Jack Thompson: PWNED!
So Wacky Jacky Thompson had his "major coup" in court, when the judge ordered Take 2 to present the game to him and let him actually PLAY the videogame before deciding whether or not it should be banned in the state of Florida as a public nuisance. After only two hours of play, with some cheat codes provided by the publisher, he reached his verdict.

Quote from Niero over at Destructoid.com:

The judge said “There’s nothing in the game that you wouldn’t see on TV every night,” and that he “wouldn’t want his kids to play the game, but that shouldn’t mean that the game won’t ship.”

The quick-and-dirty rundown here:
http://www.destructoid.com/jack-thompson-ruling

A more complete version is being live-blogged at this very moment:
"Ship It, WalMart - Bully Is No Worse Than What You See on TV Every Night."

Many thanks to GamePolitics.com for keeping everyone up-to-date on this interesting event.

UPDATE: Jack Thompson Calls Judge's Actions "Childish" and "Spiteful"
Oh, man, oh, man, oh, man. THANK YOU JACK THOMPSON! Not only is this guy worth his weight in gold to Take-Two marketing, but I find it hard to believe that these antics do anything but harm his position. But they keep putting cameras and microphones in his face, so maybe they don't.

Also, this came in this morning from VideoGameVoters.com, who has asked this to get posted on various gaming blogs :

In a ruling issued October 11, 2006, Judge Robin J. Cauthron, US District Judge,
Western District of Oklahoma, handed down a preliminary injunction halting the
implementation of Oklahoma's law which prohibits the sale of video games depicting
"inappropriate" violence to minors. In the decision, the Court stated that
plaintiffs presented strong arguments that the Act contains unconstitutional
content-based restrictions and that the Act's language is unconstitutionally vague.

"This marks the ninth Court decision in the past five years to enjoin restrictions
on video games," said Doug Lowenstein, president of the ESA, the trade group
representing U.S. computer and video game publishers. "We're grateful for the
preliminary injunction and look forward to prevailing in the effort to permanently
strike down the law."

Judge Robin J. Cauthron, US District Judge, Western District of Oklahoma also
stated, "It was apparent that Plaintiffs [video game advocates] are substantially
likely to prevail in this case even if the Act is subjected to a lower level of
scrutiny."

So I guess we're now 10-and-0, if you include this afternoon's victory against Jack Thompson's attempt to get Bully banned. Nice winning streak, though I fear what will happen if we can't keep a perfect score.

You know what would be awesome? If the politicians wanting some election-year "family values" points and ambulance-chaser lawyers looking for a big class-action score would just shut up and let us play.

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 1:31 PM (Permalink)