Tech writer Dean Takahashi announced on his blog that Spencer Halpin, the brother of Entertainment Consumers Association founder Hal Halpin, has just finished Moral Kombat, a documentary on game violence.

The film takes an unprecedentedly-candid look at the hot-topic debate that pits artists' rights and our culture's thirst for violence and sensationalism, against our social obligation to protect the youth generation as it takes shape and, inevitably, shapes our future.

The trailer is available on YouTube. With this introduction and a sensationalist link between flight simulators and 9-11, it seems the debate on violence in games and the alleged consequences on society is far from cooling down.

Jack Thompson is now targeting Microsoft to prevent the release of Grand Theft Auto 4, and other parties seem to be gearing up for other head-on confrontations. Penny Arcade has its own idea about the fuss, but do you think the real witch-hunt has yet to start?

My god, I think I saw some footage from Abe's Odysee in there. What the heck? Why did they include footage from an E rated game? I thought they were trying to build a case against video game violence. Someone must've fallen asleep at the slander machine again. Speculation does not = facts. I would think these folks would know that by now. Also, it looks like someone made a rebuttal to the documentary already. Needless to say I like this video better. Although calling Halprin "scum" is a step in the wrong direction.

EDIT: Also, can they really use the name "Mortal Kombat"? Especially with the K?

Its hard to get riled up over these things when every Tom, Dick, and Harry is claiming things left and right about violent video games. You can only explain these things for so long. After that its up to others to realize their own mistakes.

Its a scientific fact that Video games are a bad influence on our children. I have an expert that I pulled out of my butt to support my claims. But if you buy my book at 24.99 S+H, I'll show you how you can protect your children from this dire plague.

And if you order now, you can get a complete collection of my library, including the Dangers of: Pool halls, Comic books, Elvis, Hard rock with Satanic overtones, Heavy Metal, Homosexuality...

And much much MORE!!!!

Actually I support violence.

Only because violence is part of our human nature, even more so for the male gender. The only problem is when you have a society that doesn't bring you up with the idea of violence in the psychological framework, is when violence becomes a "bad-thing".

Hell, thieves caught in my country get burned alive by the locals. Obviously the locals support the death penalty.

That's even better than cutting off their hand! Very nice! :D

Abe's Oddysee is rated T. It seems stupid to do a rebuttal against a documentary one hasn't seen, especially when accusing it of not giving a balanced perspective based on what's in the trailer. The full participant list shows Henry Jenkins, which is pretty much a guarantee of quality.

A trailer is supposed to give a glimpse or a summary of the subject. In this case, I couldn't find a single neutral or positive statement towards gaming.

I don't knwo where you got that idea. A trailer us supposed to get people to watch whatever it's a trailer for. That is all.

Doesn't Abe's Oddysee include scenes where aliens get turned into food items?

The UK is hardly better by the way, but the perspective is education and literacy (5th January 2007).

Some quotes:

"It is time to garrotte the Game Boy and paralyse the PlayStation, and it is about time, as a society, that we admitted the catastrophic effect these blasted gizmos are having on the literacy and the prospects of young males."

"...the nippers are bleeping and zapping in speechless rapture, their passive faces washed in explosions and gore. They sit for so long that their souls seem to have been sucked down the cathode ray tube."

"They become like blinking lizards, motionless, absorbed, only the twitching of their hands showing they are still conscious. These machines teach them nothing. They stimulate no ratiocination, discovery or feat of memory — though some of them may cunningly pretend to be educational."

(About consoles:) "Every child must have one, and what we fail to grasp is that these possessions are not so much an index of wealth as a cause of ignorance and underachievement and, yes, poverty. It hardly matters how much cash we pour into reading in schools if there is no culture of reading at home; and the consequences of this failure to read can be seen throughout the education system."

I agree with the quotes. But I also agree the reason why the person is so pissed is because the author still couldn't pass Mario Bros stage 1. Imagine the frustration! :)

*bleep*

Never mind.

I tell you kids those nintendos are EEEVILL!! EEEVIIL I say!!

That was pure sensationalism and I think all of us who watched it are dumber then we were before. If I had some money I could hire people to convincingly prove that books, movies and music are causing moral decay in society. These people are just dinosaurs who can't accept that the world is changing.

I watched the trailer the other day. Once again, they're talking about of their ass and citing things that have no place in the debate. Microsoft Flight Simulator? Yeah, nice try. Some of those guys went to flight school not too far from me. Hey, while we're at it, let's claim that MS paid for those guys to attend.

They need to disbar Thompson and force him into a Florida retirement community. Lieberman could use a ball gag. He's once again proving that he's completely out of touch. I was thirteen or fourteen when he got up in arms over Mortal Kombat, and even then he sounded like a clueless twit.