calviin (original) (raw)

Apparently, it's a bad idea to mess with gamers.

Nearly 2 weeks ago, a conservative website stated that the Xbox360 game, Mass Effect, contained “Explicitly Graphic Sexual Intercourse”. Let me be clear with you, if this were true, cnsnews.com would not be the ones with the breaking story. They were just looking for this to be the next "Hot Coffee". Despite the fact that these claims were out right lies, the gaming community and industry in general decided to ignore them so that the site could sink into the depths of obscurity from whence they came. And sink they did, but the story lived on without them.

On Monday last week, a conservative blogger, Kevin McCullough, posted claims that the children of our country were not only able to use this game to watch porn, but that they were able to customize it to their exacting and specific desires. "One can custom design the shape, form, bodies, race, hair style, breast size of the images they wish to “engage” and then watch in crystal clear, LCD, 54 inch screen, HD clarity as the video game “persons” hump in every form, format, multiple, gender-oriented possibility they can think of…" The blogger has in fact taken what was already a lie, and added more lies to it. It is Lie Stew.

This time, the gaming community responded. Emails and forum posts were addressed to Mr. McCullough telling him that he was a liar and ill-informed. Some responses to him were predictably insulting or even threatening, while others were respectful and intelligent. If I were to assigned the various levels of reaction that the gaming community could have on a scale of one to ten, I would say that this was only level one. Kevin decided to respond to the gaming community in a follow up post addressing them as being insignificant and immature. He pretended to concede to two of his mistakes, but managed to provide additional misinformation at the same time. Kevin didn't seem to understand two things.

First, he did not seem to understand that the initial response to his inaccuracies was but a small taste of the beast that is the gaming community. The comments in his email and on his forum were in effect, the warning shot. The second thing he did not understand is that responding to criticism of his lies with more lies is not a suggested method of subduing the beast. His second post only drew additional attention from the community, and round two did not go as he may have expected. Welcome to the level two.

After he posted the response, the more intelligent and articulate of the gaming community acknowledged that it was time to take this above Mr. McCullough. Emails and calls were now addressed to his bosses and the site's advertisers letting them know of the complaints and his unprofessional response. This time, he seemed to get the message. On Thursday, only three days after his original post, Kevin issued an apology of sorts. He didn't back away from his opinion that he disapproves of the game, but he acknowledged that many of the claims he made of it's content were in fact not true. For all intents and purposes, this is where the story should end. The community overall was satisfied and peace was made. Fox News seemed to have a different idea.

Wishing to participate, despite being late for the party, a Fox News report which aired on the network’s Live Desk program on this past Monday, suggested that the Xbox 360 title Mass Effect is porn disguised as a video game. Yes, Fox took the lies made on a blogger's website who had already taken those lies from another website, and shared them on its national news program. This is the inbreeding of lies at it's finest. For his part, Spike TV game guy Geoff Keighley did a great job of representing the facts in the brief, tense debate with talk show host/author Cooper Lawrence and host Martha MacCallum, but he was unfortunately outnumbered, six to one.

Thus, Cooper Lawrence and host Martha MacCallum have now also made the mistake of underestimating the response to their lies. Just as with Kevin McCullough and cnsnews.com before him, they are distributing their opinions on a game that they have not at all played. The host even acknowledges that she was not able to find videos online showing the offensive sex scenes that are possible within the game. The idea that there aren't videos of these scenes because these scenes aren't even in the game was apparently not a conclusion she was able to come to. As a news program, it is generally expected that reporters actually investigate the truth of things before reporting on them. They clearly did not perform any such investigation. The gaming community's response leveled up to level three.

Yesterday, EA, one of the biggest gaming publishers in the industry, issued an open response directly to Fox News, specifically requesting that they correct the multiple falsehoods and inaccuracies that were aired. This act on EA's behalf alone has brought about two revolutions within me. First, I have never before been on EA's side of anything. In it's long and storied past, I have pretty much always been opposed to the things they do. But here I am, enemies allied against a greater foe. Second, it is the first time I have seen a publisher stand up for it's game and step up to the plate to defend itself in light of such outrageous and patently false claims.

While EA's response certainly helps to confront Fox News, talk show host/author Cooper Lawrence is not employed with Fox News. Today, the community has decided that an eye for an eye is the best action for Cooper Lawrence. She came into the debate with the decision to pass judgment on a game that she has spent zero time with. The community has taken her lead and reviewed her most recent book on amazon.com without having actually read it. As it currently stands, her book has 546 customer reviews, with 11 reviews giving the book five stars (the highest rating) and 486 of them giving the book only one star (the lowest rating). I am certain that this sort of response is outside of what Ms. Cooper even remotely expected, and so I want to feel bad for her, but I know that she still got off easy compared to what could have been done.

I want to elaborate slightly on my interest with EA joining the fight. Often times, it has been left to the community to defend the games while the publishers watch from the sidelines, most frequently perpetrated by Take Two, who drop controversy magnets like Bully, GTA and Manhunt, and then remain silent to the news media response. To see EA taking a stand in defense of their game is a refreshing precedent and I pray that more and more often, publishers will begin to take ownership of their products and defend them against the media. The political atmosphere regarding video games and the youth continues to grow every month, and the first amendment rights are being dangerously threatened. Parents don't want to be responsible enough for their children to be careful about the media they bring into the house, and they want laws to do their jobs for them, not realizing that enacting such laws would break down certain rights, freedoms and protections that they do enjoy. Politicians push the video game hot button because it gets them support from the interest groups, but the misconceptions that are out there about video games seem to be what largely drive them. If the game publishers can begin to do a better job in publicly preventing and opposing the misinformation that is being spread, the freedom of speech protections that movies, television, music, books, comics and art receive can be shared with video games as well.