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The tricky legal problem of videogames depicting historical figures
Games that seek to represent significant historical phenomena are, by their very nature, reductive. Real-time gameplay is, Timebound’s multi-year push notifications notwithstanding, not on the table. Beyond the time imperative, creative works must also make narrative and dramatic choices. These constraints are in no way exclusive to games; the process of making media necessarily involves making artistic and practical choices. Up to a point, that’s fine. In fact, it’s desirable. But what recourse is there when these choices are disputed? Three children of the Angolan “rebel” leader Joseph Savimbi recently announced that they were suing Activision Blizzard’s French subsidiary for the…