Split-Screen :: The Game-Geek’s Daily Read

by gSathe

The recent controversy over Mass Effect, the purveyor of alien pornography, has shown us one thing. We gamers are all under thirteen years of age, and we clearly need to be saved from the vicious and pernicious evils of digitally rendered breasts because lets face it, we can’t be nearly as mature as the people who read a book or watch a movie. Because those are culture, not entertainment.

Except for one thing of course. If you start to quote statistics then serious studies tell us that the average gamer is now 33 years old. I played Donkey Kong back in the day, did you? So why are games still seen as kids stuff, and kids stuff only? Or is it perhaps that my old enough to vote and old enough to drink and old enough to drive and also old enough to watch adult only content on film mind also needs protecting from the evils of some, quite honestly tame digital loving? Isn’t this why there are ratings and isn’t this why people are supposed to actually pay attention to their kids, so that they know what they’re playing?

Hell. Remember Bloodrayne? It had a cheat code for “jiggy mode”. Dunno why, but it took a few minutes for me to realise what that was about. The answer becomes as obvious as… umm… the nose on your face, once you start playing the game, of course. Lara Croft is the woman we all remember though, gamer and non-gamer alike.

Lara was known to even non-gamers, a lot before the movie starring Angelina Jolie’s breasts came out. Sexual imagery, both suggestive and more overt, have been a part of video games from the beginning. Remember Duke yelling, “Come get some!” and then stomping on the aliens to get to the half naked strippers? Who would in fact flash their boobs for you, or explode in a gorily satisfying manner.Course, that was all a long time back, and the images you see on screen are a lot more realistic than those old blocks with one pixel in a different colour to signify a nipple. But even the games have changed a lot.

Such imagery has been present all along in books, music, movies and television, all of which offer as much access to young people. But there’s something about the video game which still marks it out in the minds of many as something which only the kids are into, no matter what the reality is. They are the preserve of the children, and we have to preserve the children, of course.

And so things get out of hand, and things get taken out of context. And a game like Mass Effect, which clearly isn’t meant for children, suddenly becomes the center of a scandal in front of the mass media. The “Sexbox” scandal (love that headline) began with a strange and unresearched rant, and it’s not something I’m even going to discuss. That’s been done ad nauseum, and it’s been done by some of the most interesting people out there. That the rant made it to the news isn’t something that surprises me either. Journalism often works like that, with around the clock deadlines forcing otherwise responsible people to take shortcuts that they would never normally take.

The fact is that no one actually bothered to check how reasonable the story was, and any fact checks that took place, took place after the story had gone on the air…

But what is new in all this then? That gamers weren’t the only ones to take on the issue in public. EA intervened directly and stood up for their product, which is a first. Game companies have usually taken the approach of lying low and waiting for things to settle down on their own, which leaves the gamers community to speak up for their passion. It’s an outspoken community and it had responded to the issue in a lot of interesting ways too.

So does EA’s response respresent a change in their PR thinking or was it just too ridiculous a story to ignore? I don’t know but either way I say kudos EA, now give us some more new IPs, because it’ll take a lot before we forgive you for Origin.