Adventures of a Legal Beagle

Funnier than the commentary and side gags of anyone on G4’s Attack of the Show or X-Play (oh - and Morgan Webb will be mine one day… oh yes, she will…) are the continuing antics of Jack Thompson, gaming’s favorite lawyer.  This is the guy who tried to get Rockstar to shelve Bully because of the Hot Coffee scandal last year and, when that wouldn’t work, brought suit against Rockstar and Wal-Mart over the game which he’d dubbed a “Columbine Simulator” even after the ESRB gave the title a Teen rating.

Thompson has been compared to Don Quixote (by Bob Guccione Jr., publisher of Spin magazine - and not favorably) and Batman (by himself, back in the 1990’s when the object of his ire was the music industry) and a complete raving lunatic (by almost every other free-thinking individual alive).  If none of these are true, he’s at least entertaining.  This year his exploits included the ridiculous campaign against Bully, a contempt case in which the judge actually recused himself and filed a formal complaint against Thompson with the state bar association,  and - in perhaps the most amusing anecdote of all - expressed a desire to take action against Midway, Inc. due to “unlicensed content” (or is that “unlicensed kontent”) in the company’s recent title Mortal Kombat Armageddon.  The message Thompson sent included the following passage:

“It has today come to my attention that the newly recently Mortal Kombat: Armageddon contains an unauthorized commercial exploitation of my name, photograph, image, and likeness within the game.  You are commanded to cease and desist immediately from the distribution of this game because of this unauthorized, illegal content…”

All this would be fine of course - if there really were any image or likeness of Thompson in the game.  Instead, Thompson was reacting to a website posting in which a gamer was describing (complete with screenshots) various characters created with the Mortal Kombat: Armageddon “Kreate a Karactar” mode.  One of the characters created was a gray haired guy in a suit which the creator had named Jack Thompson.  I for one can’t wait to see what this guy will pull next year.  He’s a hoot!  He should have his own HBO special because he’s funnier than Dane Cook any day of the week.

He (or someone using his name) has even taken to sending us abusive emails every time we post news that paints him in a less than favourable light. Someone's got too much spare time on their hands, we think!

In related news this year a federal judge filed an injunction against Louisiana’s HB1381 before it could ever take effect.  The law, which Thompson assisted in writing, was supposedly based on “hard scientific evidence” linking violence in games and real violent acts committed by those who play the games.  The judge stated that the evidence used had been considered by other courts and, in each case, was considered “tenuous and speculative.”

A Handheld Dies Before it Ever Lived

Early this year the Gizmondo officially died when its parent company was declared insolvent.  Gamers everywhere were shocked by the news as they thought the new system had already died months before.  Economics lesson:  this is what happens when you launch a system no one has heard of against one created by Sony and which millions have been waiting for.

Delays, Get Yer Delays Here...

The foray into the next generation did not go exactly as planned.  In January 2006 the Wii was commonly known as The Revolution ("Let's go crazy... let's get nuts... let's look for the purple banana 'til they put us in the truck...") and the Playstation 3 was due to release in the spring.  Nintendo shocked the world with the look of it's weird new controller and bizarre name change to Wii (notice how much less bizarre that sounds now). Sony ate crow time and time again as the PS3 was delayed until November, differences between the two different PS3 bundles were exposed although Sony had claimed the two units were identical except for the hard drives, and the company was forced to admit that they would not be able to meet their originally projected production numbers.  Nothing ever goes as planned (bonus points for the one who knows what 80's band sang that ditty).

And More Controversey

With the Hot Coffee scandal a year behind and Jack Thompson busily barking up incorrect trees at every turn, there were surprisingly few controversial games released this year and not too many politicians attempting to make games into a hot topic.  Since this was an election year it may be safe to assume that Democrats (who, contrary to popular belief have traditionally been more vocal on censorship issues - it was Republican Oliver North who helped get Cop Killer into the spotlight, but it was Democrat Tipper Gore who had led the charge against offensive lyrics that eventually resulted in those black and white warning lables and the PMRC) were wise enough to keep their mouths shut and go along for the ride rather than speak and mess everything up.

One minor controversey did arise in Sin City itself - the one place you'd think anything was cool - when Mayor Oscar Goodman got wind of the forthcoming Xbox 360 game Rainbow Six: Vegas.  The game deals with a terrorist attack in Las Vegas and that just didn't sit well with the Mayor who claimed he'd do whatever he could to get the game stopped.  Now, months later, we've heard nothing from Goodman on the subject and the game released in November for Xbox 360 with versions for current gen systems due in January.  This kept gamers talking for all of five minutes or so.

Of more interest to many was the revelation that Battlefield 2142 was packaged with a form of adware.  Intended to deliver regional advertising in-game, the user was made aware of the software's existence when she opened the box and was greeted by a small slip of paper.  Gamers cried foul and turned to EA for a solution or an apology or an alternative - even a way to opt-out - and were instead told, essentially, if you don't like it, don't buy it or play it.  That, my friends, is Big Tobacco balls (you know all those ads that tell you not to smoke - its Winston-Salem and R.J. Reynolds, etc who pay for those).  When you're EA you can get away with that.