Independent “Filmmaker” in Propagandistic Bullshit Shocker! February 22, 2009

So here we have a trailer for a documentary film entitled Spencer Halpin’s Moral Kombat, a film apparently tackling the subject of violence in video games. However, (at least according to the trailer), what we actually have is a steaming, sensationalist turd of a rhetoric piece spouting anti-gaming nonsense.

Now, a lot could be said about why this trailer doesn’t know what the fuck it’s talking about, but there are a few standout points for me. The first of which is that they actually interviewed lawyer and anti-games activist Jack Thompson. If you’re not sure who that is, he’s one of the first few interviewees, the man with the tiny face that talks about Cain and Abel as if it actually happened. Ol’ Jack is rather renowned in video-gaming circles for being an incoherent vomit-puddle of a man who understands the medium he’s campaigning against about as much as an amoeba understands String Theory. He was once banned from practicing law in Alabama for acting like a petulant child in court. There’s nothing wrong with wanting a balanced viewpoint, but no film about video gaming that wants one can have Jack Thompson anywhere near it. He’s an insane, narrow-minded conservative throwback, and the only things bigger than his head (although not his face) are the massive blinkers he insists on wearing.

The second point being the claim (by apparent association) that video games were essentially responsible for the attacks on the WTC, because Flight Simulators were used to train the men who piloted the jets into the towers. Flight Sims are not, never were and never will be video games. They’re exactly what it says on the tin: fucking simulators. The entire point of them is that they teach you how to fly aircraft. You might as well move to ban flight instructors as well, because they’d do an even better job of teaching you how to fly. Video games on the other hand, violent or otherwise, set out to entertain, and therefore do no better a job of teaching how to commit acts of extreme violence than do films or novels.

And I have no idea who said it, but: “we are who we are pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” What a crock of pathetic, unquestioned nonsense rhetoric bullshit. Does that mean that Christian Bale is a murderous psychopathic businessman, or that Cate Blanchett is a telepathic Elf-Queen? I wonder if the person that said that ever listens to any of the stream of mephitic sewage tumbling from his mouth. At least now it’s on record, so if he ever wakes up from the intellectual slumber he’s tumbled into he might one day hear those words and realise what a tosser he once was.

Now, whilst it’s probably obvious what my opinions are at this point, I really am all for a fair and balanced inquiry into what the cultural impact of violent video games truly is. But if this is the quality of discourse that we can expect on the matter, then I for one welcome the day when all we do for entertainment is listen to the gentle, grey hum of the fridge. At least then there will be no chance of being exposed to this documentary.