Have some video game critics completely given up on the idea of verifying their claims before issuing them?
We ask because we're flabbergasted by what's been said about Xbox 360 role-playing hit Mass Effect in recent days.
GamePolitics reported last week on bizarre accusations by the conservative Cybercast News Service that Mass Effect featured "explicitly graphic sexual intercourse."
That those charges are just wrong didn't stop conservative blogger Kevin McCullough from picking up the CNS nonsense and running with it. McCullough, in fact, tries to turn the alleged porn in Mass Effect into a presidential campaign issue. In a (not so) cleverly-titled Townhall.com article, The "Sex-Box" Race for President, McCullough writes:
[Presidential candidates] all probably assume they have better, much more important, urgent, timely, things to campaign on, but I sure would like to get their individual takes on the new video game that one company is marketing to fifteen year old boys.
GP: Do we really need to point out that Mass Effect is rated "M" for players 17 and older? More from McCullough:
It's called "Mass Effect" and it allows its players... to engage in the most realistic sex acts ever conceived. 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...
GP: Has McCullough played - or even invested any time at all in researching - Mass Effect? Based on what he has written, we can't imagine that he has. His screed continues:
Here's a question [for the candidates]... "How much moral judgement should the President push into legislative issues that are likely to severely damage our children's innocence, function, and capability?..."
If a pre-teen, teen, young adult, or adult male plays such a game in which the women DO submit without choice, are made to appear as Barbie streetwalkers, and perform whatever act can be imagined, what's to stop that same male from assuming that the women in his "other world" shouldn't be forced to do the same.
...And because of the digital chip age in which we live - "Mass Effect" can be customized to sodomize whatever, whoever, however, the game player wishes.
With it's "over the net" capabilities virtual orgasmic rape is just the push of a button away.
McCullough wraps up with a call for legislation apparently designed to drive Mass Effect developer BioWare out of business:
How refreshing would it be for a President to... put his pen and signature to a bill that dealt with such simulated sex excess in a way that was punitive to its creators to such a degree that they would never recover from it?
GP: We've seen some ill-informed criticisms of video games over the years, but McCullough has definitely raised (or, perhaps, lowered) the bar in that regard.
Once again, for anyone who cares to actually, you know, research the well-known love scene in Mass Effect, here's the video:
Comments
This whole story sounds like something straight from The Onion. My first reaction was to laugh, but that comment by "David Austin"... wow. I guess some people are just "happy" being angry and ignorant.
If anyone was planning to read through the comments, on that website, really don't bother. Save yourself the migraine.
Often, it's not worth it.
Now, let us all point and laugh.
*points* GAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA! *rolling on floor while laughing* AAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAA! *begins smashing fists onto floor in fit of laughter*
"If anyone was planning to read through the comments, on that website, really don’t bother. Save yourself the migraine."
No. Austin asociated gamers with the likes of trekkies. This means war.
I'm a Gundam Otaku, damn it!
*No offense to the real Star Trek fans.
QUOTE
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If anyone was planning to read through the comments, on that website, really don’t bother. Save yourself the migraine.
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Oh! if only I had read your advice sooner! *cries*
Go ahead and try. Bioware is a Canadian company. Even if this does work, you'd probably see a huge international incident. Kiss large shipments of meat goodbye, kiss all that softwood lumber goodbye, kiss the American economy goodbye.
No effing idea. Austin probably thought it would be "clever" to associate us "antisocial" gamers to the likes of another poorly understood niche group.
It just reveals his bigotry.
With it’s “over the net” capabilities virtual orgasmic rape is just the push of a button away."
Damn I must not be putting the right points into my character. I have neither Customized Sodomy nor Virtual Orgasmic Rape as my options when interacting with a female NPC.
By Kevin McCullough
http://www.bbfc.co.uk/website/Classified.nsf/0/cc835097120af09d802573590...
I wonder... if they were so sexually repressed, would this whole game have slipped under the radar?
Idiocy has no borders my friend.
apparently 'thanks for pointing out. but politics discussion is not allowed'
gesz if companies dont stand up to this BS then things wont get better.
If you keep on doing what you've always done you'll always get what you've always gotten.
That's why you PM the or E-mail the story to them ;).
Hopefully his readers do a Google search on the game and become blinded by long, droning sci-fi plot.
I mean really since when are you able to create characters to have sex with, I must have missed it on my first play through.
What a crock of bullshit propaganda just to get server hits.
More like 40 seconds. After that, it's the uh... pillow talk. Sorta. (Ie- "Woo! That was fun! Moving on...")
At least, that's what I'm seeing in that video clip up there. Heh.
Anyways, yeah, someone mention that in that other comment board. (I would do it, but 1- I can't deal with such willful stupidity and 2- I'm not a conservative, so it would feel wrong pointing out the errors to them myself...)
I think JT is avoiding any sex related game issues since his gay porn fiasco. He'll stick to violence.
MMmmmm.... smells like... sanity. If only the rest of the world would join in.
And it will be wonderful and funny and sad.
....like pretty much everything Jacko gets involved with...
Note sure. You may want to read up on some of the Japanese H-games that are in circulation right now.
No. It's not a T2/R* game. He doesn't care about anything else in the industry. Save for a scant few like Halo, Doom, Mortal Kombat, and Counter-Strike, he doesn't mention ANY other sandbox games or other M Rated titles, like Saints Row, Dead Rising, Resident Evil, or anything of the sort.
He's obsessed with 'taking down/destroying' T2, like they're some sort of embodiment of the entire industry to him.
He doesn't seem to get the fact that the company is not selling sex, rather selling a video game.
As for customization, you can change your avatar's (player model) face, skin, hair, and eye color. Nothing else. Nada, zip, zilch. No body type configuration, no breast enhancement surgery, not even to adjust the player height. As a sign of good journalism, perhaps this fellow should actually purchase and test said game before he ever starts harping on it, but then again, what journalist does research? I mean heaven help us if they actually present real facts instead of good-speak.
As for game play, you play a Human marine Commander in the near future who's mission is to prevent a deluded and homicidal alien from using an army of androids from destroying all organic life as we know it. In order to do that the player must traverse alien worlds looking for clues as to this alien's plan and engaging enemy forces in order to save civilian lives from murder and mutilation from said androids. In a nut shell, classic space opera stuff, you know, like Star Wars or Dune, or Buck Rodger for you really old people out there.
As for this 'graphic sex scene' if is a five minute sub-plot in the game between the main character and either a human woman or an mono-gendered alien if your player is male, or with a human male or same mono-gendered alien if the player is female. It's not forced upon the player to do said sub-plot, and there is quite a bit of explanations before hand with the possible 'choices' saying that they wish to wait. As for the 'graphic' nature of it, frankly, the movies Ghost and Top Gun had more graphic love scenes in them, and they were from the 1980's. Of course, this is discounting the fact that the game is rated M due to violence related to fighting the before mentioned evil alien and his army of robots, but why confuse the issue with the facts, right? After all, it is required for retailers to verify that the individual purchasing said title is over 18 years old, and it's the responsibility of the parents to know what they are buying their child before they purchase it, correct? After all, both Democrats and Republicans have been harping on and on about parental rights and family values, then something as simple as parental responsibility would be a minor issue, wouldn't it?
It doesn't take a uber-geek or a basement dwelling social outcast to see this stuff, but it does take a deluded fool who doesn't even do even the most basic of subject research, which most journalism students would point out, I might add.