A Modest Video Game Proposal

A Modest Video Game Proposal is the title of an open letter sent by activist/former attorney Jack Thompson to members of the press and to Entertainment Software Association president Doug Lowenstein on October 10, 2005. He proposed that, if someone could "create, manufacture, distribute, and sell a video game in 2006" that allows players to play the scenario he has written, in which the character kills video game developers, he will donate $10,000 to the charity of former Take-Two Interactive chairman Paul Eibeler's choosing. The title of the letter alludes to Jonathan Swift's 18th century satire essay A Modest Proposal.

Thompson stated that he thought such a game would never be made because developers would be afraid to "train" people to kill them. He was unaware that Running With Scissors had already released a commercial first person shooter, Postal 2, in which the player could massacre the employees of Running With Scissors, including its CEO, Vince Desi, and actor Gary Coleman. Before that, some games had the game company buildings as Easter eggs, sometimes destroyable by the player (for example, MechWarrior 2 features the Activision headquarters in some levels), and Doom II even had the player essentially kill id Software co-founder John Romero in the final boss battle of the game.

Jack Thompson wrote a letter that describes a game whose protagonist is Osaki Kim, the father of a high school boy beaten to death with a baseball bat by a 14-year-old gamer who played a game about beating people to death with a bat. The game intro shows the court session where the killer is sentenced to "only" life in prison.

Osaki Kim then swears vengeance, and gets weapons, "even baseball bats. Especially baseball bats." Kim goes to New York to kill Paula Eibel, the CEO of "Take This," the company that made the "murder simulator on which his son's killer trained", along with her husband and kids, then urinates on their severed brain stems (as in Postal²). ("Take This" is a parody of the name "Take Two," whose developers created the games Grand Theft Auto, Bully, and Manhunt, all of which are games which Jack Thompson lobbied against.) Kim then kills the lawyers of "Blank, Stare", the law firm that defended Take This, "with singer Jackson Browne's 1980's hit Lawyers in Love blaring." Kim then destroys high-tech video arcades called "GameWerks". Lastly, he goes to E³ on its opening at May 10, 2006, destroying all video game industry execs in "one final, monstrously delicious rampage".

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