I’m pretty fascinated by this whole Tim Langdell situation, which seems to still be unresolved. By unresolved I mean that Edge is still out of the App Store, and Tim Langdell is still a member of the IGDA’s board of directors.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about the best way to catch up is to read Derek Yu’s recap on TIGSource, but basically there is an iPhone game called Edge (an IGF mobile nominee, and well regarded in the App Store when it was available) that was recently pulled from the App Store because MobiGame (the team who made Edge) was threatened by this guy Tim Langdell who (the details are a bit fuzzy) may have published some games in the early 80s under the name EDGE Games and has since aggressively guarded the trademark of the word “edge” for seemingly anything he can get away with.
So this guy appears to be a parasite who threatens and extorts people who try to use his trademark for a common english word. That’s pretty slimy, but not terribly unusual. However, it turns out that this guy is a member of the IGDA board of directors, an organization whose mission is to “advance the careers and enhance the lives of game developers.” It would seem to me (and many others) that Langdell’s business practices are out of line with that mission.
There are a lot of other hilarious and bizzare details of this situation that you really have to see for yourself, particularly some things pulled from Langdell’s website like the “Mirrors a new game from Edge” graphic I’ve included here, and a flash file supposedly advertising space travel with an endorsement from Buzz Aldrin. Oh, and TIGSource forum member have also created an unofficial compo to make games that use the word EDGE as much as possible and include Langdell’s image.
