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Legal
Depeche Mode man called as expert on misery
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 27 November 2009
Depeche Mode’s main songwriter, Martin Gore, will be called as an expert witness should a lawsuit filed this week in California go to trial. American videogame fan Erik Estavillo is suing the makers of ‘World Of Warcraft’, Activision Blizzard, claiming that the game has alienated him from the real world, and has named Gore in court documents as a man who knows his stuff when it comes to feelings of disaffection and isolation.
In papers filed on Tuesday, Estavillo accuses the company of maintaining “a harmful virtual environment to many of its customers by forcing them to follow [‘World Of Warcraft’s] sneaky and deceitful practices”. These practices apparently include making characters in the game walk too slowly.
And who better to back up these claims than Martin Gore? According to Estavillo, the musician would be called because “he himself has been known to be sad, lonely and alienated, as can be seen in the songs he writes”. Gore would be joined by a second alienation expert, Winona Ryder, who would explain “the significance of alienation in ‘Catcher In The Rye’ and … how alienation in the book can tie to alienation in real life [and] videogames such as ‘World Of Warcraft'”. Obviously.
This isn’t the gamer’s first attempt to sue a technology company. Past (unsuccessful) lawsuits have included suing Microsoft, due to stress arising from a broken Xbox, and Nintendo for interfering with his right to seek happiness by blocking some software from being released on the Wii.
In this case he is seeking $1 million in damages from Activision Blizzard. That money probably wouldn’t make him happy, but at least it could fund a few more bizarre lawsuits.
