Game Changer - BBC, Bill Paxton, Daniel Radcliffe, Grand Theft Auto

BBC has officially announced Game Changer. It’s a movie based on the conflict between Jack Thompson and Rockstar. Radcliffe plays Rockstar co-founder Sam Houser, and Paxton will take on the role of Jack Thompson.

Conceived for an adult audience, this special 90-minute drama tells the story of the controversy surrounding the computer game Grand Theft Auto - arguably the greatest British coding success story since Bletchley Park.
Its triumph was down to a bunch of British gaming geniuses who had known each other since their school days, and at the heart of it all was GTA’s creative mastermind, Sam Houser. In autumn 2013 its latest iteration - GTA:V - earned $1bn in its first three days, becoming the fastest selling entertainment product in history.

Grand Theft Auto offers gamers the chance to step into a fantasy world where they can behave like criminals, gun down rival gangsters and cops, hijack cars and venture deeper into an imaginary American underworld.

But the violent gameplay coupled with its outstanding commercial success leads to fierce opposition: from parents worried about children immersing themselves in such a violent world; from politicians, alarmed at the values they say it encourages; and above all from moral campaigners, who fight passionately to ban it. At the vanguard of this crusade is the formidable campaigning lawyer Jack Thompson, a man determined to do whatever he can to stop the relentless rise of Grand Theft Auto.

This is part of BBC’s push to promote computer science to the younger generation with programming that reflects the triumphs of British tech.

That could be interesting, though I wonder how dramatized it will be. In the final analysis, Thompson was far from “formidable”, he was simply someone loud enough to get onto Sunday morning talk shows… did he ever actually succeed in doing anything other than boosting video game sales?

I read Jacked and I imagine that BBC can’t be following the book too closely. The book shows everything from the Jack Thompson side and almost none of the Rockstar side. Rockstar declined to give interviews to the author, so his only sources for behind the scenes stuff in the studio was ex-team members, second-hand accounts, and the tiny bit of official stuff they did around that time like reacting to Hot Coffee.

Most of the Houser brothers material came from their days of DMA Design, which would match up more closely to Dan Radcliffe’s appearance since Sam was a lot older by the time of Thompson’s tomfoolery.

Edit: It wasn’t a great book. Kushner’s own Master of Doom was much better because the people involved actually spoke to him.

Take-Two is filing suit against BBC.

Take-Two Interactive has filed suit against the BBC for trademark infringement based on their movie currently titled ‘Game Changer’ as it relates to Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto video game series.

While holders of the trademarks referenced in the film title and its promotion, Rockstar Games has had no involvement with this project. Our goal is to ensure that our trademarks are not misused in the BBC’s pursuit of an unofficial depiction of purported events related to Rockstar Games. We have attempted multiple times to resolve this matter with the BBC without any meaningful resolution. It is our obligation to protect our intellectual property and unfortunately in this case litigation was necessary.

I’m not sure trademark infringement is a valid claim for protecting against an ‘unofficial depiction of purported events related to [infringed title]’.

This seems pretty laughable on its face. I assume Rockstar understands the Streisand Effect and is willing to suffer the consequences.

I don’t think the Streisand Effect has any bearing on a movie adaptation of a book regarding events that are in the public record. Rockstar’s not trying to stop the movie to bury some secret. They’re just trying to get paid.

Yeah, that’s what it seems like. Hopefully they fail.

The Micro Men show, which seems to be the template for this, both used Sinclair’s trademarks and was by most acccounts pretty unfair to him personally, so if they could get away with that they’ll probably get away with this.

Trailer: https://youtu.be/vHQI_MUbDGo

Oh dear God this is terrible.

Aaargh. On creating the RAGE engine:

Creating a new game engine is about trying to create an authenticity to movement, right? Do ping pong. Sam loves table tennis. If you can show him how the ball would move in flight, get that right…

What is this I don’t even.

And, believe me, verisimilitude is the least of this show’s problems.

This is the greatest comedy ever made.

Its a comedy right?

To be fair, the last half an hour hasn’t been as excruciating as the first half an hour was. It does actually feel like a real TV show now, rather than a bunch of people reading nonsense exposition off a teleprompter. It’s still shit though.

Apparently CEOs of large companies don’t have lawyers.

they have bad beards instead

Eurogamer liked it even less than I did. They also highlight the bizarre airbrushing of Rockstar North out of the story, which seems to defeat the entire stated purpose of running this during the Make It Digital season.

Take Two is now suing a production company called Salon Pictures. Presumably over this, which I’d never heard of.