It's still far from the end of the road for Jack Thompson: apparently, the Florida lawyer walked out of his recent disciplinary hearing after filing his own formal objections to the sanctions hearing. The result? An enhanced disbarment recommendation that may result in barring Thompson from practicing law for ten years. More details in the full article.

Activist lawyer Jack Thompson has been on the case of violent games and their developers for years now, and he's provoked the ire of gamers time and again. We're looking back at some of the most memorable quotes he's ever dropped, and we've chosen the twenty best out of them all. See the full list of Jack Thompson's most memorable quotes right after the jump!

Jack Thompson is at it again, and this time he has his eye on the recent shoot out that occurred at North Illinois University earlier today. In an interview with Fox News, he presented the same arguments as with previous campus massacres and other violent incidents, pinning the blame once again on violent video games. You can read more about what Jack Thompson had to say, as well as the video interview in the full article after the jump.

A two-month survey conducted by the National Institute on Media and Family (NIMF) involving 60 retailers in the U.S. show that 46% of retailers sell M-rated video games to teens. The East County Youth Coalition and other youth groups are now requesting retailers to provide employees with proper training and separate M-rated titles from other games.

More on this at the full article!

Take-Two Interactive and Jack Thompson have certainly had a storied past. While we all know about the uneasy settlement between Take-Two and Jack Thompson involving a particularly heated lawsuit last April, we've also caught wind of the many moves Jack has made against Take-Two, the most recent one being his lodging of a complaint against the televised ads of Bioshock.

The shaky relationship between the two is still not looking good. What started as an e-mail from Jack Thompson to Take-Two chairman Strauss Zelnick, CEO Ben Feder, the Federal Trade Commission, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, the legal counsel of Blank Rome and GamePolitics turned into an exchange between the Florida-based lawyer and Gena Feist, Take-Two's VP and Associate General Counsel.

Below is Jack Thompson's opening e-mail, unedited and presented as is:

From: Jack Thompson

Sent: Monday, August 27, 2007 4:55 PM

Subject: Letter to Take-Two’s Strauss Zelnick, Ben Feder Re Manhunt 2

Dear Mr. Zelnick and Mr. Feder:

Congratulations on receiving a “Mature” rating for Manhunt 2. You’ll live to regret it (trust me), so enjoy it while you can. I want to bring to your attention the fact that at www.rockstargames.com anyone of any age can order Manhunt 2 and receive it, with no age verification whatsoever.

Asking a 14-year-old if he’s 17 is not age verification, now is it? You also know that the use of a bank card as an age verifier is a violation of all bank card agreements, right? Govern yourselves accordingly, if you can.

Regards, Jack Thompson

Strong words indeed, and it's to note that things go downhill from there on in. See Feist's reply by clicking on the Full Article link below.

More behind the Full Article link!


Buy: [Manhunt 2 (PSP)]
Buy: [Manhunt 2 (Wii)]

In light of the tragic ride-by killing of 11-year-old Rhys Jones, U.K. Conservative David Cameron cited and spoke out against various cultural influences - one of which is violent videogames - to be responsible for such abhorrent behavior among today's youth. The part of his rather lengthy speech about videogames, verbatim:

What has become of our society when we have this spate of children killing children? It means understanding and acting on that age-old maxim that it takes a village to raise a child. It means retailers stopping the sale of alcohol to young teenagers.

It means music companies, media companies, games manufacturers, not just thinking, ‘What is my social responsibility as a company in terms of the projects I support and the charities I back, good and important as they are’, but asking, ‘What is the effect of the music I produce, the games I market and the programmes I broadcast?’

The rest of the article after the jump!

The recent outbreak of anti-video game movements and ideals pressed the Entertainment Consumers Association to build defenses around the gaming consumer. This came at a critical moment in gaming history as the ordinary gamer didn't have an official body to represent him against those that may attempt to hinder one's right to responsible entertainment.

 

The ECA was established to protect the consumers of the gaming community, just as the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) enveloped the developers of the industry, the Entertainment Software association (ESA) represented the publishers, and the Entertainment Merchants Association (EMA) spearheaded movements for the game retailers.

In an interview with GoNintendo, Hal Harpin dived into the ECA's objectives and its history, all the while hinting the ECA's views and opinions that gamers might find helpful and could relate to. The ECA is currently concentrating on monitoring developments of anti-games legislations nationwide, including updating a tracker frequently for "potential" laws as they pass through the legislative process.

Interestingly, they are also mindful of the fear of violence in video games that seem to come from people who hardly had any gaming experience. They provide the needed education for interested parties to see the pluses and minuses of gaming, while slowly dropping the non-gamers' irrational fear of games.

But perhaps more interesting than most is the ECA's view of infamous anti-video game advocate Jack Thompson. Harpin cautiously answered GoNintendo's question about their perspectives and opinions of the Florida lawyer and said:

With the resignation of Doug Lowenstein, the former president of the publisher’s trade association, I may be close to the top of his hit list. Jack is definitely not a fan, let’s put it that way. My thoughts on Jack are that he is an extraordinarily effective communicator and advocate. He’s able to pull together groups of otherwise disparate people and channel their support for his side of the argument. To-date, we, as a people, haven’t given him near enough credit, nor concerned ourselves with uniting against him and other anti-games groups. The time has come to do just that, and we need member support in order to be effective in combating them.

As an updated to our previous post, the complaint that Jack Thompson filed yesterday was turned down by Federal District Court Judge Paul Huck on the basis of having (as GamePolitics reports) "failed to follow the proper federal court procedure for amending a complaint."

From yesterday's report, we learned that Thompson had amended online blog Kotaku and its parent company Gawker Media onto the lawsuit he had filed earlier.

To further quote GamePolitics:

For his part, Thompson admits his mistake and pleads ignorance [...], citing distractions he says were caused today by the Florida Bar and an unnamed game website which published his home address and phone number.

Furthermore, it's also been reported that Thompson would raise the issue once again and re-file the amendment to the case - this time, following the rules and other courtroom procedures.

Hot off the heels of Jack Thompson's request to the Federal Bureau of Investigation to do something about Kotaku, Jack Thompson amended an earlier lawsuit filed against the Florida Bar and the Florida Supreme Court dated March 13th and April 11th respectively. The amendment seeks the inclusion of game blog Kotaku and parent company Gawker Media in the case.

The suit is in relation to an article published by the blog on its site which blasted away at Thompson for commenting on national television that the tragic events at Virginia Tech were related to violent video games.

Thompson also seems to have taken offense in one comment posted by a reader that accused the activist lawyer of using the Virginia Tech tragedy to feed off his cause and run his own agendas.

Originally created in Electronic Arts' California studios, the latest title in the Tiger Woods franchise was moved down south to the Electronic Arts Tiburon studios in Orlando, Florida. Because the studio already sports an impressive list of sports titles in its dev portfolio, EA Tiburon seems to be the significant sports title development studio for Electronic Arts.

With titles such as Madden NFL Football, NASCAR and NCAA Football under its belt, EA Tiburon is confident they could also improve on the golf title to make it even greater. Steve Chiang, general manager at EA Tiburon and Top 7 of 2006's hottest 100 devs, said, "We are working our tails off to bring quality games. We are here because we love games."

It looks like the next title for the franchise could be gearing up for a total next-gen makeover, since the move now delegated the title to a single studio instead of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07's split-studio development scheme. The news report from St. Petersburg Times also said that the next-gen Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 would be released by summer with user content functionality, such as:

• Gamers would be able to share screenshots and characters with friends and family
  
• Gamers can create social networks with fellow gamers
• Gamers can play as themselves by creating their animated image from a photo
• Gamers can play with people from across the world, but not in real time