If you haven’t noticed already, Xbox live is in support of Rock The Vote campaign and users have been downloading icons and these are the results as of this morning. The numbers are much higher now. You get the idea though. “Xbox LIVE partnered with Rock The Vote in an intiative to get gamers to register. Not picking sides, mind you. Just to register. As part of that initiative they released free Rock the Vote gamerpics for players to attach to their gamercard. One for Obama. One for McCain.”
At the age of 35, Michael Hollick was a struggling actor. He is in a total of four episodes from Law & Order, playing a different character in every episode. He has yet to be a big face in Hollywood. Over the course of 15 months, he was paid $100,000 while the sales of Rockstar accumulated over $600 million. The difference between a video game actor and a real actor is that a real actor gets residuals.
Unlike Hollywood, the gaming industry does not have a Screen Actors Guild where they are protected with agreements which automatically follow after the production of a project.Hollick said “But it’s tough, when you see Grand Theft Auto IV out there as the biggest thing going right now, when they’re making hundreds of millions of dollars, and we don’t see any of it.”
There’s been a lot of talk and controversy over GTA IV. Obama gave some words about it saying “This video game … isn’t intended for kids, I understand… [but] those video games are raising our kids”. Jack Thompson has been bashing the title on the Glen Beck Show, stating “we’re training our kids to be killers”. In The United Arab Emirates (UAE) it’s already official. The game is banned from their country, but some have found a loophole and have purchased the title from a duty-free airport in Dubai.
I do not understand how a video game could make one go on a rampage and murder someone. How can a person mistake virtual reality and create reality out of it? That is just beyond my morals (maybe drug influence?) I guess some parents raise their kids teaching them that it is okay to murder, sleep with prostitutes, use drugs, and steal cars. It’s a sensitive topic, but at the end of the day, I know I’m playing a video game.
