” and claimed he would resume practicing law, daring The Florida Bar to stop him. However, he ultimately never returned to the legal profession.
Where is Jack Thompson today?
Many years later, Thompson told Inverse he was teaching civics classes to Florida inmates as of 2016. He said he volunteered for this gig, calling it “the last chapter” of his life. It is currently unclear whether Thompson, now 73, is still teaching civics.
In a March 2024 episode of the My Perfect Console Podcast, Thompson acknowledged that video games have some benefits, like helping children with learning disabilities develop critical skills.
Still, his views on digital violence have hardly softened. In the episode, he likened gaming to nuclear fission, describing technology as “neutral” but expressing concern about its potential for harm.
Thompson’s legacy: A warning, not an example
Thompson’s activism and over-the-top persona turned him into a sort of symbol of the 2000s clash between traditional values and the fast-emerging digital culture. Today, he’s more of a symbol of how not to approach pushing back against video game violence rather than being seen as an example to follow.
Ultimately, public perceptions of digital violence have shifted quite a lot. With 65% of Americans gaming and more than two-thirds of them being over 30, there’s no shortage of people who had plenty of time to play games and figure out this didn’t turn them into violent killers any more than watching Scarface turned them into Tony Montana.
Someone who supported Thompson’s crusade in the 2000s might say that publishers now test boundaries with violent content less than they did 20 years ago. While there is some truth in this observation, attributing it to Thompson’s activism is a stretch, at best.
It’s more likely that boundary-pushing titles like Manhunt are no longer receiving AAA funding because the very concept of a triple-A budget has evolved. These days, the costs involved with making AAA games tend to be so high that they’re mostly reserved for projects expected to earn hundreds of millions of dollars.
Moreover, video game violence has become more normalized over the past two decades. As a result, it is much harder for developers to test societal boundaries like they did in the 2000s, as the threshold for what’s considered acceptable violence is now so much higher than it used to be.
In the end, Jack Thompson’s legacy serves as a cautionary tale about the risks of radical approaches to media criticism. As gaming culture has matured, so too has public understanding of its effects, leaving his warnings largely unheeded.
