Everyone’s favorite pantomime attorney Jack Thompson was making headlines across the gaming world, following his comical email exchanges with Gena Feist, Take-Two’s VP and Associate General Counsel regarding his criticism of Take-Two’s business practices. Whilst the legality of this is questionable under the terms of the legal agreement between Thompson and Take-Two, perhaps what is more irritating than Thompson himself is the fact that he remains free to continue his political soapboxing on sites like Game Politics.
I understand the fact that this is considered newsworthy information, and that Game Politics would be foolish not to report on it in the first instance. However, without taking sides, you don’t see Take-Two contacting political blogs and sending out of context, incorrectly timestamped emails for the purposes of posturing and assigning blame, which seems to be the sole point in doing so unless I’m missing something. Not only that, but Thompson does himself no favors by highlighting his ignorance of the legality of commonplace age verification techniques – something I’d assume attorneys would do well to be knowledgeable of. I’m sure that much will be made of Take-Two’s failure to respond to Game Politics’ request for a statement regarding the emails, but perhaps they simply recognize that the proper place for this kind of discourse is the courtroom.
Personally, I look forward to the time when Manhunt 2 is forgotten about as the mundane, uninspired title that it will inevitably be, and these painfully frequent arguments about video game violence and selfish political agendas can be reserved for games that people actually want to play, like GTA IV. Roll on 2008.
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