Tim Langdell Loses IGDA Membership
- Thread starter Andy Chalk
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Wow, just reading that article (I skipped over it when it first came out), and then checking up on the facts of Langdell's activities (Applying for a trademark on a title after a game with that title gets announced by a different developer? Claiming a movie from 1997 was using his game company copyright? Only keeping copyright so that he can bully people who actually make things into 'licensing agreements' for his company, while he creates nothing? This guy isn't gutter-slime at all!) pretty much eviscerated The Escapist's credibility in my eyes. A shame, as I originally thought their writers were better than the shills that populate the vast majority of 'gaming journalism.'mk-1601 said:
Once you cut their legs out from under them, it's merely a stumble's length to the ground.lacktheknack said:
that's basically exactly what he did. He's been doing it for like a couple of decades.Ahlycks said:
Hey, Does this mean that other companies that bought licenses from him can sue him? Or does it just stop him from further abuse of the system? Cause if it's the latter, I think he got off pretty lucky.
The argument is, Edge Games couldn't cherry pick its lawsuits. It HAD to maintain that its trademarks were valid, otherwise they would lapse by themselves basically. You can't sue everyone who uses Edge for 30 years, then stop when the elephant uses it, and then continue when the elephant passes. All the "meercats" as someone said, that were hassled by the "hyena" prior or since the elephant passed would grow sharp teeth.Knight Templar said:
That article was part of a 2-part series, each explaining the Mobigames case from both sides of the spectrum. He wasn't supporting Langdell, he was simply playing Devil's Advocate. Heaven forbid that a game's journalist should present a little something for the public to chew on rather than just jumping on the bandwagon right away.mk-1601 said:
So basically when there's a major story in the industry, you would prefer a website that stacks its articles heavily in favor of one side rather than presenting a perspective from both sides of the issue. Why don't you go back to watching your Fox News? That should sate your desire for biased news media.SamElliot said:
Uh, right, so reading an article that was heavily biased in favor of the guy with the shifty business practices and going "Wait a minute, this is bogus!" makes me a Fox News watcher? Reading comprehension's not your strong suit, is it?WhiteTigerShiro said:
And no, when there's a major story (no matter what), I would prefer that any news organization would present facts, particularly ones that actually hold up to scrutiny. Mr. Chalk's article did not, as he was portraying Langdell as a victim (Mr. Chalk's own words), and ignored the well-documented history of absurd, greed-fuelled behavior the man had displayed to bilk as many people as possible of money they earned, and all because they put a word in the title of their work.
Now, to bring you down to reality: yes, there are always two sides to every story (more often than not, there's actually more than two sides), but that doesn't make them equally legitimate. Let's consider the 'birther' argument (that President Obama is a foreign-born Muslim planted into the U.S. to become president and destroy the country from within). There's certainly two sides to that story: one believes that, the other thinks it's bullshit. The side that thinks it's bullshit can point to the released birth certificate, the announcement in the news that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, that he went to a church (the reverend who ran said church was the center of a controversy during the '08 election, which seems conveniently forgotten by the birthers), and so on and so forth. The side that believes it just does because it 'sounds right' or because 'Obama rhymes with Osama' (sometimes they'll cite Fox News or some other article of suspect credibility, but otherwise, they have nothing). Can you honestly tell me that reporting these sides as being equally valid viewpoints on an issue is the right way to do things? Unfortunately, certain members of the press do. The same goes with Mr. Langdell's crusade against Mobigames.
This isn't a matter of wanting to hop on a bandwagon, or favoring biased news (love how you tell me to go 'back' to watching Fox News, when I actively avoid watching their pathetic excuse for 'news,' or any television news for that matter, you partisan hack). This is a matter of actually demanding standards from a supposed 'news source.' Go suck up to the Escapist staff somewhere else.
EDIT 1-P.S.: As for it being a two-part article: the fact that they even went past a one-part article is ludicrous, considering they could have easily placed all the worthwhile content of both articles into one.
EDIT 2-P.P.S.: Couldn't help but notice you blew right past my comment that "I thought [The Escapist's] writers were better than the shills that populate the vast majority of 'gaming journalism.'" You know, that "bandwagon" you're accusing me of preferring? I clearly pointed out my disdain for such one-sided reporting with that sentence, QED I don't like biased news sources.
Is it yours? See my next reply if you don't understand why I question this.SamElliot said:
His exact words: "Yet somehow it got turned around; Langdell, ostensibly the victim, has been utterly vilified by the gaming media." Here's a dictionary, go look-up "ostensible". Actually, I'll save you the time; "outwardly appearing as such; professed; pretended". Yeah, that really looks like he's believing Langdell's case when he uses a term that basically means "supposedly" to describe his status as the victim. Again, he was writing the article from a legal point-of-view, and discussing how (legally at least) Langdell could very-well end-up being in the right (which he did, if I remember the aftermath of that lawsuit correctly). I find it interesting that you question my reading comprehension, yet you can't even pull-out that simple fact from the article. Oh, and he later goes-on to call Langdell's act of trademarking a commonly-used word in the English language as a "dubious quality".
So yeah, this isn't them saying "Hey Langdell's a great guy, we should go easy on him", this is them saying "Holy shit, he's kind of a douche bag, but here's why he just might being (legally) 'right' regardless of that". I would also like to note that it saddens me that I have to place the word "right" in quotations when referring to anyone's legal priority. :/
Cute how you bring-up a case of proof vs paranoia and compare it to a story which (at the time) was proof vs proof. It was a nice attempt to trick me into saying you have a point, so I'll at least give you an A for effort. Though frankly, to answer your question, if the "birthers" as you call them (I never get into that conspiracy BS) had any actual evidence to talk about, then yes of course I'd like to see both sides equally represented by a news source, even if the general populace is already biased towards one side or the other. Were they actually right (hypothetically speaking of course), I would hate to think that the news would just side-step their evidence because they personally don't agree with it. Being a journalist isn't about taking a side and reporting just that, it's about fishing-up any facts you can find and reporting them, even when the facts speak don't say what you want them to.
Had you actually read the articles, you would know that the second part (which speaks mostly in favor of Mobigames) refers largely to information they were handed after posting the first article that explained Langdell's legal edge (no pun intended) on the matter. Besides that, you aren't complaining about them posting two parts of an article, so I can only guess that bringing this up from out of no where is basically just you trying to backtrack out of a corner after your lack of research on the issue caught you off-guard. Admittedly, my own vague memory of a couple articles from over a year ago misrepresented them as being specifically intended to present both sides of the view, when in fact the two were simply based on information that was had at the time.
Well then I apologize, I guess I was too distracted by you complaining about them presenting equal voice from both sides that it overshadowed any mention of you disliking biased news media. Had I noticed that, I probably would have called you out for contradicting yourself. Which, honestly, you kind of are. Here they provided articles from both points of view, but you're so busy being pissed-off at Langdell that you're offended by any mention of him potentially being in the right. So my apologies if it appeared as-if you prefer a biased news media, it's just the front you were presenting by complaining about an unbiased news article.
Over-all, the Mobigames case was fun and interesting to watch. It was one of the rare cases in the gaming industry where the journalists actually get to be journalists, and actually have to fish around to find some data on a situation that would otherwise have been kept as hush as possible; as compared to 90% of news in the gaming industry which is specifically fed to journalists for the sake of generating some marketing buzz on an up-coming release.