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The Rapture of Lawyers
October 5, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Zach Whalen writes today about a letter he received from Left Behind Games threatening legal action, received in response to his several posts about Left Behind: Eternal Forces, a controversial game about the army of God after the rapture. Zach posted the letter itself, and notes that it is a form letter sent to a number of people, including Tim Simpson, Radical Congruency, Raving Atheists, and left-wing uberblog Daily Kos. GamePolitics has a mention of the letters and I'm sure many comments will follow over there.

I haven't read all the articles in question, but the cease and desist is the same in all cases, suggesting that the company is fishing.

Zach's far more cordial than I would have been, inviting readers to suggest possible legitimately false statements he may have made in his many posts about the game. I wrote a few pages about Left Behind in my book Persuasive Games, focusing on the ambiguous religious representation rather than the more incendiary features that others have raised a torch over. I met with the Left Behind crew at E3 a few years ago when I was researching the book, before the game was released, and asked a bunch of questions, some difficult. They seemed rational and understanding of the inevitable criticism of their work then, so I'm a little surprised to see this festering lawyer strategy. I don't know how the game has sold, but maybe they are just acting out their own disappointment that it didn't move as absurdly many copies as the namesake book.



Comment from Jason on October 8, 2007

I've no doubt the potential legal action centers primarily around the "convert or kill" descriptions of the game, which are patently false.


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