As the worldwide gross box office take for Avatar surpasses one billion dollars, the film’s director took a pot shot at videogamers.

In response to his movie “winning” a “black lung” rating from [URL=http://scenesmoking.org/]SceneSmoking.org[/URL] for depictions of cigarette smoking on-screen, James Cameron [URL=http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/business/04smoke.html]told the New York Times[/URL] the impetus behind Sigourney Weaver’s character Grace lighting up:

[INDENT]… from a character perspective, we were showing that Grace doesn’t care about her human body, only her avatar body, which again is a negative comment about people in our real world living too much in their avatars, meaning online and in video games.

[/INDENT]Cameron would no doubt then be intrigued by [URL=http://www.gamepolitics.com/2009/12/21/microsoft-patent-seeks-%E2%80%9Creal%E2%80%9D-avatars]Microsoft’s recent patent application[/URL] that seeks to tie the appearance of online avatars to a user’s real-world health and fitness.

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