The latest round of indignant lawsuits by those irked at negative reviews: Left Behind Games isn’t too happy with their game’s reception in the blogosphere, so they’ve started sending out threats of lawsuits to silence the critics. One of the letters is online, another target is Daily Kos, and most amusingly of all, the CEO of the company tried to plead for Christian charity from on critic before deciding to wave a lawyer at him.
It’s an awfully silly strategy. Bloggers have loud mouths, but don’t have deep pockets. These attempts at legal harrassment are only going to win them negative publicity, and no money at all.
LOL moment in that Daily Kos article:
Ah, transparency.
as far as I recall nobody ever gave this game a positive review, not even most evangelical christian organisations
somebody feels like they can take on the world
Holy cow! on gameologys site jason shows up and trolls!
I think pharyngula just gave Gameology the internet version of an STD…
I can see it now, in a doctors office:
“I regret to inform you the tests are back, you have… Jason.
it’s nothing terminal though, just sad”
Clarification: unless I missed something, it doesn’t look like Daily Kos received a letter themselves (the diarist is just reporting about what other people have received).
The good news is that we can give you some spam and troll filters to control Jason outbreaks, but you have to be aware that it will still be possible to spread Jason to others, even if you don’t have signs of an outbreak.
Madness. I’m shocked, shocked at the lot of you. Why, these bloggers have clearly run afoul of the Universal and Inalienable Right of those producing really comically bad material NOT to have their output roundly mocked.
If this is allowed to continue, what might be next? Will people feel free to mock Pauley Shore movies? Will critics start unashamedly pointing out that friends don’t let friends watch Gigli?
It’s a slippery slope, I tells ya.
I’m a game developer by profession.
And ignoring the messages, racism, and bigotry in the game?
It’s just badly made. The art is horrid, there’s no lighting to speak of, it was two generations behind when it was released and somehow manages to have poor performance.
The interesting thing is all their problems are self inflicted. The original idea sounded cool, if utterly offensive; going Old Testament on sinners right and left in New York. Sure, you make a token attempt at a conversion or two but manly it is headshots for Jesus. So instead of following threw from the reviews it sounds like they caved into their critics and the game is a lot of boring running around the map. This is supposed to lure me away from say Medieval Total War II were I can launch hordes of slobbering Crusading Christian fanatics against Muslim cities to rape, loot and pillage for Christ?
Were is the virtual inhumanity of it all?
So they managed to offend both the secularists and the Christians without satisfying anyone. Small wonder they duded. Maybe the next game they will find their short and curlies and release the game they should have.
The lawyers sent a letter to the (new and improved) Raving Atheists too.
I think their ploy is to get everyone talking about their pathetic game to create a buzz, PZ’s comment about negative publicity notwithstanding. They are, after all, about to launch an expansive of their craptacular product.
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*Disclaimer: The terms “pathetic” and “craptacular” not meant to disparage the Left Behind products. Philboid Studge is not responsible or liable, directly or indirectly, for any loss or damage that may be incurred in reading this comment.
Joe Grant #17, I smell a cease & desist letter for you in 5,4,3,2…..
Whenever I see something about Tim LeHaye, Left Behind books,
or that awful game I get a bad taste in my mouth. A taste of sulfur. Does that mean I’m going to hell ? Or are they? Must be them, since I can’t go to hell. It doesn’t exist.
I would just like to take this opportunity to point out that “Left Behind: Eternal Forces” was developed by a team of Indonesian child slaves, many of whom died horribly. Also, that five out of every seven boxed copies of “Left Behind: Eternal Forces” contain neither game disc nor instructional booklet, but instead hordes of deadly hobo spiders. It is worth noting that the system requirements for “Left Behind: Eternal Forces” include a gallon of infant blood, and that in order to complete one of the primary quests in the game, the player is required to physically assault his or her own mother. Finally, I have heard from reliable sources that “Left Behind: Eternal Forces” once shot a man in Reno — just to watch him die.
oh, now you’ve done it…
the wording in the cease and desist letter was clear:
now PZ is going to get a nasty letter because of your comment, K. Signal!
LOL
Are these guys really that weak?
Also, am I the only one wishing that PZ could play a copy of this game? I mean, PZ playing a violent Christian video game could make for months upon months of wonderful, delicious fun.
I guess I’m not as scared at least in part because it isn’t me, but a lawyer working out of his mom’s basement doesn’t seem so intimidating to me. If that’s the best legal representation that Left Behind Games, Inc. could afford, well, that would explain a lot.
Besides, suing people who write badly about you is only a useful tactic when you don’t have the money to astroturf, or put up slick and deceptive websites about your game/business/whatever. It gives you the opportunity to have a pyrrhic victory against your foes…without the victory.
Thank you. This information has now been included in the game’s Wikipedia article.
Sorry – I guess the lawyer’s office could be in his mom’s living room or attic rather than its basement. (I misread.)
That negates a lot of my first point, I guess.
The game itself is pretty awful, but I thought the theology kind of worked.
The central element is that each unit has a “faith” level that can go up or down over the course of the game. Units with a high faith are under the control of the player; units with a low faith are under the control of the enemy. Units in the middle range are uncontrolled and just stand around until they’re influenced to join one side or the other. Now, this is important: Over time, faith tends to drift back into the middle range.
So the first training mission is to move the hero character from Point A to Point B. The catch is that he needs to pass through a gauntlet of “evil musicians” (I guess they’re playing heavy metal). If he walks along normally, his faith will drop into the neutral range and he’ll become an agnostic or maybe a Unitarian. This ends the game since there’s no way to bring him back under your control. So the correct strategy is to move as quickly as possible to “safe” regions, and then order the hero to pray until he’s recovered the faith he needs to pass the next danger spot.
I thought this was a wonderful metaphor for the work that Fundamentalist preachers have to do in order to maintain their standard of living.
Unfortunately, there will never be a shortage of scumbag shyster lawyers who will be happy tools for anyone willing to pay them to harass . . . . . .
Units with a high faith are under the control of the player;
but i thought this was post rapture?
wouldn’t the units with high faith by definition be controlled by God (which would also, by definition, be another AI element).
otherwise, they wouldn’t have been “left behind”, right?
the whole concept of the “left behind” books is just ridiculous.
I rather thought “Alice in Wonderland” was a better example of an acid trip written into book form, myself.
Noticed their stock is trading for 12 cents, down from 7 bucks last year. They have $10,000 in cash and total assets of 1.7 million against liabilities of $2.85 million. My guess is that their ability to continue to hire lawyers will not last too much longer.
Wasn’t there a post here a few days ago about how the Roberts clan complaining about a litigious society? I wonder what they would make of these lawsuits? Or is it the “it’s only OK if we do” logic from the religious kooks?
It’s interesting that Dawkins commented on how strong restaurant or theatre critics can be compared to religious critics, and now when a video game includes religion, we’re once again told to remain quiet, even if it’s just saying that the graphics are bad. Any other game would just be a loss of profit, but Left Behind somehow merits special treatment.
Speaking of harsh reviews, have there been any developments on the Stuart Pivar front? Last I heard, Jeremy Irons was speculating that Pivar’s attack on PZ was just part of a vendetta against Jeffrey Epstein, who had fronted some money to get Seed going.
. . . And by “Jeremy Irons” I mean Peter Irons, of course. Can you blame me if, in my head, I hear the former reading the lines of the latter?
Can you blame me if, in my head, I hear the former reading the lines of the latter?
after Jeremy Irons made that horrendous “Dungeons and Dragons” movie?
yes, yes I can.
:p
Left Behind Games’ stock (LFBG.OB) closed today at $0.11. It peaked in November 2006 at $7.44. Their 2006 auditor’s report questioned the ability of the company to continue as a going concern.
my schadenfreude levels are rising.
Given that this is a person who is willing to legally represent someone threatening a SLAPP against people for expressing negative opinions of a product, his office might well be in his mother’s bedroom. <.<
(Though that’s arguably true of anyone willing to represent a plaintiff in any SLAPP.)
Hey, no fair! I said mean things about the Left Behind video games, too! Where’s my freakin’ cease and desist order? I tells ya, I don’t get no respect.
Done. Thanks for writing. Next.
May I use this as an opportunity to push the Slacktivist’s Left Behind Fridays? The man dissects them but good.
Greta Christina – I would assume that’s because the lawyer would either spontaneously burst into flames or become so engrossed in the archives that he would totally forget what he was doing were he to try and find that post on your blog. :)
I was reading this past weekend, that some churches get teenagers come to youth groups by letting them play Halo.
Ichthyic-
but i thought this was post rapture?
wouldn’t the units with high faith by definition be controlled by God (which would also, by definition, be another AI element).
otherwise, they wouldn’t have been “left behind”, right?
The “Left Behind” books postulate this period of time after the Rapture but before the Second Coming where the people who are “left behind” get one last chance to change their ways and find Truth. There is apparently some conflict in the fundamentalist evangelical community over this interpretation of the Rapture.
But since the whole “Rapture” thing was made up just over a hundred years ago by someone piecing together various pieces of the Bible written by dozens of authors and by misreading metaphors, unrelated pieces of scripture and “historical” books of the Old Testament like Daniel as prophecies about the End of the World, the arguments are a bit like arguing over exactly how Doctor Who’s TARDIS works.
the whole concept of the “left behind” books is just ridiculous.
Well, sure it is. It’s based on a bad reading of a collection of 2000+ year old books, books full of metaphors that were never intended to be taken literally interspersed with bias accounts of history from one particular tribe’s point of view and some poetry that comes from gods know where. It’s a bit like finding a lost library full of history books from the 1950s, books of Emily Dickinson’s poetry, and copies of the Chronicles of Narnia and deciding that it’s all one book, almost all of it happened literally, and that some of the history and half of the poetry is supposed to be read as a prophecy about the end of the world in the year 4000.
From the Dailykos article:
“Defense Department’s America Supports You program, planned to send care packages including Left Behind: Eternal Forces to soldiers serving in Iraq. OSU had also scheduled to embark on a “Military Crusade in Iraq” in the near future. “We feel the forces of heaven have encouraged us to perform multiple crusades that will sweep through this war torn region,” OSU stated on its site. “We’ll hold the only religious crusade of its size in the dangerous land of Iraq.” Blumenthal’s article spurred ABC News to query the Pentagon about sending the controversial game to American soldiers serving in a Muslim country; the Pentagon quickly reversed its decision.”
a bit like arguing over exactly how Doctor Who’s TARDIS works.
Hey hey hey, you leave the Doctor out of this!
Joe Grant wrote:
Are you talking about the game or the religion?
There is apparently some conflict in the fundamentalist evangelical community over this interpretation of the Rapture.
LOL
shocker!
he arguments are a bit like arguing over exactly how
Doctor Who’sTARDIS works.there now, that seems more appropriate.
damn, missed a closing tag:
TARD
IS