Oh, right, like half the population. Here's right-wing panic site World Net Daily's aghast summary of the game, via Wonkette:

The elf reveals he specializes in assassination, and the other character replies, "I bet you're good at a lot of things."


The elf responds, "Mmmm, that's quite an offer, especially coming from another man – if we are both speaking of the same thing."


If the player selects the response, "I suspect we are," the elf agrees to have homosexual sex with the character.

WND then quotes selectively from gay blogs ("Gay geeks rejoice, all your gaming fantasies have come true") and YouTube comments ("We're a bisexual nation living in denial") and provides a list of retailers (like Wal Mart!) presumably for boycotting. Because, you know, if there's one way to make gay sex look hot and appealing, it's by showcasing it with stilted dialog, jerky body movements and elf ears, in a role playing videogame like Dragon Age. Hottt.

In a $120 million suit filed this week, Thompson claims that the site inflicted emotional distress by not monitoring the nasty comments, like this one: "Jack Thompson should be smacked across the face with an Atari 2600."

Upset by all the virtual hate, Thompson, who once fought to get Howard Stern off the air, tried to reach Facebook — with a fax machine. Since the online company didn't reply, he thinks they did it all intentionally. And he's being extra drama queen about the whole thing: "If I were Charles Manson, that wouldn't warrant the postings."

In case you're wondering why Thompson lost his lawyer powers, there are many, but mostly because he constantly accused people of peddling porn and generally being sinners.

Image via pshab's flickr.

The company and, more to the point, its insurance company are shelling out the money to settle a lawsuit from investors who claimed the company knew its programmers had hidden the sex scene in the game and decided to ship it anyway. Not a terrible idea; development is expensive, timetables are tight, and in any case the hidden scenes could only be unlocked with special software. But the company underestimated how strong America's Puritan impulses remain. Now it's spending 36 times what CBS was (unsuccessfully) fined for the crime of exposing America to Janet Jackson's nipple. It's just that inappropriate to take a break from your life of crime, for sex.

Now, there are two schools of thought on violence and video games. Some hee and haw about how virtual killing fields do nothing but give the young a taste for blood, a taste that will then lead them down a murderous path. And, thanks to all those hours glued to the tube, their shot's going to be pretty good, so the public should be scared.

Others, meanwhile, argue these games provide a relatively healthy way to expel pubescent angst and, perhaps, prevent unsavory outbursts. Let's assume for a second that the former's the truth. The lawmakers — who will again vote on the matter — see a link between rising murder rates and video games. Why? Because 100,000 people have been murdered since 1999, when current President Hugo Chavez took office. Video games have become more realistic and, therefore, bloody in that same time period. Thus, there must be a connection.

Fine, okay, but these same lawmakers are forgetting the fact that their army needs the United States' help to contain terrorism and drug traffickers. Rather than trying to stop violence via some bullshit bill, they should harness that destructive intemperance and direct it against the nation's common foes. (Which, according to Fidel Castro, includes the United States.)

But maybe that's just us being glib. Perhaps a better reaction would be to tell the National Assembly to urge parents to be more aware of their offspring's proclivities and address it themselves.

Web entrepreneur Jeff Atwood, who first highlighted the ads, writes that they "take advertising on the internet to the absolute rock bottom," and toward the moronic, hypersexualized future foretold in Mike Judge's movie Idiocracy.

Yes, sure, inevitable cultural and intellectual decline of America, whatever. Vulgarians that we are, we're far more burned up by the game's false advertising: After all that flesh, there's not actually a "queen" to "save" in the game! The boobage was strictly for "marketing purposes," according to Evony. Now that's something you can (probably!) sue over.

The first ad emphasized Evony's pedigree as a clone of the strategy game Civilization, in which the player must "build an empire to stand the test of time."

The next picture used a stolen catalog photo to emphasize the game's ample... opportunities for adventure!

But that ad really didn't convey the teamwork aspect of the game. To get across the "cooperation" theme, what could be better than hot twins?? The word "lover," perhaps. There's your ad!

The words "my lord" in prior ads really didn't properly convey a player's dominion over buxom females as well as a kneeling woman with an exposed bra and a sword pointed at her chest. But we'd have gone with, "buy our game or we stab this hot lady" for the tagline, here, as it's really more direct than "Help! Save the Queen," but without distorting the original message.

Oh, forget about saving the queen. So much work! Click here to just have wench sex and rule the world, already.

The orgasmic wench-elf and the kneeling queen and the lusty court twins were all too subtle, it turns out. Click here to play the boob game!* (*Game does not actually involve boobs). (This is an actual ad.) [Coding Horror]

See how many of the following classic moments you can spot in this clip:

"All I can think of is the guy in the library."

Ron Leingang, "Game-Play Counselor"

Howard Phillips, "Fun Club President"

"I had trouble with Lincoln Logs! (Sigh). Kids and fantasy."

[via Mental Floss]

You don't need to be able to talk gold and swords to understand that WoW, as it's abbreviated, is a "massively multiplayer online role-playing game" — which means that it's a group timewaster through which people bond. (A lot of people: The game, for which Blizzard charges a monthly subscription fee, has 11 million subscribers.)

Sort of like golf! Venture capitalist Joi Ito has called World of Warcraft "the new golf," the social glue connecting a new generation of Silicon Valley businessmen. True enough, I suppose, for the overpaid, underemployed investor class. But for the people who are trying to pick up the slack for coworkers who overdid it on a raid last night, here's what World of Warcraft really is: the new binge drinking.

The first thing to get cut in everyone's ad budget was "experimental" ad buys, random things like branded pop-up games and ads in Virtual Worlds and other, mostly online things that probably never worked in the first place. Also getting chopped: mobile ads that go straight to your cellphone—which not only don't work, but actually annoy the consumer in the process of not working.

Areas like mobile, virtual worlds and widgets are expected to be hit particularly hard, as it remains unclear what kind of impact ads in these media have. These campaigns often reach a small number of people, and standard measurement systems have yet to be developed. "When we get into the need to drive results, you can't spend money on the experiments and hope to keep your job and get your sales goals"...

"Virtual worlds are probably one of the things that haven't been proven effective just yet. I can't see us selling virtual worlds to anybody right now," says Lars Bastholm, an executive creative director at independent digital marketing shop AKQA.

Good news for nerds of the purist variety! [WSJ; pic via FPSrantings]

Former president of Dennis Publishing (Maxim, Blender, etc) Steven Colvin will soon be leaving his year-old postion as head of CNET / CBS Interactive entertainment and lifestyle division (Gamespot, mp3.com, tv.com, Chow, etc). Within the department, Colvin is widely believed to be the "brains" behind Jeff Gerstman's unceremonious canning last December. Just before the firing, Colvin spent hours in a meeting with Eidos attempting to salvage the relationship after Gerstman's negative review of Kane and Lynch. No word on if this departure is volunary or not, but his role is being taken over by CBSi COO Steve Snyder, which might be indicative of hardly-unexpected "restructuring" occuring sooner rather than later. Control of one of the department's largest assets, tv.com, was recently transfered out of the department.

There was also an annoucement today that CNET's extremely generous vacation hours package will be discontinued after this year, sick time hours will be reduced, health care providers will be changed, and benefits cut for "opposite-sex domestic partners", in order to be "consistent with CBS' company-wide poilcy".

On the plus side, parking fees can now be paid pre-tax.

"Suppose your Sim had a tough day, or the Sim kids are out of control, maybe the Sim worked out — that could be a moment for that particular [brand of] pain relief," [a Sims branding exec] said. "And they take that pain relief and feel restored, better rested ... less on edge."

Possibly the saddest quote ever. [Ad Age]

Less than six weeks before the second edition of the event is supposed to begin, the official E For All web site has listed Microsoft and Electronic Arts as the only major game publishers who will be exhibiting at the show this year. THQ and Konami, both of whom attended E For All in 2007, have no current plans to attend the 2008 event.

Big Download has also learned via their respective PR reps that a large number of other major gaming publishers also have no current plans to attend. That list includes Sony, Midway, Atari, Sega, Warner Bros. Interactive, NCsoft, LucasArts, Sony Online, Square Enix, Codemasters, Gamecock, Southpeak, Disney Interactive and Capcom. PR reps for Nintendo, 2K Games and Activision did not yet know whether or not their respective companies would be attending.