Former Philadelphia Eagles football player Lenwood Hamilton has filed a lawsuit claiming that the creators of the Gears of War video game franchise lifted his physical likeness and imitated his voice to create the character Augustus “Cole Train” Cole, according to a TMZ report.
The lawsuit’s defendants include publisher Microsoft, series creator Epic Games, and Cole’s voice actor, Lester Speight.
Cole played a central role in 2006’s Gears of War for the Xbox 360 and made multiple appearances throughout the sequels that followed. A 2013 spinoff, Gears of War: Judgment, cast Cole as a playable character. Cole most recently appeared in 2016’s Gears of War 4 for the Xbox One and PC platforms.
Notably, Cole’s in-game backstory focuses on the fact that he was once a professional player of “thrashball,” a fictional sport similar to American football. Hamilton cites this key similarity in his suit.
Gamesindustry.biz, which obtained a copy of the lawsuit, says the suit states: “The similarities of the avatar ‘Cole Train’ and Hard Rock Hamilton include that both are black (and ‘Cole Train’ is the only black avatar in the Gears of War series), they both played professional football (although in Gears of War the game is called ‘thrashball’), Cole Train’s number is 83 (same year that Hamilton played for the Philadelphia Eagles — 1983), the derby hat, wristbands, a front gold tooth, and a striking resemblance of both physiognomy and body build.”
Hamilton also claims Speight, who previously starred as office linebacker Terry Tate in a series of Reebok commercials, played a role in replicating his likeness. While working at the independent Philadelphia wrestling organization Soul City Wrestling in 1998, Hamilton and Speight allegedly discussed a potential video game featuring a character similar to Hamilton. A forensic examiner cited in Hamilton’s suit additionally claims that Cole’s in-game voice matches Hamilton’s “to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty.”
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.