Crispy Gamer News

(contributors: Hal Halpin, President, ECA; James Fudge, David Chapman)

We count down the top twenty-one news stories of 2008, though picking which were the very best proved to be a painful, gut-wrenching exercise. There were so many interesting stories this year; we watched the interactive entertainment industry grow - and then later - retract as the global economy wreaked havoc on every kind of business you can imagine; players got their first taste of WiiWare, Home and the New Xbox Experience; we watched as the big three slugged it out for North American supremacy in the latest round of console wars and we saw Blizzard dust off its classic franchises and move million of copies of its Lich King expansion.

Yeah, 2008 was a good year, but not without its share of triumphs, disappointments, joys and sorrow. Here are the stories that moved us, made us angry, scared us and made us think about the industry we cover.

We begin with #21 - #15, starting now.
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Capcom dodged a bullet recently when a federal judge threw out a lawsuit by MKR group, the producer of George A Romero’s Day of the Dead. The lawsuit alleged that Capcom’s popular game Dead Rising, infringed on Romero’s movie about survivors fending off zombies in an abandoned shopping mall. Judge Richard Seeborg disagreed with MKR, noting that the similarities beyond the setting and the zombies were minuscule. The judge said that the concepts used by both the game and the movie were too vague to be copyrighted.

In my opinion this is a good thing for the game industry because some concepts just cannot be copyrighted and the movie industry would do well to save its money and avoid these kinds of lawsuits altogether. Dead Rising isn’t really about survivors anyway - it’s about what the player does in the few hours he has in the mall. Romero wishes his films had that much thoughtfulness and focus..

Capcom will bring its Wii Dead Rising game to America in Q1 2009, but it doesn’t like like it will be as much fun as the original on which it is based..

Source: GI.biz