Legal Niches

Cameron Blows Smoke at Gamers

By pete_gallagher

As the worldwide gross box office take for Avatar surpasses one billion dollars, the film's director took a pot shot at videogamers.

In response to his movie 'winning' a 'black lung' rating from SceneSmoking.org for depictions of cigarette smoking on-screen, James Cameron told the New York Times the impetus behind Sigourney Weaver's character Grace lighting up:

… from a character perspective, we were showing that Grace doesn't care about her human body, only her avatar body, which again is a negative comment about people in our real world living too much in their avatars, meaning online and in video games.

Cameron would no doubt then be intrigued by Microsoft's recent patent application that seeks to tie the appearance of online avatars to a user's real-world health and fitness.

Full post as published by GamePolitics.com on January 05, 2010 (boomark / email).