Clone wars: Wrestler sues Microsoft over Gears of War character A former football player, professional wrestler, and motivational speaker is suing Microsoft, claiming an iconic character in Redmond's Gears of War game ripped off his likeness. Lenwood "Hard Rock" Hamilton claims that he provided photos and voice recordings in 2005 for the character who would become Augustus "Cole Train" …
Erm, if you look at Lester Speight.... He's a black man who looks to have a similar build to Cole Train and also played American Football in 1983 (though apparently never made it to the NFL) before becoming a wrestler. Good luck with the lawsuit, given that most of the traits the suit is based on are shared by the guy actually playing the character.
"Seven years later, Hamilton alleges, he again discussed playing a character, but turned it down over concerns the game would be too violent."
Ah... there we go. It finally dawned on him that his morals cost him a lot of money, so now he wants the cash he'd have got if he worked for it. Good luck with that.
He's not actually the only black character in the series. In Gears 3 there's also Jason Stratton, a COG soldier, and Aaron Griffin, a 'civilian'. Both available as 'skins' to use in multiplayer as well as being story characters.
Also, Gears has a history of having a number of ethnic characters around so it's not like they don't pay attention to what are increasingly inaccurately called 'minority' ethnic types.
....Google image search Lester Speight and literally the first image it displayed was a photo where he looks almost the spitting image of the screenshot on the article. So this guy is apparently filing a suit based on that fact that the two of them look VERY vaguely similar.
Some companies reserve the right to use the image, likeness, whatever, of anyone they AUDITION, and NOT say it belongs to someone, (or something to that effect), even when that person is not hired, as long they don't relate the character directly to someone.
Or any employee, regardless being auditioned or not.
For example, they could copy your face and place over a random NPC in any game if you ever worked for a game company.
It would usually be in Fine Print, in a loooong contract. You could have one of those for yourself, RIGHT NOW, and not be aware of it.
Without a contract, it usually doesn't work, like Lindsay Lohan tried. Did this guy make a contract protecting his image, before audition or motion capture? Nope?
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