Gaming Addiction? Nope. Just Self-Indulgent

According to an article on wired.com, a man in Hawaii named Craig Smallwood is suing popular South Korean game producer NCSoft because, he claims, they have made their MMO Lineage II too addictive. Smallwood claims that, between 2004 and 2009, he racked up 20000 hours of game time and is now “unable to function independently in usual daily activities such as getting up, getting dressed, bathing or communicating with family and friends.” A federal judge is allowing the case to go forward, though it does appear that this may be on a technicality in federal law that doesn't allow the case to be dismissed at this point.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new winner for the Stupid Lawsuits award!
Dear Mr. Smallwood, there are no chemicals or subliminal brainwashing in Lineage II that would cause you to be addicted. What you are calling "addicting", most people would simply call "entertaining". It seems to me that most people who play these games want them to be more entertaining and so suing a game designer for providing exactly what their customer base wants does not even come close to making sense.
Is it possible to be addicted to video games? Sure it is. I am an avid gamer myself and I am certain that there have been times when my wife has questioned my addiction levels. That is not, however, the game maker's fault or responsibility. They are providing a product we have paid them to provide and, if the game is "addicting", that just means they are doing a good job.
I have to say, I have never played Lineage II. I never played Lineage either. If it is that entertaining, maybe I am missing out. I have played other NCSoft games and they generally do good work. It would be a shame if they had to make their games less entertaining just because of certain idiots in their player base.
I have seen some people commenting that maybe these game designers should have some sort of counselling position on staff, someone who would pop in and "chat" with players who are spending "too much time" playing these games. Why? That is not the game designer's responsibility! Most of these games already do pop up in-game messages that say something on the order of, "You have been playing for an extended amount of time. Please take a break." Personally, I find even those messages to be annoying and intrusive. If some game designer decided to add some sort of teeth to the "take a break advice", I would simply take my game money elsewhere. I have no doubt that I am not alone in this regard. I am paying you. Shut up and provide the service and product I am buying.
There is a dark underbelly to this story. According to papers filed by NCSoft in their defense, Smallwood was engaged in real money transfers. Not being specifically familiar with Lineage II, I have to generalize this from my knowledge of other MMOs, but basically it means that he was either buying or selling game currency with real money, a practice that is expressly forbidden in the Terms of Service. It is so forbidden, in fact, that all of Smallwood's game accounts were terminated and banned in 2009. It is rather amusing that Smallwood did not realize that he was "addicted" until after he was banned, isn't it? There couldn't be an ulterior motive to this lawsuit, could there?
Open and ready access to the courts for redress of grievances is an American principle that certainly needs to be maintained. However, we need - just as much - to develop a system that will prevent trash lawsuits like this from clogging up our courts. This kind of lawsuit is largely to blame for the expense, inefficiency, and just plain frustration of our judicial system. Not to mention the fact that, if it does go to trial, NCSoft has to waste time and money on a defense when the defense should be as simple as "He's an idiot - case closed." There are a number of steps between here and a full-fledged trial, though. Hopefully a judge at one of those steps will toss this case into the trash heap where it belongs.

Putting The Super Back In Superman

With the results of a recent lawsuit from the Siegel and Shuster estates (heirs of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, original creators of Superman), it looks like Warner Brothers has a choice: have a new Superman movie in production by 2011 or, possibly, never again without paying huge penalties. I have yet to find a concise, understandable description of this lawsuit or its results (if anyone out there has a link, feel free to send it my way), so I don't have those details for you, but I do know that the heirs of Siegel and Shuster have been saying for years that they have gotten a raw deal from Warner Brothers and DC Comics and, more often than not, the courts have generally agreed. The fact that almost all creators from that era got a raw deal seems to go pretty much unnoticed, but that's a different story.
The story here is that Warner Brothers needs to get a new Superman movie rolling fast, but they say they can't because the character is currently perceived as "uncool" and "damaged goods". One studio talking head in the court case used the abysmal box office record of Superman IV as evidence that this franchise was "played out".
That last point we can address easily. The abysmal box office record for Superman IV was evidence that Superman IV sucked. End of story. The sheer volume of successful Superman adaptations since then is overwhelming evidence that the problem was in that particular offering, not in the franchise as a whole.
So then we are left with the problems of "uncool" and "damaged goods". Those actually are not that difficult to deal with either. Whenever suit-and-tie-wearing executives interfere with the presentation of the character called Superman, we inevitably get a guy in a blue suit and red cape who does not otherwise show more than a passing resemblance to Earth's greatest defender. The bean counters have, over and over again, tried to "modernize" Superman, tried to copy the formulas of other heroes and anti-heroes, tried to "make" Superman "cool". These attempts have, over and over again, failed miserably. Without exception, every time someone tries one of these ridiculous re-imaginings and it bombs, someone else comes along and brings the Big Blue Boyscout back to his roots, and the character's popularity once again surges. You would think that, after seeing this formula repeated so many times, someone in charge might actually notice.
Since you guys at Warner Brothers can't seem to figure these things out on your own, let me give you a few pointers:
Superman is not an anti-hero. He is a shining beacon of hope and people could certainly use a bit more of that these days. It has been very rare that showing a darker side to Superman has actually worked (think Kingdom Come, a fabulous graphic novel that you really should read if you have not done so) and these have only worked because they actually highlighted his positive traits and were ended with a large redemption that restored Superman to these positive traits. If you ever doubt that Superman is The Hero and that doubt is not resolved absolutely and at least relatively quickly, you have not written a Superman story.
Superman is not Batman and you cannot use the same methods for one as for the other. This is not actually the same thing as the "not an anti-hero" point because Batman is not truly an anti-hero. He does things that are dark (opposite of Superman) but he does them for purely noble reasons (same as Superman and decidedly opposite of anti-hero motif). The combination of similarities and differences is what makes putting these two characters together so popular. They share absolute morals - protect the innocent, never kill, fight injustice no matter the odds, etc - but they constantly bicker over methods. The defining difference is in who they most seek to affect and how they accomplish this. Batman's primary affect is on criminals through fear. In many of the best batman stories, the average citizen doesn't even know whether or not there really is a Batman - he's an urban legend - but the criminals know him and are afraid. Superman's primary affect is on the average person through hope. Everyone knows Superman is real and most people feel a happy thrill when they see him flying through the air. Do you see the difference?
Superman is the most powerful hero in the DC universe. Quit wasting our time with problems Jimmy Olsen could solve. There is a reason the comics only rarely feature Lex as the upfront villain. Yes, it's good to see his devious manipulations from time to time but have you forgotten what the original and longest running Superman comic was called? Action Comics! Notice a key word there? We want to see Superman go toe to toe with villains who can actually hit back.
Superman is not a whiner. Leave the angst to the X-Men or the Boy Wonder. Teenagers. Superman is not a teenager. You don't make an adult character cool to teenagers by making him act like them. They're not stupid. Most teenagers see that as the lame attempt to grab their attention that it is.
Superman is not alien. Get off the isolated alien kick. Yes, he is technically and genetically not human, but he is emotionally and socially more human than human. He is the best parts of humanity, amplified. Superman was raised by Kansas farmers who taught him human values, human loves, and human ideals. Yes, he knows he is an alien and yes, this occasionally causes issues, but it is not the center of his being. The center of Superman's being is being the best human he can be because that is what Mom and dad taught him to be.
In short, give us back our Kansas boyscout and let him do some serious butt kicking in the name of defending truth and justice. Those two words are a Superman catchphrase, but I'll give you two more that should be guiding stars to the folks at Warner Brothers: hope and action.
There is nothing uncool or damaged about the character of Superman, only about the way Warner Brothers executives have treated that most iconic of characters. Be fair - hell, be honest and just. Make a Superman movie worthy of the name and you'll see moviegoers flock to the box office. Continue to think that people should be dumb enough to buy anything with a big red S on it and you'll continue to lose money. Shouldn't be a difficult decision.

Hooterless Hooters

It is no secret that I believe that lawsuits are out of control and that our whiney, "I can have anything I want" population has reached a point of shame that is disheartening, to say the least. People looking back through history at this time right now will shake their heads and laugh at what people today thought was important enough to sue over or feel alarmed at how amazingly self-indulgent the people of the late 2oth and early 21st century were. I hope they will, at least. That will mean that something that can truly be called human survived and that we, maybe, got past this period of idiocy.
I hate to admit it, but the current winner for my Wall of Shame for stupid lawsuits hails from my original stomping grounds. Nikolai Grushevski, of Corpus Christi, Texas, has sued the restaurant chain Hooters, claiming that they denied him a job purely because he is male. On the surface of it, the claim is false because Hooters does have a number of jobs that use male employees. Bartenders, cooks, hosts, even managers all include male employees. Grushevski, however, specifically wanted to be a waiter and, of course, we all know that Hooters does not employ male waiters. It is rather implicit in the name of the place.
According to Grushevski and people like him (this is actually not the first time such a lawsuit has been filed against Hooters), this is sexual discrimination. They say that waiting tables is not a gender-specific job and gender should not be used as a hiring criteria. Grushevski even claims that he applied for this position because it is one of the better paying jobs in town. Having grown up around Corpus Christi, I find that claim hard to believe - there are a number of waiter position in the Corpus Christi area that would both pay better and receive higher tips - but it isn't even relative to the suit. Is Grushevski claiming that a bartender at Hooters would make less than a waitress?
Having been a waiter in south Texas, I can dismiss Grushevski's money claim out of hand. Male waiters in south Texas do not, on average, make nearly the tips that female waitresses do (I state this having been one of the highest tipped waiters in my area at the time) and a male waiter at Hooters would make pretty close to zip because he would have offended a significant portion of the customers just by being there.
That last part, however, is the important part. Hooters has spent years building up a particular brand image, and doing quite well with it. In this particular case, the job of Hooters waitress is as gender-specific as the job of Chipendale dancer. Women - most women, at least - do not go to the Chipendales expecting to see female dancers and men, on average, do not go to Hooters expecting to see male waiters. Is that discrimination? Absolutely not! There is nothing that prevents anyone from running a complimentary female dancers group (in fact, there are plenty of them) and there is nothing that prevents anyone from running a complimentary restaurant with scantily-clad male waiters.
Comparisons have been made to such ground-breaking discrimination issues as allowing women to be firefighters or men to be nurses, but the comparisons are not valid. We are not talking about businesses catering to specific customers in those cases. It would be ludicrous to open a second firehouse to hire only female firefighters (though there could definitely be a calendar and Playboy spread in the idea) and a dying person does not care who is helping so long as the helper is capable of the job.
It isn't about the vagaries of the law or the fine-tuning of social consciousness. It is about common sense. So long as the variety and options continue to exist in the wider spectrum, there is nothing wrong with a business using their own brand image requirements for hiring. An advertising campaign looks for a specific appearance in the people they hire for specific advertising jobs. Is that discrimination? The Hooters girls are Hooters biggest advertising campaign and Nikolai Grushevski needs to just go submit applications elsewhere.

Taking Things A Bit Too Far

Iraq war veteran Kevin Murray, with the support of the Thomas More Law Center and on behalf of U.S. taxpayers, has filed a lawsuit against Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and the Federal Reserve claiming that the recent federal bailout of the American International Group is helping promote Shariah law. The reason for this claim is that AIG will be offering Shariah-compliant homeowner insurance policies, known as takaful, to U.S. customers through one of its subsidiaries. For those who do not know, Shariah is the legal application of the Islamic religion.
Now I must say, there are plenty of reasons to be grumpy about the AIG bailout and there are more than plenty of reasons to be apprehensive about the applications of Shariah law, but this particular lawsuit is stretching things just a bit. AIG is not converting to all takaful policies nor is it requiring anyone to buy takaful policies. It is only offering them as an option to those who want them. It seems to me that, rather than being an establishment or even an endorcement of religion, this is exactly what the First Amendment's religion clause is all about: allowing open and equal access to various religious groups.
It is a long road from this to England's recent decision to allow Shariah law to have a say in certain civil courts. I'm not saying that people shouldn't keep an eye on things to make certain there isn't any encroachment, but there is a difference between guarding against abuse and outright paranoia.
To be honest, though, I do not actually believe that paranoia has anything to do with this one. The Thomas More Law Center is a non-profit law firm that promotes conservative Christian values. Anyone care to place any bets on what their agenda is in this?
This is nothing more than a thinly-veiled attempt at discrimination and it shouldn't fly here any better than it would were the religion involved Christianity. Most legal scholars seem to be of the opinion that it won't since the prevailing opinion is that what AIG is doing is an open access business policy and not an establishment or endorcement of religion. The fact that it won't fly, however, does not mean that the Thomas More Law Center shouldn't be slapped down for trying. In fact, the people who should be slapping the hardest are those Christians who are concerned about religious freedoms.
I cannot state often enough or emphatically enough, you cannot defend liberty by removing it from someone else. Every time you aprove of the removal of one liberty, you set a precedent for the removal of others. If you give government the power to curtail liberties in one field, you are giving them the power to curtail liberties in all fields. Once the rule is established, it takes no effort at all to change the word "Islam" to "Christian" or "Jewish" or "Buddhist" or pick your flavor.
Anyone who has read my posts in the past knows that I am not a fan of Islam. I am fully aware of the dangerous tendencies inherent in that religion. I am also aware, however, that there are many Muslims in the world who do not subscribe to those dangerous tendencies, just as there were many Christians who were not psychotic murderers during the time of the Crusades and the Inquisition. Pick your battles, but pick them wisely lest the battle you pick wind up being against yourself.