These were delivered to my office yesterday:  c/o Warner Bros, two 500 lbs Lego statues of Lego Batman and Lego Robin (Lego John Schappert not included).

Infamous florida lawyer and asshole, Jack Thompson has been permenantly disbarred without leave to re-apply to the florida bar.  The entire gaming world should throw a giant party to celebrate.  Joystiq has the full text of the dismissal here.  Evidently he was sanctioned a few months ago to be unable to submit documents to the court himself (having to go through another lawyer) after he submitted pornagraphic materials to the court (really Jack? you thought that was a good idea?).  Once the proceedings began for his disbarrment case, he responded only through materials he submitted himself, which were thrown out.  The courts thus treated his case as uncontested and tossed his ass out of the florida bar, for many, many reasons, the worse of which are cataloged in the document.  My personal favorite:

Respondent retaliated against attorneys who filed bar complaints against him for his unethical conduct by asserting to their clients, government officials, politicians, the media, female lawyers in their law firm, employees, personal friends, and their wives, that the attourneys were criminal pornographers who objectify women.

You got what was coming to you, you insipid fuck.  Unfortunately the loss of your professional status probably means you’re going to spend your time at your true calling in life, being an obnoxious boil on the face of the earth.  Hopefully your new found unemployment will cause you to default on your mortgage, relegating you to ranting on a street corner, forgotten and alone.

Oh, by the way, you owe the Florida Bar Association $43,675.35

e’ve had a fun week in the US with all the banks going under, and the federal government nationalizing the largest insurance company in the world, and then providing hundreds of billions of dollars in bailouts.  All this has reminded me how much I love the stock market.  As such, I’m starting a weekly column, to be published on Sundays, that talks about what happened in the past week in the markets with respect to companies involved in the development or production of video games.  These stocks are as follows:

NASDAQ

• Microsoft [MSFT]
• Electronic Arts [ERTS]
• THQ [THQI]
• Take-Two Interactive [TTWO]
• Activision Blizzard [ATVI]

NYSE

• Midway Games [MWY]
• GameStop [GME]

TYO

• Nintendo [7974]
• Sony [6758]
• Konami [9766]

I’ll be starting coverage next week.  Keep in mind that I am in no way a professional analyst, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

There’s a rumor going around that Google is going to buy Valve in the near future.  While that makes some people really happy, I’m not one of them.  Google is interested in Steam, because it’s an awesome content delivery system for the PC, and it meshes well with Google’s roadmap.  What doesn’t really make a lot of sense is what’s going to happen to the game studio part of Valve.

Valve Software has some of the most talented people in the industry working in their studios - games like Team Fortress, Half-Life, and of course Portal don’t happen on their own.  Steam has lots of publishers on board already (Eidos, Ubisoft, Activision, etc.), and Google’s ability to run a game studio internally is a huge unknown (although I’ve been wrong before).

All in all, a very uncomfortable position for me.

[Update]: Or maybe not.

The finance sector is caught up today with the collapse of some of the biggest and oldest banks in the US.  This has largely overshadowed a more interesting piece of news to gamers:  EA has walked away from Take Two after 7 months of negotiating to purchase it.

As a result, Take Two’s stock price has taken a swan dive, as all kinds of speculators unload the shares of TTWO stock that sadly, EA is not going to buy from them at a premium.  What I find interesting is that analysts seem to think this is a mortal blow for Take Two.

EA saw a good opportunity to buy Take Two because they have some extremely talented people working there, and several key franchises EA would like to get their fingers in.  From my point of view, this little breakup is better for everyone involved, including you.

EA’s new CEO has been doing a fine job of diversifying their development portfolio into new IP, but you can’t do this entirely buy purchasing studios.  The value in a studio, even more so than in most companies, is in the people who work there.  Intellectual Property they own certainly has a premium attached to it, but no IP in the world is going to be profitable if you don’t put it in the hands of talented developers.  But buying studios wholesale is a risky business, because if those developers think you’re going to mess with the way they run things, they tend to jump ship, leaving you holding the empty - and expensive - bag.

EA needs to look across the continent from Vancouver to Montreal, and look at what Ubisoft has managed to do by developing highly innovative titles in house, much to the delight of their shareholders and the gaming community.  A purchase of Take Two would have consolidated the entire suite of sports franchises under EA’s grip stifling innovation in that arena even further - not something anyone wants to see.  Take Two has quite a few studios, and as much as analysts talk about EA being able to integrate these studios under their own technology stack, this has historically not worked out well for companies that tried to do so.

Take Two isn’t exactly bereft of cash.  GTA has historically been the foundation upon which Take Two operates, but they have other gems as well (Bioshock, Civilization).  If they can retain their top talent - and continue innovating new IP - I expect we’ll continue to see both shareholder value and excellent titles out of Take Two in years to come.