Movie Addicts. Celeb Dishers. Gamers. We're All Here.

Acronyms or no, I’m still positively roaring with laughter on this one, kids. Seriously, if I found this any funnier I’d have an embolism.

The PTC, or the Parents Television Council, recently sent master-level winged monkey Dan Isett, their Director of Public Policy to take on the Arizona Daily Star’s Phil Villarreal in a desperate attempt to help build grass-roots support for having both GTA IV and all of its creators banned from the United States. One of many watchdog groups chiding the massively popular game, the PTC was recently shown to have absolutely no clue whatsoever what they were talking about in terms of Grand Theft Auto Four.

Isett: I’ve actually played ‘Grand Theft Auto IV,’ and it’s right in keeping with previous versions. The series continues to lower the bar and this is the first game that has an alcohol content warning. You get points for driving drunk in this game.

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If Glenn Beck were to get a tattoo any time soon, I’d strongly suggest he look into a bullseye for his forehead, because he’s just called down some pathologically scathing wrath. 

Tonight on his CNN Headline News show, Beck came out with a truly spectacular announcement–check this out: [Read more →]

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Music is an oft-overlooked part of video game, but a good soundtrack that’s suited to the action can make the difference between an okay game and a great game. For instance, the bizarre surf-rock soundtrack of the Capcom beat-em-up God Hand is one of the reasons it has such a dedicated (if small) following.

That’s why I was interested to read this story about the music in GTAIV. Though the main thrust of the articleis about using the game as a way to sell music to players, it also talks about the work the developers put into assembling the soundtrack. [Read more →]

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No, seriously. In perhaps one of the strangest developments in California politics since Arnold Schwartzenegger was elected governor, head of the San Diego GOP Committee Tony Krvaric was at one time an actual, bona fide warez kiddie. For those of you not familiar with warez, they’re basically copyrighted material made available for download without providing payment to the publisher. Basically, it’s music piracy but for games and applications. And Krvaric was co-founder of Fairlight, a group that would eventually evolve into an international piracy group that is, according to law enforcement authorities, among the world’s largest such enterprises.

Now, there are plenty of people out there who call politicians, especially REPUBLICAN politicians, crooks, but it’s a surprise to see that a San Diego Republican actually WAS a criminal. Krvaric himself, not surprisingly, refers to the whole affair as a “hit piece”, designed to force Republicans to “take (their) eye off the ball in 2008″.

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So I was looking forward fervently to catching that lunatic Jack Thompson on Glenn Beck’s show last night. I thought it would be great to watch Beck tear apart the man who has no concern for personal responsibility of parents and individual gamers, the man who’s facing disbarment hearings down Florida way, the man whose mastery of anecdotal evidence, flawed studies, and making mountains from molehills.

So imagine my disappointment–my heart-breaking collapse!–as I heard Glenn say “I know what eighty percent of people who hear this are saying right now, ‘Oh no, here’s another crazy conservative on TV screaming about the dangers of video games’”. Indeed, Mister Personal Responsibility himself, the man who was willing to take his mantra of Personal Responsibility so far that he’d sooner see mortgage-holders who can’t meet their monthly payments thrown out in the street than see the government step in and help, apparently thinks that you’re too stupid to know the difference between the fantasy of Grand Theft Auto IV and the reality of life.

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If you live in Knoxville, and find yourself in need of psychiatric help, I would recommend you keep flipping through the Yellow Pages past Dr. John Robertson, an anti-video-game zealot so deeply committed that even he can no longer tell the difference between games and real life. In fact, the CHILD AND ADOLESCENT PSYCHIATRIST (emphasis for a good reason) believes that not only should children not be allowed to play GTA 4, but also that ADULTS shouldn’t either.

Now, clearly, Robertson knows more about CHILD AND ADOLESCENT psychology than I do, but presumably, him referring to ADULT psychology is out of his bailiwick. This would be like taking your Mercedes to a Ford dealership for repair; after all, they’re both cars.

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Perhaps it’s a low blow on the part of the New York Daily News to bring out the mother of a slain police officer to talk about the important social issue that is Grand Theft Auto Four. Perhaps her perspective and testimony might be a smidge biased. Perhaps it’s even totally irrelevant as the evil murdering bastards who killed her son never even played a video game in their lives (not that we know either way, of course), but ever in the pursuit of a decent sound bite, they trotted out bereaved mother Tatyana Timoshenko to spew the quote:

For some people, it’s a game. But for me, it’s not funny. It was for real. It was my son. This game teaches children to kill, then they wonder where criminals come from.

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So here it is. Grand Theft Auto Four has been released to stores and I can no longer practice law. Not even in Guam, and they’ll let a chicken practice law in Guam. I remember going up against Clucky in a product liability case. He doesn’t look like he could litigate his way out of a henhouse with a map to the front door, but man, he fought like a demon.

I still can’t believe I lost.

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New Zealand, the people who brought us the immortal horror classic Dead Alive and master of horror Peter Jackson, have apparently decided that this was a bad move and have pulled a complete one-eighty. Independent MP Gordon Copeland is leading a charge to solve all their problems and get Grand Theft Auto Four completely banned from New Zealand.

Apparently, watering games down and charging double or more for them was no longer working as a master plan to stop all violence in New Zealand. Thus, even more drastic measures are required to stop the people of New Zealand from having fun performing thoroughly legal activities in the privacy of their own homes. Because as luminaries like Jack Thompson have made us all quite aware, video games cause violence, and if you play a video game and don’t become violent, well, that’s simply because you haven’t yet had the opportunity.

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It’s got to be pop culture when even Wesley Crusher can have an opinion about it.

And right now, Wil Wheaton is probably fuming at his monitor, assuming he actually reads this. Wil Wheaton, who really hates all references to Wesley like fire and is actually a pretty nice guy in real life, is weighing in on the Grand Theft Auto Four controversy, and he’s actually doing it pretty sensibly.

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