- Feb 7, 2005
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Ok, its a slow news day on here so I'll bring up a pet peeve news item. Videogames are constantly bashed as sex and violence inciting media though compared to Saw IV and Hostel II they look like the Wizard of Oz.
Anyway, Fox had a panel and "experts" convene on a 2 minute sex scene in an RPG called Mass Effect. Here's the wiki summary and the video, I'll post cliffs below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...mepolitics.com/page/2/
Sex Scene Coverage on FOX News
On January 21, 2008, a Fox News segment "The Live Desk With Martha MacCallum" discussed Mass Effect with the heading '"Se"xbox? New video game shows full digital nudity and sex." MacCallum stated that the game "leaves nothing to the imagination", features "the ability for players to engage in full graphic sex" where the player gets to decide what happens, cited critics as saying that the Mature-rated game is marketed to children and teenagers, and read a rebuttal from publisher Microsoft stating that the company abides by rating systems and provides monitoring tools for parents. Psychology specialist and author Cooper Lawrence and video game journalist Geoff Keighley were interviewed. The former described sexual content in video games as teaching their active users, adolescent boys, to consider women as objects of desire valued solely for their sexuality. She added that the game's player character is a man who decides how many women he wants to be with. Keighley focused on challenging the accuracy of previous statements, saying it is a choice to play the protagonist as a male or a female. He also described Mass Effect as having an optional, brief sexual situation ("with the side of an alien boob") as the culmination of a relationship in a 30+ hour game. Adding to Lawrence's innacuracies is the fact that the main character is not allowed to be with more than one individual, sexually and romantically. MacCallum and Lawrence stated that they had not played the game.
The segment turned to a four-member panel in the studio, who slammed "Luke Skywalker meets Debbie Does Dallas", doubted the ability of parents to keep their children from playing inappropriate games, and suggested that the game's raters (ESRB) "should have their heads examined" for not giving it an Adults Only rating, and asked what had happened to Atari (1977), pinball and Pac-Man (1980).
[edit] EA's response
Electronic Arts, the parent company of Bioware, requested a correction of "serious errors" from Fox News in an open letter.[41][52][53] Fox News replied by stating that EA had been offered a chance to appear on the channel. On the 25th, Lawrence, who had since watched someone play the game for about two and a half hours, retracted her earlier statements in an interview. She added that she had been told the game was similar to pornography, and noted that she "has seen episodes of Lost that are more sexually explicit." In the interim, her latest book attracted several hundred customer reviews on Amazon.com who rated it one star out of five without reading it.[41]
[edit] Game Show Response
"Taking a cue" from Fox, Adam Sessler summed up the incident in a G4 segment X-Play[54], and gave a review for Mrs. Lawrence's book: "I haven't read your book, but it completely sucks. I for one feel that it should be kept out of the hands of impressionable young women who have feared that they too might develop into the apalling simpleton that you have demonstrated yourself to be ." Sessler said this to "mimic" what Lawrence and Fox News was representing in Mass Effect.
[edit] Anti-Game Activist Response
Jack Thompson revealed to Kotaku that he felt the whole "contrived controversy is absolutely ridiculous"[55].
***************
Cliffs: Fox has a banner that says "Full Digital Nudity and Sex" on screen. The panel and expert slam the game, DESPITE NEVER HAVING PLAYED IT. They call the game pornography. One guy is allowed to defend the game but everyone else laughs at him. For the record, the game is rated M (18+), the scene is less than 2 minutes long out of a 30+ HOUR game, it features side boob action ala network tv after 9pm.
The "expert" gets her book slammed on Amazon with 1 star reviews by people who never read it, since she never played the game they felt that was fair. She has since apologized and said she was wrong. Electronic Arts has called on Fox to state a retraction/apology but they have not done so.
7 states have tried to ban videogame sales to minors, each time the law has been thrown out by the courts as unconstitutional, and the state has had to pay attorney's fees to the game companies since they were warned BEFORE THEY EVEN PASSED the law that it was unconstitutional.
You can go to a library and get a book with graphically obscene sex and violence. You can rent a movie like Saw which is essentially realistic torture porn. Hell, a 9 year old can google "murder" like that little girl in "Knocked Up". Legislators need to stop pushing dumb laws they have been informed are unconstitutional by their own lawyers, and wasting millions of your tax dollars doing so. Fox needs to stop lying to create sensationalist garbage.
Anyway, Fox had a panel and "experts" convene on a 2 minute sex scene in an RPG called Mass Effect. Here's the wiki summary and the video, I'll post cliffs below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...mepolitics.com/page/2/
Sex Scene Coverage on FOX News
On January 21, 2008, a Fox News segment "The Live Desk With Martha MacCallum" discussed Mass Effect with the heading '"Se"xbox? New video game shows full digital nudity and sex." MacCallum stated that the game "leaves nothing to the imagination", features "the ability for players to engage in full graphic sex" where the player gets to decide what happens, cited critics as saying that the Mature-rated game is marketed to children and teenagers, and read a rebuttal from publisher Microsoft stating that the company abides by rating systems and provides monitoring tools for parents. Psychology specialist and author Cooper Lawrence and video game journalist Geoff Keighley were interviewed. The former described sexual content in video games as teaching their active users, adolescent boys, to consider women as objects of desire valued solely for their sexuality. She added that the game's player character is a man who decides how many women he wants to be with. Keighley focused on challenging the accuracy of previous statements, saying it is a choice to play the protagonist as a male or a female. He also described Mass Effect as having an optional, brief sexual situation ("with the side of an alien boob") as the culmination of a relationship in a 30+ hour game. Adding to Lawrence's innacuracies is the fact that the main character is not allowed to be with more than one individual, sexually and romantically. MacCallum and Lawrence stated that they had not played the game.
The segment turned to a four-member panel in the studio, who slammed "Luke Skywalker meets Debbie Does Dallas", doubted the ability of parents to keep their children from playing inappropriate games, and suggested that the game's raters (ESRB) "should have their heads examined" for not giving it an Adults Only rating, and asked what had happened to Atari (1977), pinball and Pac-Man (1980).
[edit] EA's response
Electronic Arts, the parent company of Bioware, requested a correction of "serious errors" from Fox News in an open letter.[41][52][53] Fox News replied by stating that EA had been offered a chance to appear on the channel. On the 25th, Lawrence, who had since watched someone play the game for about two and a half hours, retracted her earlier statements in an interview. She added that she had been told the game was similar to pornography, and noted that she "has seen episodes of Lost that are more sexually explicit." In the interim, her latest book attracted several hundred customer reviews on Amazon.com who rated it one star out of five without reading it.[41]
[edit] Game Show Response
"Taking a cue" from Fox, Adam Sessler summed up the incident in a G4 segment X-Play[54], and gave a review for Mrs. Lawrence's book: "I haven't read your book, but it completely sucks. I for one feel that it should be kept out of the hands of impressionable young women who have feared that they too might develop into the apalling simpleton that you have demonstrated yourself to be ." Sessler said this to "mimic" what Lawrence and Fox News was representing in Mass Effect.
[edit] Anti-Game Activist Response
Jack Thompson revealed to Kotaku that he felt the whole "contrived controversy is absolutely ridiculous"[55].
***************
Cliffs: Fox has a banner that says "Full Digital Nudity and Sex" on screen. The panel and expert slam the game, DESPITE NEVER HAVING PLAYED IT. They call the game pornography. One guy is allowed to defend the game but everyone else laughs at him. For the record, the game is rated M (18+), the scene is less than 2 minutes long out of a 30+ HOUR game, it features side boob action ala network tv after 9pm.
The "expert" gets her book slammed on Amazon with 1 star reviews by people who never read it, since she never played the game they felt that was fair. She has since apologized and said she was wrong. Electronic Arts has called on Fox to state a retraction/apology but they have not done so.
7 states have tried to ban videogame sales to minors, each time the law has been thrown out by the courts as unconstitutional, and the state has had to pay attorney's fees to the game companies since they were warned BEFORE THEY EVEN PASSED the law that it was unconstitutional.
You can go to a library and get a book with graphically obscene sex and violence. You can rent a movie like Saw which is essentially realistic torture porn. Hell, a 9 year old can google "murder" like that little girl in "Knocked Up". Legislators need to stop pushing dumb laws they have been informed are unconstitutional by their own lawyers, and wasting millions of your tax dollars doing so. Fox needs to stop lying to create sensationalist garbage.
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