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The History of Videogame Lawsuits
AsiNisiMasa writes "1UP is running an interesting piece detailing the history of lawsuits in the gaming industry. It reveals a bit about Nintendo's old strong-arm tactics, the origin of the third party developer, Electronic Art's employee abuse, and of course plenty of violent games being 'linked' to violent behavior. Jack Thompson gets an entire page to himself." From the article: "To show their appreciation, Atari took Activision to court, claiming that the company didn't have the right to develop Atari games. Atari lost, and more companies decided to follow in Activision's footsteps, creating the concept of third-party developers. It was a defining moment for video games."
Jack Thompson gets an entire page to himself.
That's good. Just what the guy needs. More notoriety and attention.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
They skim over the fact that when KC Munchkin lost to PacMan, there were dozens of other copycat games that were suddenly too risky to market, which contributed to the industrywide 'cold spell'.
as to how once nintendo beat off 3rd party developers with a stick, and now would love to see some 3rd party support, eh? eh? eh, nintendo?
MORTAR COMBAT!
I can, The Sims (and the ten million expansions to it) I hate those games.
It is rare to see an article devoted to decades of lawsuits seriously covering this subject matter in such an enjoyable, highly readable and appropriately tongue-in-cheek way.
Bear that bookmark in mind as one piece to submit on upcoming calls for contenders to the crown of "online journalism of the year" awards...
Ironically, your notation of his deficient spelling wasn't ironic at all.
Just going off what I know of Thompson, yes he was, but since the court case didn't go the way he wanted, he decided to pretend he was never involved.
The man is an attention whore, but only for positive attention.
He usually goes on the offensive when you call him on his BS though.
A persecution complex is like paranoia, it is flexible enough that anything negative you do/say to him can be incorporated into his mental framework.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
"Atari took no precautions to prevent third party games. The judge ruled that Atari didn't have a legal leg to stand on."
That's because there was no such thing as a third party video game company when the Atari 2600 VCS originally debuted in 1977. The renegade Atari employees who created Activision founded the third-party industry. The same industry that pretty much caused the 1982-84 videogame industry collapse that ruined Atari which it never truly recovered from which is why "carpet-bagging" companies like Sony and Microsoft now control the industry. Nintendo put a lock-out chip in the NES to prevent games like *Custer's Revenge* from ever appearing on their console. They wanted to restrict the third parties to ensure quality. At least that's what they told the public; the monopoly power was an alleged side-effect of that behavior. It should be remembered that Atari gained a 90% controlling interest in the earlier gaming industry without such tactics.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
The article needs more fact checking. I'm not a video game historian, but some errors jumped out here -
Blockbuster wasn't sued for renting out manuals (don't libraries do that?) They were sued for photocopying the manuals and keeping the originals. Copyright violation.
"Data East's 1984 arcade game" was not "The Way of Karate" - it was "Karate Champ."
Obese individuals DIDN'T sue McDonalds and win - they sued Mcdonalds and lost. The author is confusing that lawsuit with the woman who was served a cup of lava; she sued and won.