I’m not exactly Stephen Fry on Twitter. At the time of writing, my main @craiggrannell account has about 1700 followers, and I get one or two new ones daily. Therefore, it’s easy for me to check every new follower, in case they’re someone interesting. One of today’s most certainly is: Tim Langdell, or rather, Edge Games, his nom-de-plume in the videogames industry. Yup, he signed up at @edgegames and currently appears to be following me, someone who retweeted the most recent article I wrote about his interesting take on his court cases, and precisely one other person. ‘Yay.’

Anyway, he provides some exciting extra insight into his thinking about current events, including the following gem:

Bobby Bearing 2 is finally on AppStore! (as EDGEBobby2 since the full name wouldn’t fit into 12 Chrs for a good fit name)

The bizarre name of his new game is something I and other people have raised, wondering if it was to be used during appeal, in order to say “hey, look, I am still using this Edge name and Mobigame were big, fat liars”; as it turns out, he’s now hugely in love with Mobigame, and everything he’s done for years was down to EVIL FUTURE PUBLISHING:

Since we’re now free of restrictions and requirements on us by Future, we’re now heartily promoting Mobigame’s games. They rock!

Mobigame’s response to this has been a whisker away from telling Langdell to get stuffed, and the EDGEBobby2 thing makes no sense either. I assume he’s suggesting 12 characters is a “good fit name” for the iOS home screen, but I have games that happily have 15 characters, which, by stunning coincidence, is the number of characters in ‘Bobby Bearing 2’. Additionally, you can name things differently on the App Store and the iOS home screen, and so there’s literally no reason why the App Store displays EDGEBobby2 as the name of Langdell’s new game.

Anyone still following the story might also be interested to see the new and stripped-down Edge Games website, where Langdell now pitches himself as an ‘indie games developer publisher’ rather than selling a ton of games across multiple platforms. Now there’s merely EDGEBobby2/Bobby Bearing 2, an ‘advert’ for Mobigame that Mobigame doesn’t want there, a curious statement that Future’s Publishing’s Edge trademark for its newsletter and website is still under licence from Langdell, and the usual pile of trademark and copyright notices.

So, Langdell’s down but not out, and he still claims everything that happened wasn’t down to him and that we’ve not heard Edge’s side of the story (aside from the many times he’s written to websites to tell his side of the story). In fact, he just emailed me out of the blue, providing the entire release sent to Eurogamer, and stated:

Also, do you think David Papazian is aware that Edge still owns registered trademarks for EDGE in the US and UK? And common law rights elsewhere worldwide? We were puzzled by the DCMA reference for two reasons (i) a DCMA is surely for copyright and David has written to us to say there is no copyright infringement, (ii) if he got confused and meant trademark infringement then obviously Edge is not infringing its own trademark, even if David also owns Edge registrations.

I guess if you want to untangle the mess directly, you can pop over to @edgegames and quiz Langdell yourself; as for me, I’m thoroughly bored of this entire situation now, and so this will be the last thing I ever write about Langdell on this blog.

Strong sales largely rely on balancing price, profits and demand. Make something too cheap and your revenue will be high (if demand is also high), but you won’t make much profit. Make something too expensive and your profit-per-unit could be high, but you also risk killing demand.

It’s with this thought in mind that I wonder why Vue Cinemas prices food and drink the way it does. It’s not the only chain guilty of gouging a captive audience, but it’s shocking how far the company has gone in recent years. In my local cinema, the ‘value’ meal that comprises a regular popcorn and drink now costs an astonishing eight pounds (roughly the cost of an adult ticket). The chain, naturally, provides a bucket of each product, in order to try and give you the perception of value (i.e. “Wow, that was expensive, but they sure give you a lot!”), but I wonder if people are starting to see through the bullshit.

Of late, it’s increasingly common to see entire audiences without any refreshments at all, bar the odd bottle of overpriced water. It’s clear that the modern cinema is pricing itself out of its own captive market. Additionally, people are being increasingly careful about diet, and so “enough Coke to drown in” doesn’t look as appealing as it perhaps once did.

One curiosity at Vue, though, is its kiddy combo (first noticed by Mrs. G). You get a smallish drink, a smallish amount of popcorn and a candy of some kind. On closer inspection, the amount of popcorn you get still exceeds what you’d find in three small bags in a supermarket multipack, and the candy is typically a ‘fun size’ Milky Way. The cost, though, is—relatively speaking—not too bad: under three quid. What I wonder is why Vue and other chains aren’t recognising that adults en masse would almost certainly buy more smaller portions if they were offered and available for a reasonable price, and the subsequent increase in sales would offset people avoiding the ridiculous ‘value’ meals currently sold.

In the meantime, I’ll continue buying the odd kiddie combo. I don’t have a kid myself, but it’s the only option that’s not totally taking the piss from a pricing standpoint and that isn’t akin to snarfing down enough salt to kill a movie-monster slug and enough sugar to make your teeth explode.

Charlie Brooker for The Guardian:

If anyone reading this runs a news channel, please, don’t clog the airwaves with fact-free conjecture unless you’re going to replace the word “expert” with “guesser” and the word “speculate” with “guess”, so it’ll be absolutely clear that when the anchor asks the expert to speculate, they’re actually just asking a guesser to guess. Also, choose better guessers. Your guessers were terrible, like toddlers hypothesising how a helicopter works.

This refers to the recent and terrible events in Norway, but also happens to be relevant for an awful lot of news coverage these days.

Hat tip to Felix Metzger for pointing me at Electronista’s MacBook Air review, which contains some oddball pros and cons. First, cons:

Not as fast as costlier rivals.

Is that really a ‘con’ of any hardware? The more expensive iPhone 4 is superior to the cheaper iPhone 3GS, but is that a ‘con’ regarding the older hardware? Surely if an alternative option is cheaper and faster, that might be something you should criticise, but more expensive and faster is just par for the course.

Battery life could still be longer.

That’s a statement, rather than a criticism. If Apple had a MacBook Air battery that lasted 24 hours, there would still be people who’d moan that it could last longer. But Apple’s 13-inch notebook lasts around seven hours, which is at the forefront of this technology. Again, if Apple was falling behind its rivals, that would be a ‘con’. “MacBook Air doesn’t include technology that doesn’t yet exist” isn’t really a criticism at all.

And then there’s a lovely pair of opinions. First, the ‘con’:

Display isn’t as vivid as on a MacBook Pro or similar.

Then a ‘pro’:

Sharp, low-glare display.

The gist is that Apple’s toned down its MacBook Air display, so it’s no longer akin to a mirror! Hurrah! But then that means it’s not quite as vivid as it once was. In this case, Electronista has a valid complaint, but it strikes me that you get one or the other (with current display technology): either you have glare with vibrancy or matte with dullness. Apple’s struck a balance, and so the review has complained about something it’s earlier championed. Odd.

Note that this doesn’t showcase that Electronista is stupid or that reviewer Jon Fingas needs a slap. The review itself is imperfect but pretty good and balanced. What it does show is that if you run a publication that forces reviewers to add ratings or the inevitable and rather pointless ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ lists, you must take extreme care on those overview elements. They are the things readers are driven to first, and they can so easily mislead, unintentionally or otherwise.

Tim Langdell claims in an document sent to Eurogamer that he’s not, in fact, a trademark troll. Oh really? (Note: if you’ve missed previous episodes of Tim Langdell Is Clearly Delusional, check out ChaosEdge for the full and exciting story.)

What’s that, Tim? We’re all wrong? You want to defend yourself? OK, fair enough. Go for it!

Previously Edge Games and Tim Langdell

Oooh. Bad start, Tim, given that you are Edge Games.

have made virtually no public statements about the various Edge disputes over the past two years since it seemed clear any statement they made would not be reported fairly

Translation: because ChaosEdge and others showcased how blatantly we bullshitted the USPTO, I realised the game was up and finally learned to keep my mouth shut. But now I figure enough time has passed and I have lots of EDGEWOOL™ to pull over people’s EDGEEYES™.

However, they believe the time has come to try to set the record straight on a sizable number of misconceptions and falsehoods that have been circulating on the internet.

Sounds great.

Eurogamer then says Langdell claims it was, in fact, Edge magazine publisher Future Publishing that demanded Langdell take action to protect the Edge trademark, following agreements between the two in 1996 and 2004 to share ownership of the name. Langdell claims Future

required Edge to challenge rival attempts to register or use the Edge mark or face severe penalties from Future for failing to do so. Edge would never have taken the action [against EA] if Future had not required it under the agreement between Future and Edge

This would be the, by that point, non-existent agreement between Future and Edge, presumably. And that would also be the Edge magazine whose logo Langell duly ripped off. And the Edge magazine he kept banging on about ‘spawning’. And the Edge magazine he mocked up a non-existent US cover of, in order to fool the USPTO. OK, got it.

Eurogamer then says Langdell argues he/Edge has

never sought to extract payment from other companies for game licenses, “other than very rarely taking a token payment when the other party was happy to offer it.”

That sound you just heard was David Papazian of Mobigame quite literally exploding. We’re so sorry, David. (Apart from Langdell, who’s sorry you managed to get the press and, later, EA on your side.)

The suggestion that Edge or Tim Langdell acted as ‘trademark trolls’ by bullying people or taking legal action to force companies to pay license fees is an entirely false allegation. They have never done that.

Apart from, obviously, when they did precisely that. And, yes, I’ve seen the documentation to back this up.

Edge and Langdell have always acted ethically and with integrity.

That sound you just heard was me quite literally exploding. This blog will now be written by Zombie Craig.

Edge does not make a habit of taking legal action over the Edge mark: in the past 20 years Edge has only ever taken only two legal actions: one against Future Publishing (in 1994) and a second against EA (in 2010) – and the latter was because Future required them to do so.

Hrrrggnngnnzzzz! Whrrzz ahnn lohhhzd ovvvv blllcckkzzzz. Brrraaainnzzzzzz!

Edge has released new games on a regular basis at all times in the past 20 years, albeit at a lower rate than it did in the 1980s.

Hllrrkk! Gmmzzzz ohnnn duh-vzz-dzzz dnttz cnnnnnzzzttt. BRRRAIIIINNNZZZZ!

At this point, the blog police swoop in. This zombie joke has gone on too long and isn’t funny enough, they say. We are therefore going to turn your life into a videogame and award you an extra life, at the expense of 10,000 points. Also, as further punishment, we will double the number of people on your Twitter feed who joke each day that you look just like Seth MacFarlane. No, don’t complain, it’s your own fault.

Onwards!

Despite the false reports, Edge has released a number of games since the mid 1990s, continuously selling and releasing new games at all times from 1984 right through to Bobby Bearing 2 in 2011.

As ChaosEdge noted, Langdell’s games for the past decade have largely involved the odd Java remake or buying dead properties and ‘releasing’ them on DVDR. His beef with Mobigame was that its Edge (essentially a time-attack platform game that was like a cube-based Marble Madness) was passing off on Edge’s ‘famous’ brand. And this was because one of its games from 1986, the Q-Bert! and Knight Lore inspired Bobby Bearing, had a similar viewpoint. This, note, also being the Bobby Bearing that its creators, Robert Figgins and Trevor Figgins, are pretty sure Langdell no longer has any rights to whatsoever.

Still, Bobby Bearing 2, eh? That seems like a sensible name for a sequel to the original Edge game, so presumably it’s just an error that it’s called EDGEBobby2 on the App Store; also, I suspect that game wasn’t at all created to try and win the court case against EA, but sadly wasn’t ready in time.

Sidebar. Best review of EDGEBobby2 on the App Store:

This is a direct rip off of Edge by Mobigames and Future Publishing’s iconic logo. Don’t buy this, buy the Mobigames original!

Langdell finishes off by saying he’s appealing against Future kicking its arse and is

confident of prevailing

This being the court case where, according to a report by John Walker, Langdell had a dubious grip on truth and reality. And, to add a wee cherry on top, he’s now asserting he’s filed a counter-claim on the grounds Future

damaged the reputation of Edge and Tim Langdell by forcing Edge to take action against French developer Mobigame and EA.

Yes, you read that right. If it wasn’t for nasty old Future Publishing, none of this would have ever happened, because Tim Langdell is a gaming saint. If we ignore the threatening emails he sent developers, obviously. And his successful attempts to mislead the USPTO with doctored documentation, obviously. And I’d say just about the only way he could have damaged his reputation in this industry any worse is by somehow breaking into Nintendo’s manufacturing plant and changing all their game masters to Watch Tim Pooing, a 30-second loop of Langdell on the toilet.

Amusing update: Pocket Gamer reports that Mobigame has just slapped Langdell with a DMCA notice to his web host, along with sending a cease and desist to Apple over EDGEBobby2, which “infringes Robert Figgins’s copyright [and] also infringes Future Publishing logo, our trademark EDGE, and confuses our fans”.