This is the usual games = evil trail from Fox this time focused on Mass Effect with it's "full digital interactive nudity!" which is the biggest load of bollocks I've ever heard having seen it it's the tamest thing imaginable. In fact one of the two possible sex scenes is actually shown in their news report. Plus this is fox who are not exactly known for being puritan and lacking in nudity and violence.
You can watch the clip here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YEzRJ5ojtg
They wheel out a "psychologist" Cooper Lawrence who probably isn't a psychologist at all and one of the first things out of this woman's mouth is the same tired old crap "if you look at the statistics it's adolescent boys that play these 'video' games not their dad's" Er no the largest consumer group for games is in the 30's the average age of a gamer is something like 35. Sure kids play games but the idea that this is all kiddies stuff is just insulting and to have a so called expert not know that just proves she has no idea what is going on.
She runs the old tired violent and sex games make kids into monsters cliché.
She also has no idea what the game is about talking about how women in the game are shown as having no value. I think almost every female character in the game is shown as a fairly strong and active member of the team I mean the two female romantic possibilities are Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams who is a experienced soldier and Dr. Liara T'soni a intelligent scientist an expert in her field neither are portrayed as arm candy with no will of their own. And it's not like they jump into bed at the first word, you have to romance them fairly carefully.
EA are pretty unhappy with this factually inaccurate attack on their game and have demanded a retraction and apology http://kotaku.com/348187/ea-calls-fox-out-on-insulting-mass-effect-inacc...
and gamers are angry that this cheap knee jerk it's evil games think of the children nonsense
Some have decided to take matters into their own hands and are spamming Cooper Lawrence's amazon page with 1 star reviews http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1599211793/ref=cm_cr_mts_prod_img
It's just typical of the uniformed media to jump on the band wagon like this and roll out their pet psychologist with no knowledge and hasn't done any research on the topic but it is starting to get old
Comments
It's not so much of a bandwagon to them - it's a strategy. Broadcast media is losing market share and money hand over fist to interactive forms of entertainment, so you can bet they'll use every trick in the book to make their challenger look bad. Even if it means out-and-out lying.
SPOILERS BELOW:
What I thought was particularly telling was that this is a game which is pretty much about killing; you spend a fair amount of the game gunning various robots, aliens and people down (in one case, one of your allies own mothers, simply because she was being coerced,) with a variety of excitingly exotic and painful looking ammo. At one point you have the choice to eradicate an entire species (well, to put the nail in their coffin, anyway.) Yet the thing Fox News decides to object to on moral grounds is consensual sex between adults? Perspective please?
I have to say though, I didn't really think I had to be that careful about the romancing. Actually I'd pretty much decided not to bother with either of the romance subplots on the first play-though, and didn't have a clue I was on one until just before the final battle when a woman marched into my character's cabin and said something that my (male) brain pretty much translated as "You. Sex. Now." There didn't seem to be a polite way out of it, so I went along, but I wouldn't exactly call it careful romancing on my part. :)
Indeed, it was the same thing with GTA gunning down hookers in stolen cars is fine until they found the locked sex scene then they were all "Ban this sick filth!" and "It's corrupting our sweet and innocent children!".
Romance wise maybe it varies depending on which of the two options you picked, there is a whole load of having to do the sub quest after each main mission. It seemed like there was a lot of potential to pick the wrong conversation tree and end the quest. I've managed that in their previous games with the romance quests.
Hmm. Maybe it's just me? Perhaps my natural conversational charm makes me utterly irresistible to fictional, blue-skinned women?
I mean - everyone's got their niche, right?
Yeah some of us have to work to seduce fictional blue women :D
Oddly...
(oh, and for those that didn't follow it, the "expert" backed down and sortof apologised. Fox are still sticking to their guns though.)
That's brilliant....
"To: Brian
From: Jack
Why would you be surprised. I don't see any problem with it. The guy who shot his mouth off about it had no idea what the Hell he was talking about."
Priceless. Pot, kettle?
Strangely I've seen Jack Thompson on some gaming shows where he appeared like a reasonable person and not the ranting maniac you see on fox news and the like. He's a bit of an odd duck.