So I attended the VGXPO in Philly on Saturday, and while the show floor was a little sparse (and looked emptier because of the size of the venue) the most noteworthy action happened in one of the convention centers conference rooms. After a screening of the documentary "Moral Kombat" from Spencer Halpin there was a live debate on the issue of video game violence between Jack Thompson and Lorne Lanning (creator if the Oddworld series).

Sadly there was no recording allowed (no photos either, but I did sneak one on my cell phone), and the wi-fi was non existent. Kinda lame since I was trying to live blog it all. Luckily I was sitting with Susan Ardent from Game|Life and Chris Grant from Joystiq who not only had one of those Verizon cards but fingers of steel to live blog over 90 minutes worth of talking. No small feat. So in lieu of me writing from memory about the event, I'm going to refer you to his love blog on the event.

Read on for my impressions of the event...

First things first, I have to admit Jack deserves some credit for walking into that den of wolves and agreeing to have a debate on the issue in the first place. I disagree with most of his ideas and nearly all of his tactics, but the man sat there and for the most kept himself composed and treated N'Gai and Lorne with a ton of respect. Lorne, on the other hand sadly seemed the less gracious of the two. He resorted numerous times to attacking Jack personally, which in light of Jack not responding in kind made Lorne come off as petty as some points.

I think the problem on Lorne's side was that he was trying to attack too many targets at once. He at points held Jack, the media, the government, and retailers to blame. While I'm usually all up for some Bush-bashing, it really didn't belong here. He even trailed off into strange tangents about nutrition and WMD's.

You couldn't really say one side won and the other lost, since it really wasn't set up to have a winner... more of a conversation. Everyone lost, however, when they took questions from the audience. With few exceptions, gamers got up to ask questions with the intention of making Jack look like an idiot, but ended up just making us gamers looking bad. I'm not sure why gamers decided to stand up and try to make their little point and make Jack look dumb, but the guy's a lawyer and had no problems deflecting the "questions" thrown at him. Walking out I really wish I had asked a question instead of listening to the guy in the Powerglove ramble on about whatever.

In the end, I know I said I'd never cover JT here, but since this isn't his usual hate speech that I see on the news broadcasts and was actually set up to have people on both sides of the argument I felt it were different. Surprisingly he came off more gracious and kind than Lorne, and a lot of people in the audience. He's no saint, but the guy IS a lawyer and knows how to handle himself depending on the situation he's in. So while I say "gracious and kind" it's really a matter of him knowing the crowd he was dealing with. He's still completely wrong.

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