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Anti-game attorney Jack Thompson apparently doesn’t believe that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Thompson filed a document yesterday with a federal court in Florida discussing a character in the upcoming Grand Theft Auto IV and threatening to block the game’s release.
I have this morning read with interest an article on page 80 and 81 of the September 2007 issue of Game Informer magazine which was generated when, according to its author, Rockstar Games “stopped by the Game Informer offices for an impromptu hour-long gameplay session with the Xbox 360 version of the game.”
The showcasing play of the game to Game Informer revealed that the first killing mission of the “hero” of the game, Niko, is to kill a certain lawyer. When Niko comes into this lawyer’s office, having used subterfuge to do so, Niko pulls a gun on the lawyer who says, “that the firm supports the second amendment and that ‘Guns don’t kill people. Video games do.’”
…The fact that the lawyer, killed on Niko’s first mission, would bring up video games, makes it clearly a reference to me…
You have until five o’clock P.M. this Friday… to inform me that you are going to delete the above references and any other references that could reasonably be construed to be references to me in Grand Theft Auto IV and any other video games that are pending release…
Now you have descended this low – using one of your games to threaten my physical safety… Failure to comply with the deadline… will result in my having to take necessary and proper means to stop release of the game which targets me personally… given the copycatting of violent games…
It is likely that the attorney in the game is a parody of Thompson, as Rockstar has regularly poked fun at real world figures and copycat games in their GTA titles.