Everything you wanted to know about gaming, and less.

by Jamison DeLorenzo

Last week was a special time for me. It wasn’t because that Burnout was an excellent game. It wasn’t because I managed to find myself in the middle of a Guitar Hero party where I was the only one able to show off my skills in Expert mode. It wasn’t even because I was blessed with seeing GTA IV’s April 2008 release date. The media finally managed to embarrass itself beyond belief with what might go down as the stupidest video game debate since the original panic surrounding the Pac Man obsession in the mid 80’s.

Those of you into video game news are not new to this information at all. In fact, you are probably wondering why you should continue reading when you’ve seen so many different video game experts sound off on this issue, including X-Play and Penny Arcade. I’d offer forthcoming pictures of boobs, but this is a family-oriented site. Instead, what I can offer is more cheap laughs at the expense of the “news” corporation that started this discussion.

The reason I take such exception to the Fox News debate last week goes far beyond the egregious lies that were flying around the debate like flies at a fall baseball game in Cleveland. Mass Effect had an enormous impact on me. It was easily one of my favorite games from the past five years. Whatever your impressions of that game were, you understand that when a massive amount of lies swarms around one of your favorite games you become enraged. It took a long time to figure out exactly how I wanted to respond to the Fox segment on Mass Effect. Once I realized that it has been ages since I did a line item breakdown of something that has gotten under my skin the internal debate was resolved.

It is time to kick back, relax, and watch the snowball of rage come rolling down the hill.

The event begins as the tag line on the bottom of the screen serves as the basis for the topic du jour. According to the always accurate bottom-of-the-screen banner, Mass Effect features “Full Digital Nudity” and “Graphic Sex.” I realize that the news shows on the channel are generally pretty right-wing, but what is most striking is that this is the same network that has brought us a litany of shows revolving around sex and edgy cartoons. How can the same network that reruns the Side-boob Hour with Peter Griffin also get freaked out about a side-boob in a video game? That and a small portion of a posterior is the racy sex scene that these people are talking about.

Before the interview comes in play, an interesting comment on marketing was thrown in. Admittedly I do not watch a lot of TV, but did you know that the game, which is clearly rated ‘M’ (i.e. ages 17+), is being marketed to kids *and* teenagers? Sometimes it is difficult to tell when people make up lies used by other people in an attempt to sound poignant, but this felt like one of those templated arguments that is used by so many people when they attack video games.

Anyway, the interview came next between a psychological expert of some sort (I refuse to put the name in because I don’t want to leave any hints that I am lending any credence to the person) and a video game columnist (in other words, someone far more professional than myself). I got a really good laugh when every single opinion made by the psychologist was shot down like the Luftwaffe over England when she admitted to never playing the game. I always find it annoying that people can make by informed decisions about a game without ever sitting down in front of it. It’s easy to make snide remarks about anything without being truly informed, but you cannot call yourself a professional without doing actual first-hand research. This is bad science at its very core.

• Studies prove adolescents play games more than kids – I don’t know about you, but every report I have ever read about gaming studies shows that most gamers are men somewhere in the realm of ages 27-34. To quote a famous rock band – “this is my generation, baby.” Pretty much the only thing worse than an expert that doesn’t do their own research is one that lies about the research they have (or have not) seen. On the plus side, the comedy continued because the expert then went on to claim that they had to side with the research they, supposedly, read instead of listening to someone who actually played the game.
• Women are only there for their sexuality – Ignoring that you can pick the lead to be a female, this comment is still quite the impressive broad stroke. Coming from someone who claims never to have played the game this is not a surprising comment, because you cannot know about the internal struggles all three female party members have throughout the game if you never played it.
• The man is deciding how many women he wants to be with – Technically this is a true statement, in that you can choose to be with 0 or 1 other female. Oh yes, you can make a truly stupid remark in the game to see if there’s a way you can get both female love interests to go with you. I don’t think I need to elaborate on how that choice winds up not working for you. Still, if you insist on taking the stance that the dialog option merely being present in the game is enough to be revolting, I should warn you that only someone who wants to string to women along and then make a piggish response is going to make that happen. This is the player’s choice, and I refuse to blame a video game developer or publisher for a choice that players make in a game. If this sounds familiar, this is the a rehash of one of the many attacks against GTA.
• Boys cannot tell the difference between what happens in the game and real world – I don’t doubt this for a second. I find it difficult to blame this on a video game that has arrived during the sixth console generation. I don’t know about you, but the day when people realized that raising children takes true diligence is going to be a welcome one.

Moving past this segment we get to the panel discussion portion of the program. I wasn’t sure what to expect from this segment after the interview melted my brain, but on some level I expected to see a balanced discussion. Naturally this is the trap that is laid out in front of everyone. It is a relatively clever one as it will catch almost everyone who is highly ignorant of video games.

Anyway, I’d love to give you some deep insight on the discussion the panel laid out and the differing sides of the debate, but they all landed on the “we hate Mass Effect” side of the table. In case I missed something in my years on a debate team, group discussions were always the most informative when people had differing opinions.

Here is a quick breakdown of all the comments made during this evil segment:

• Luke Skywalker meets Debbie Does Dallas – It’s hard to say exactly what this means, other than somehow a game has gone one graphic sex scene to multiple sex scenes. The lie is worsened by the clear fact that nobody on the panel has played the game because the story is one of the most compelling in an RPG that I’ve seen in a while. BioWare understands storytelling better than most, and it always annoys me when people are turned away from incredible stories based solely on disinformation and a differing taste. As a side note, I find it amusing that anyone who is unfamiliar with the original movie from 1978 is going to look it up and become more educated on a subject that the panelists clearly view as vile and disgusting.
• Why didn’t it get the AO rating? – This alone ranks a 10.0 on the Asinine Comments Meter. Pot shots aside, the AO rating is not some horrid rating that only the vilest games get. The AO rating is a direct equivalent to the movie NC-17 rating, although with movies like Saw IV being given an R rating I honestly have to wonder how a game like Mass Effect could ever possibly be given a rating similar to what you would see on current R movies. If Mass Effect were a movie it would unquestionably be a PG-13 movie. The AO comment in this case is nothing more than a buzzword used way out of context to try and make a point (or, more accurately, beat it to death).
• What happened to Atari, pinball, and Pac-Man? – The same thing that happened to Gone with the Wind – the medium grew up. I know, I know. These are turbulent times and we must all shy away from the vile video game industry. Seriously though, how can broad comments like this be made during the time of what can only be described as the Wii generation? As little interest as I have in playing it I don’t know that I could argue with anyone who claimed that Wii Sports is the most played console game in the world right now. If you want to know what happened to Pac-Man, Wii Sports is the answer to your question.
• It’s up to the parents to censor what kids see… unfortunately – Apparently the day of parental responsibility I’m pining for is a long way away. I am genuinely interested in finding out if anyone on the panel has children of their own, because that would go a long way to explaining this comment. I know only one person said it, but nobody reacted negatively to this at all. On top of all the lies tossed around in the small segment, I find it difficult to take the opinion of anyone seriously who publicly refuses to pay attention to their own children.

What frightens me is that I could keep going with this article, but I am way past the length I like to write for my weekly articles. I’m happy to discuss this further with anyone who cares to post in the forums, but in the meantime let me close by saying that I always knew there was a reason I refused to watch network TV news segments. Even if you strongly disagree with that, at least I have proof of doing firsthand research on the matter.

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