Florida lawyer and notorious party pooper, Jack Thompson, has thrown himself headfirst into the spotlight once again, turning his attention to Take-Two's first person shooter Bioshock.

Thompson's gripe this time around is with a number of adverts that were shown during WWE’s wrestling program "Smackdown,"on Friday night, a show which he claims is aimed at teenagers under the age of 18. There's no prizes for guessing that Thompson feels as though the content of the adverts aren't suitable for the audience. "Please note that big trouble is on the way for Take-Two re BioShock" he wrote on gaming website, Game Politics.

Thompson has now filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission. Part of that letter, which of course he's published online, reads:

Take-Two… is aggressively marketing its newest Mature-rated video game to kids under 17 years of age… On this Friday's night’s 8 pm Eastern time airing of WWE’s wrestling program Smackdown, there were repeated ads for Take-Two/Rockstar Game's Mature-rated, incredibly violent BioShock…

A check of the demographics of the audience of that program reveals that teens under 17 years of age watch that program in huge numbers…

Remarkably, the video game industry is running ads for games like BioShock on teen-intensive television programs while at the same time its industry-captured watchdog, the ESRB, is running a self-congratulatory ad campaign to assure parents that the video game ratings system is working and that the industry can be trusted not to target their kids with these Mature-rated games. It is all a lie, as the BioShock ads prove.

This rampant fraudulent trade practice is precisely what Big Tobacco did with its Joe Camel and other teen-targeting ads, while at the same time lying to Congress that it was not marketing its adult product to kids.

It's not the first time that Thompson has gone after Take-Two. He recently tried to claim $246 million worth of damages from Take-Two after he claimed that two teenagers accused of committing homicide were inspired by Grand Theft Auto II. The 'fantasy' violence in Bioshock is likely to mean that Thompson will be unsuccessful in his latest attempt to disrupt a mature rated game.

Source:: Game Politics