{"id":470,"date":"2006-10-18T23:51:50","date_gmt":"2006-10-19T03:51:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2006\/10\/18\/do-the-right-thing-microsoft\/"},"modified":"2006-10-18T23:51:50","modified_gmt":"2006-10-19T03:51:50","slug":"do-the-right-thing-microsoft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2006\/10\/18\/do-the-right-thing-microsoft\/","title":{"rendered":"Do the Right Thing, Microsoft"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m not much of a crusader. I’m too reasonable and pragmatic to carry grudges against Electronic Arts or Microsoft or Sony. I am a mature individual.<\/p>\n

But when one of the good guys is about to get the raw end of a deal, I like to speak up. Even if he is a crusader.<\/p>\n

Not that Gamerdad<\/a> can’t speak up for himself. He’s a superhero, after all. Andrew Bub’s website has tried to serve as a lighthouse for confused parents for a few years now and he has attracted quite a bit of attention for evaluating games with a parental eye. His staff called Oblivion<\/em> an adult theme game long before the ESRB caught on.<\/p>\n

So what to make of Microsoft starting it’s own Gamerdad? Correction. Gamer Dad<\/a>. See what they did there? Stuck a space between the words. Makes it look different.<\/p>\n

Now it is entirely possible that Brian Johnson and Microsoft have never heard of the original Gamerdad. Or didn’t bother to do a trademark search and discover that the term legally belongs to Andrew Bub for all interactive entertainment purposes. The space doesn’t matter legally, as far as I know. The two phrases are similar enough and have the same purpose and could cause confusion. So, Bub wins.<\/p>\n

None of this takes away from Johnson’s committment to an admirable goal. The world is big enough for a lot of parents to care about the role of games in a family. He and Bub have similar motivations and they are not enemies in the big picture.<\/p>\n

But Bub is a small time operator who thought of the name first. He’s an add-on character in a superhero videogame. He is the original Gamerdad. There won’t be another.<\/p>\n

Do the right thing, Microsoft. Change Johnson’s column to something else.<\/p>\n

Spread the word.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m not much of a crusader. I’m too reasonable and pragmatic to carry grudges against Electronic Arts or Microsoft or Sony. I am a mature individual. But when one of the good guys is about to get the raw end of a deal, I like to speak up. Even if he is a crusader. Not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5GFeQ-7A","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}