A laser anti-aircraft weapon for engaging targets that conveniently linger over the target area for an extended period of time. Not exactly a Death Star, is it?
Actually, on a planetary scale, that's exactly what the Death Star was for.
I think I as a consumer have a right to return trashy movies, CDs, or DVDs (i.e. "100% satisfaction guaranteed or money back")
Wow...for real? Is this right written down somewhere? It sounds more like your understanding of "rights" is "something I really want to do and therefore feel I'm entitled to."
I sympathize with you on wasting money on movies that turn out after the fact to be lousy. I've paid for movies in theaters that I've walked out on. I didn't think for a second, though, that if I stormed up to the ticket window demanding a refund that the theater would be under some obligation to give me one. I would certainly never stretch the argument into a statement about "rights."
Films and television programs are luxuries. Let's not confuse them with the actual rights that are guaranteed by constitutions and statements of law--rights of the sort that usually cost lives to secure. The Swedish courts seem to disagree with you that consumers have the right you assert, and I think the weight of national and international law generally is against you.
Copyright has problems, and needs fixing. There are a lot of good, interesting, well-thought-out arguments in favor of reforming laws as they currently exist. "I want it so it's my right" isn't one of them.
Most gamers have come to consider ESRB as "the enemy", given the degree to which they disagree (which at times tends to be rather extreme).
"Most gamers" consider the ESRB as "the enemy?" How so, and why? I'm a gamer over thirty years of age, and I have a child. I like the ESRB. I certainly don't think it's on its way out. I suspect the gamers who view the ESRB as "the enemy" are under twelve, and have conscientious parents.
So...there's apparently a law that "authorizes" cities to install red light cameras, and one city is thinking that's not the way to go. How is that "evading the law?"
All those spoiled little shits that cry when they only get 3 fucking sports cars will grow up.
Yeah, those entitled jerks! (As opposed to throwing a temper tantrum when you have to pay 10 bucks for a CD...)
Quite frankly, holding back their revenue through theft is the only way to truly make a difference, or at least prevent things from getting more sour.
It's cute that you think mass theft makes a positive difference. Guess what--it fuels massive litigation (which enriches copyright lawyers), and gives corporate entities and pro-copyright lobbyists a pretty valid (by your admission) argument for negative copyright reform. ("We need tighter laws because pirates are taking money to which rights-holders are entitled by law.")
Want to truly make a difference? Here are a few ideas:
Donate to (or hey, participate in) an independent film project.
Work on an independent or open-source game project.
Write, paint, draw, or record a potentially profitable creative work and publish it independently. (Best option--almost all profits go to you!)
All of these involve working around a dinosaur of a copyright regime that does need reforming. All of them are potentially profitable, and encourage positive reform. All of them also involve doing something besides sponging off Bittorrent, pretending the RIAA or whoever has done you some personal wrong by insisting that you pay for what they're selling.
I dunno. In principle I can't see a problem including a "game plays itself" feature if the developer wants to go that route. Let them put in whatever they want--it's their game.
As a practical matter though, if "accessibility" comes to mean "player is now a spectator," it's not clear to me how you're attracting people to gaming. If you remove the interactivity, you have a film, not a game. In the case of Mario Bros., it's an extremely boring, linear film with shallow characters and only one possible conclusion.
On second thought, maybe Nintendo is trying to make some sort of existential statement...
[C]ensorship of violent and sexual images and themes in video games is precisely what inhibits video games from maturing artistically beyond a nascent form.
Right. Because no great art has ever been created under a regime that censors violent and sexual imagery.
Theses like these are nonsense. Yes, a lot of great art bends social rules. Shocking as it may seem, though, it is possible to create magnificent works of art without pushing social envelopes. A lot of great art came out of patronage systems and commissions, where it had to be actively sponsored by a ruling elite. It was art by rules, and much of it was magnificent. (Mozart, anyone?)
I've defended the artistic possibilities of games before, as have most people, but the Tech Report article paints with an awfully broad brush. Not all games are art, nor are they intended to be. Of the games that employ violent and/or sexual imagery, I'd venture to say that only a tiny fraction of them are doing it for artistic reasons. Mostly, they're trying to sell copies of otherwise fairly inferior titles to a male audience. (I'm not being snobbish here--I find a lot of that imagery as appealing as the next male, but most of it is straight-up marketing, and doesn't pretend to be art.) And plenty of games with real artistic value have managed just fine without any sex or violence at all. While I don't think we should shy away from those themes when the project warrants them, I think ranting about the Hays Code in the era of Manhunt and Grand Theft Auto is ridiculous.
Which is so hypocritical that it's absurd. Parents foist themselves and their children on the world and then try to persuade us that being a parent equates one to being a saint and that there is nothing more altruistic than xeroxing yourself a few times.
The ready answer to this line of reasoning is of course: Aren't you glad your parents didn't think the way you do?
That chestnut aside, it's now considered hypocritical to want to fulfill one of the most fundamental biological imperatives on earth? That's a scary thought. What other fundamentally human drives would you like to see renounced in order to make the world a better place?
I'm not sure anyone here (other than you, in your haste to set up a straw man) is claiming that parents, by virtue of being parents, are candidates for sainthood. The mere fact that so many kids are abandoned, as you alluded to, seems to indicate that's not necessarily the case. A lot of people who elect to have children do work hard to raise them well, though, and I tend to think on balance that's a good thing for everyone.
I'm also not sure there's anything inherently more virtuous about caring for someone else's child than for your own, as you seem to suggest.
You must be using some definition of the word "hypocritical" that I'm not familiar with.
An anonymous reader submits a "story" linking to a random blog spouting off rumors about a nefarious scheme by Comcast to redirect port traffic. The "story" is then published under a headline asserting the rumor as fact, while the summary is actually a plea for the fact-checking on the story to be done by readers.
In my mind, this is actually a little beyond childish prank territory.
To all you folks who are going to write in with "ZOMG LMAO! Grow a sense of humor!" and so on, ask yourselves: would a straight-up act of identity theft be as funny if it were aimed at an anti-copyright lobbyist? This isn't a prank--the man's signature was forged on an official document, and then (apparently) submitted to the Swedish tax authorities. I don't know about Sweden, but in the U.S. that's pretty heavily criminal conduct.
There are concerns that Left 4 Dead will not get any additional content, the community will be divided, and that the quick development cycle won't do justice to the sequel.
If Valve were to add an additional year to the development cycle, would the fans be whining that it was too long to wait?
In short, if there's a difference, it's not the sex, it's the sexism. Anyone who can't acknowledge this is a bigot and a twit.
BIGOT, n. One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.
--Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
I mean, really. You state that the the difference is not in the sex itself, but in the sexism, and then acknowledge differences between the sexes that possibly affect job performance.
How about this proposition: men, in the aggregate, are more physically and mentally predisposed than women to certain activities, and vice versa.
The bolded language is the key here. It suggests that men and women (as you acknowledge) are different. This is not the same as saying that "women can't do math" or "men don't make good school teachers." It's possible (and very sensible) to acknowledge biological and behavioral differences in a way that does not set up barriers to employment or other life activities to persons of either sex wishing to engage in them.
If you're playing a shooter, gore might make sense. If you're playing Tetris, not so much.
Violence, like anything, loses its effect when it's overused. If the blood is repetitive and gratuitous, the brain is ultimately just going to edit it out, and for entertainment purposes the player is left to deal with whatever underlying gameplay mechanics or story remains. I think gore tends to be used to try to compensate for a lack of these bedrock elements, which is unfortunate.
Horror is a genre where gore is almost criminally overused. Gore in horror is like sex in comedy--it's what you tend fall back on when you run out of real material.
You'd think that, but tragically, most HMOs refuse to cover monkeys, and gene transfer therapy is quite simply beyond the means of working class simians.
While it would be nice to think that putting taxes on garbage disguised as food would promote the availability of real food, I'm inclined to doubt that things work that way.
"Real food" is widely available--you just have to know which supermarket shelves to look at.
And as much as I'm in favor of eating things that are good for me, as my father once said, "Sometimes you just want to shake a nutritionist by the lapels and say: 'I know it isn't good for me! That's not its function!'"
I'm a bit skeptical of the "healthy foods are more expensive" argument. The notion that you need a certain economic status in order to maintain a decent diet seems to be a uniquely American problem.
Beans, lentils, eggs, rice, basic grains--the stuff most of the world's poor live on--are all highly consumed because they're (relatively) easy to cultivate, nourishing, and cheap. Cheaper by far (even at your local U.S. supermarket) than Hamburger Helper, Spam, Hot Pockets, etc. But the Hot Pockets are much more heavily advertised, and take less time to prepare. I think putting together a halfway healthy meal is much more a question of time than money.
Wrong. The ONLY punishment appropriate when government violates the rights of the accused in the course of collecting evidence is to deprive them of the use of that evidence.
It might be worth pointing out that this is only true in the United States. No other country (including those with search and seizure protections enshrined in their respective constitutions) adheres to an exclusionary rule as a matter of constitutional principle.
Even in the U.S., the exclusionary rule took a while to evolve. Even after it was crafted as a federal standard, the states took a while to fall in line. There are ways of deterring bad official conduct that don't involve excluding relevant evidence of a criminal offense. (Civil suit against the police, independent disciplinary bodies, etc.) Other countries manage just fine.
Upon review, we find that the crux of the state's "unauthorized use" case was based on the proposition that Appellant was acting outside the scope of his authorization to use the computer by engaging in criminal conduct, i.e. soliciting prostitution.
This wasn't so much about this guy sending naked pictures of himself as it was about him using his work computer to set up a rendez-vous with a dominatrix. The court determined that this was pretty obviously outside the boundaries of what you might reasonably expect to be able to do with your work computer.
That said, it's troubling that a misdemeanor (solicitation) can get double-whammied into a felony because it's done on company time, and that that's apparently at the company's discretion. And the potential for abuse is there. It doesn't look like the guy advanced constitutional vagueness arguments (probably because this isn't a great case for that). Eventually someone will be fired for surfing/. at work. Then we'll have an interesting case.:)
Which is fine for hard core gamers. But for casual gamers it is just frustrating.
You sir, are 100% correct. Fighting games (despite some marketing to the contrary) are absolutely not for the casual crowd.
I find it very interesting that, at a time when game industries and game players alike are making huge amounts of noise about the market for casual games, fighting games seem to be experiencing something of a renaissance. In the past short while we've had Street Fighter IV, an HD remix of SSFII Turbo, Soul Calibur IV and Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. In the near future we have BlazBlue, KOFXII, and now MvC2 with online play.
Fighting games have always been geared toward the hardcore crowd. Heck, even among hardcore gamers, fighting games are a niche market. (For clarity, I understand "hardcore" to indicate the sort of game that involves a strong competitive element, requires a huge time/practice investment to develop skills in, and features enough technical depth to have a broad distribution of skill level in the player base.) The only noteworthy exception--as others here have noted--is Smash Bros., which managed to achieve some crossover popularity with more casually-oriented gamers, largely due to the nostalgic appeal of its character roster. (I strongly question whether Smash Bros. would at all have been successful if it had featured the same gameplay mechanics, but a generic cast of characters.)
So yes, more casual gamers will probably not enjoy MvC2 and its ilk. But for some of us, Capcom's announcement is excellent news.
Making sure I understand your question (which is an interesting one): can Jack petition the Utah State Government for the redress of a grievance, even if he doesn't live there?
I think the answer is: sure. In fact, he already did. He proposed a bill there, which Utah state legislators backed. It got vetoed by the governor. You have a right to the petition, not necessarily to the redress.
Generally speaking, the First Amendment applies to state governments. So the more pertinent question becomes, can the Utah government prosecute Jack for sending e-mails ostensibly petitioning for the redress of a grievance which the legislator already went to bat for him on?
Evidently, Jack sent Waddoups an e-mail whose header included a picture of a lapdance. CAN-SPAM indeed seems to be the wrong tool for this situation (probably why the AG sort of hedges in the article on whether anything will be pursued).
There may be a charge under Utah law for electronic communications harassment. Yes, Thompson has his First Amendment rights, but those aren't unlimited. You can petition the government for redress of grievances, but there are all sorts of ways you can do that that are offensive or obnoxious enough that the First Amendment won't help you.
To a degree, I can sort of fathom the (mostly monetary) motivations that push producers to convert games into movies or movies into games. And to be fair, there are some movies that feel like video games (300, anyone?), and some video games that feel like films, so the conversion makes a sort of sense in terms of strict cost/benefit analysis.
But Shadow of the Colossus? Really?
This is a game that had only moderate popularity at release. More to the point, though, the substance of its art depended on the gameplay and on an interactive engagement with the constructed environment. As others here have pointed out, there wasn't much in the way of story or character to latch onto. *Minor spoiler alert* I mean, the most moving moment in the story is when the horse plunges into that crevasse. Even then, the effectiveness of that moment as a plot device depended a lot on the use of the horse throughout the game. As a film, what do you have? A guy on a screen (they'll have to give him a name), riding around on a horse, fighting monsters. I'm sure a lot will be invested in special effects. I'm just as sure that the investment will add precisely nothing to the artistic value of the game, which is untranslatable into a static and much less interactive medium.
Slashdot Mirror
A laser anti-aircraft weapon for engaging targets that conveniently linger over the target area for an extended period of time. Not exactly a Death Star, is it?
Actually, on a planetary scale, that's exactly what the Death Star was for.
Or how about '-1, Too Informative'?
I think I as a consumer have a right to return trashy movies, CDs, or DVDs (i.e. "100% satisfaction guaranteed or money back")
Wow...for real? Is this right written down somewhere? It sounds more like your understanding of "rights" is "something I really want to do and therefore feel I'm entitled to."
I sympathize with you on wasting money on movies that turn out after the fact to be lousy. I've paid for movies in theaters that I've walked out on. I didn't think for a second, though, that if I stormed up to the ticket window demanding a refund that the theater would be under some obligation to give me one. I would certainly never stretch the argument into a statement about "rights."
Films and television programs are luxuries. Let's not confuse them with the actual rights that are guaranteed by constitutions and statements of law--rights of the sort that usually cost lives to secure. The Swedish courts seem to disagree with you that consumers have the right you assert, and I think the weight of national and international law generally is against you.
Copyright has problems, and needs fixing. There are a lot of good, interesting, well-thought-out arguments in favor of reforming laws as they currently exist. "I want it so it's my right" isn't one of them.
Is it really "piracy" if the rights-holder gives you permission to reproduce his work?
Most gamers have come to consider ESRB as "the enemy", given the degree to which they disagree (which at times tends to be rather extreme).
"Most gamers" consider the ESRB as "the enemy?" How so, and why? I'm a gamer over thirty years of age, and I have a child. I like the ESRB. I certainly don't think it's on its way out. I suspect the gamers who view the ESRB as "the enemy" are under twelve, and have conscientious parents.
Alarmist headline? Maybe?
"California City Mulls Evading the Law!"
So...there's apparently a law that "authorizes" cities to install red light cameras, and one city is thinking that's not the way to go. How is that "evading the law?"
All those spoiled little shits that cry when they only get 3 fucking sports cars will grow up.
Yeah, those entitled jerks! (As opposed to throwing a temper tantrum when you have to pay 10 bucks for a CD...)
Quite frankly, holding back their revenue through theft is the only way to truly make a difference, or at least prevent things from getting more sour.
It's cute that you think mass theft makes a positive difference. Guess what--it fuels massive litigation (which enriches copyright lawyers), and gives corporate entities and pro-copyright lobbyists a pretty valid (by your admission) argument for negative copyright reform. ("We need tighter laws because pirates are taking money to which rights-holders are entitled by law.")
Want to truly make a difference? Here are a few ideas:
Donate to (or hey, participate in) an independent film project.
Work on an independent or open-source game project.
Write, paint, draw, or record a potentially profitable creative work and publish it independently. (Best option--almost all profits go to you!)
All of these involve working around a dinosaur of a copyright regime that does need reforming. All of them are potentially profitable, and encourage positive reform. All of them also involve doing something besides sponging off Bittorrent, pretending the RIAA or whoever has done you some personal wrong by insisting that you pay for what they're selling.
I mean, really. Was there a shortage?
I dunno. In principle I can't see a problem including a "game plays itself" feature if the developer wants to go that route. Let them put in whatever they want--it's their game.
As a practical matter though, if "accessibility" comes to mean "player is now a spectator," it's not clear to me how you're attracting people to gaming. If you remove the interactivity, you have a film, not a game. In the case of Mario Bros., it's an extremely boring, linear film with shallow characters and only one possible conclusion.
On second thought, maybe Nintendo is trying to make some sort of existential statement...
[C]ensorship of violent and sexual images and themes in video games is precisely what inhibits video games from maturing artistically beyond a nascent form.
Right. Because no great art has ever been created under a regime that censors violent and sexual imagery.
Theses like these are nonsense. Yes, a lot of great art bends social rules. Shocking as it may seem, though, it is possible to create magnificent works of art without pushing social envelopes. A lot of great art came out of patronage systems and commissions, where it had to be actively sponsored by a ruling elite. It was art by rules, and much of it was magnificent. (Mozart, anyone?)
I've defended the artistic possibilities of games before, as have most people, but the Tech Report article paints with an awfully broad brush. Not all games are art, nor are they intended to be. Of the games that employ violent and/or sexual imagery, I'd venture to say that only a tiny fraction of them are doing it for artistic reasons. Mostly, they're trying to sell copies of otherwise fairly inferior titles to a male audience. (I'm not being snobbish here--I find a lot of that imagery as appealing as the next male, but most of it is straight-up marketing, and doesn't pretend to be art.) And plenty of games with real artistic value have managed just fine without any sex or violence at all. While I don't think we should shy away from those themes when the project warrants them, I think ranting about the Hays Code in the era of Manhunt and Grand Theft Auto is ridiculous.
Which is so hypocritical that it's absurd. Parents foist themselves and their children on the world and then try to persuade us that being a parent equates one to being a saint and that there is nothing more altruistic than xeroxing yourself a few times.
The ready answer to this line of reasoning is of course: Aren't you glad your parents didn't think the way you do?
That chestnut aside, it's now considered hypocritical to want to fulfill one of the most fundamental biological imperatives on earth? That's a scary thought. What other fundamentally human drives would you like to see renounced in order to make the world a better place?
I'm not sure anyone here (other than you, in your haste to set up a straw man) is claiming that parents, by virtue of being parents, are candidates for sainthood. The mere fact that so many kids are abandoned, as you alluded to, seems to indicate that's not necessarily the case. A lot of people who elect to have children do work hard to raise them well, though, and I tend to think on balance that's a good thing for everyone.
I'm also not sure there's anything inherently more virtuous about caring for someone else's child than for your own, as you seem to suggest.
You must be using some definition of the word "hypocritical" that I'm not familiar with.
An anonymous reader submits a "story" linking to a random blog spouting off rumors about a nefarious scheme by Comcast to redirect port traffic. The "story" is then published under a headline asserting the rumor as fact, while the summary is actually a plea for the fact-checking on the story to be done by readers.
News for nerds, indeed.
But goddamn that's a brilliant prank.
In my mind, this is actually a little beyond childish prank territory.
To all you folks who are going to write in with "ZOMG LMAO! Grow a sense of humor!" and so on, ask yourselves: would a straight-up act of identity theft be as funny if it were aimed at an anti-copyright lobbyist? This isn't a prank--the man's signature was forged on an official document, and then (apparently) submitted to the Swedish tax authorities. I don't know about Sweden, but in the U.S. that's pretty heavily criminal conduct.
There are concerns that Left 4 Dead will not get any additional content, the community will be divided, and that the quick development cycle won't do justice to the sequel.
If Valve were to add an additional year to the development cycle, would the fans be whining that it was too long to wait?
Would it really matter to somebody in the future that I spend $15.19 on June 1st at Lulu.com, for example?
Relative to June 1st, I live in the future.
So...what did you buy?
In short, if there's a difference, it's not the sex, it's the sexism. Anyone who can't acknowledge this is a bigot and a twit.
BIGOT, n. One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.
--Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
I mean, really. You state that the the difference is not in the sex itself, but in the sexism, and then acknowledge differences between the sexes that possibly affect job performance.
How about this proposition: men, in the aggregate, are more physically and mentally predisposed than women to certain activities, and vice versa.
The bolded language is the key here. It suggests that men and women (as you acknowledge) are different. This is not the same as saying that "women can't do math" or "men don't make good school teachers." It's possible (and very sensible) to acknowledge biological and behavioral differences in a way that does not set up barriers to employment or other life activities to persons of either sex wishing to engage in them.
If you're playing a shooter, gore might make sense. If you're playing Tetris, not so much.
Violence, like anything, loses its effect when it's overused. If the blood is repetitive and gratuitous, the brain is ultimately just going to edit it out, and for entertainment purposes the player is left to deal with whatever underlying gameplay mechanics or story remains. I think gore tends to be used to try to compensate for a lack of these bedrock elements, which is unfortunate.
Horror is a genre where gore is almost criminally overused. Gore in horror is like sex in comedy--it's what you tend fall back on when you run out of real material.
You'd think that, but tragically, most HMOs refuse to cover monkeys, and gene transfer therapy is quite simply beyond the means of working class simians.
Monkeys, write your congressman!
While it would be nice to think that putting taxes on garbage disguised as food would promote the availability of real food, I'm inclined to doubt that things work that way.
"Real food" is widely available--you just have to know which supermarket shelves to look at.
And as much as I'm in favor of eating things that are good for me, as my father once said, "Sometimes you just want to shake a nutritionist by the lapels and say: 'I know it isn't good for me! That's not its function!'"
I'm a bit skeptical of the "healthy foods are more expensive" argument. The notion that you need a certain economic status in order to maintain a decent diet seems to be a uniquely American problem.
Beans, lentils, eggs, rice, basic grains--the stuff most of the world's poor live on--are all highly consumed because they're (relatively) easy to cultivate, nourishing, and cheap. Cheaper by far (even at your local U.S. supermarket) than Hamburger Helper, Spam, Hot Pockets, etc. But the Hot Pockets are much more heavily advertised, and take less time to prepare. I think putting together a halfway healthy meal is much more a question of time than money.
Wrong. The ONLY punishment appropriate when government violates the rights of the accused in the course of collecting evidence is to deprive them of the use of that evidence.
It might be worth pointing out that this is only true in the United States. No other country (including those with search and seizure protections enshrined in their respective constitutions) adheres to an exclusionary rule as a matter of constitutional principle.
Even in the U.S., the exclusionary rule took a while to evolve. Even after it was crafted as a federal standard, the states took a while to fall in line. There are ways of deterring bad official conduct that don't involve excluding relevant evidence of a criminal offense. (Civil suit against the police, independent disciplinary bodies, etc.) Other countries manage just fine.
Quoted from the appellate court's opinion:
Upon review, we find that the crux of the state's "unauthorized use" case was based on the proposition that Appellant was acting outside the scope of his authorization to use the computer by engaging in criminal conduct, i.e. soliciting prostitution.
This wasn't so much about this guy sending naked pictures of himself as it was about him using his work computer to set up a rendez-vous with a dominatrix. The court determined that this was pretty obviously outside the boundaries of what you might reasonably expect to be able to do with your work computer.
/. at work. Then we'll have an interesting case. :)
That said, it's troubling that a misdemeanor (solicitation) can get double-whammied into a felony because it's done on company time, and that that's apparently at the company's discretion. And the potential for abuse is there. It doesn't look like the guy advanced constitutional vagueness arguments (probably because this isn't a great case for that). Eventually someone will be fired for surfing
Which is fine for hard core gamers. But for casual gamers it is just frustrating.
You sir, are 100% correct. Fighting games (despite some marketing to the contrary) are absolutely not for the casual crowd.
I find it very interesting that, at a time when game industries and game players alike are making huge amounts of noise about the market for casual games, fighting games seem to be experiencing something of a renaissance. In the past short while we've had Street Fighter IV, an HD remix of SSFII Turbo, Soul Calibur IV and Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. In the near future we have BlazBlue, KOFXII, and now MvC2 with online play.
Fighting games have always been geared toward the hardcore crowd. Heck, even among hardcore gamers, fighting games are a niche market. (For clarity, I understand "hardcore" to indicate the sort of game that involves a strong competitive element, requires a huge time/practice investment to develop skills in, and features enough technical depth to have a broad distribution of skill level in the player base.) The only noteworthy exception--as others here have noted--is Smash Bros., which managed to achieve some crossover popularity with more casually-oriented gamers, largely due to the nostalgic appeal of its character roster. (I strongly question whether Smash Bros. would at all have been successful if it had featured the same gameplay mechanics, but a generic cast of characters.)
So yes, more casual gamers will probably not enjoy MvC2 and its ilk. But for some of us, Capcom's announcement is excellent news.
Making sure I understand your question (which is an interesting one): can Jack petition the Utah State Government for the redress of a grievance, even if he doesn't live there?
I think the answer is: sure. In fact, he already did. He proposed a bill there, which Utah state legislators backed. It got vetoed by the governor. You have a right to the petition, not necessarily to the redress.
Generally speaking, the First Amendment applies to state governments. So the more pertinent question becomes, can the Utah government prosecute Jack for sending e-mails ostensibly petitioning for the redress of a grievance which the legislator already went to bat for him on?
Evidently, Jack sent Waddoups an e-mail whose header included a picture of a lapdance. CAN-SPAM indeed seems to be the wrong tool for this situation (probably why the AG sort of hedges in the article on whether anything will be pursued).
There may be a charge under Utah law for electronic communications harassment. Yes, Thompson has his First Amendment rights, but those aren't unlimited. You can petition the government for redress of grievances, but there are all sorts of ways you can do that that are offensive or obnoxious enough that the First Amendment won't help you.
To a degree, I can sort of fathom the (mostly monetary) motivations that push producers to convert games into movies or movies into games. And to be fair, there are some movies that feel like video games (300, anyone?), and some video games that feel like films, so the conversion makes a sort of sense in terms of strict cost/benefit analysis.
But Shadow of the Colossus? Really?
This is a game that had only moderate popularity at release. More to the point, though, the substance of its art depended on the gameplay and on an interactive engagement with the constructed environment. As others here have pointed out, there wasn't much in the way of story or character to latch onto. *Minor spoiler alert* I mean, the most moving moment in the story is when the horse plunges into that crevasse. Even then, the effectiveness of that moment as a plot device depended a lot on the use of the horse throughout the game. As a film, what do you have? A guy on a screen (they'll have to give him a name), riding around on a horse, fighting monsters. I'm sure a lot will be invested in special effects. I'm just as sure that the investment will add precisely nothing to the artistic value of the game, which is untranslatable into a static and much less interactive medium.