As said before, the year of 2007 was one of media ignorance for the gaming industry.  Ignorance being a word that I cannot stress enough.  It seemed as though another controversy was making news reels, sometimes from the media, sometimes from supposed “authorities on violence in youth”, and even from various governmental authorities across the globe.  However, very very few of these matched the pure stupidity of the Fox News controversy around Mass Effect.

Now when I say stupid, I am not referring to Fox as a network, rather I am referring to the ignorance with which people ignored the facts and instead pressed ahead on how “morally wrong ” the idea of a sex scene in a video game is.  The sex scene in Mass Effect was going to make waves no matter what as the game was released but the approach taken by Fox News and the very “reliable” Lawrence Cooper wasn’t exactly professional.

The News segment opened up with claims that Mass Effect contained “Full Frontal Nudity” and “allowed players to choose what the character did in the graphic sex scene”.  As guests on the show they had Lawrence Cooper who was supposedly an expert on psychology and the one and only Geoff Keighly who was still working with spike tv at that point.  The feature itself lasted a mere 5 minutes so the facts and ability to speak were very few and far in between.  The feature is dominated by a very very ignorant Lawrence Cooper going on and on about how studies were conclusive in that violence desensitized young children and that the average gamer was a very young male.  Geoff tried to get in his part that there is no graphic nudity and the sex scene itself is very tasteful, also mentioning how the scene itself wasn’t even necessary.  In fact you have to consciously build that relationship with your character and the NPC over the course of the entire game in order to reach the sex scene.  However, he was cut short by Lawrence Cooper running her mouth off about how young boys are always going to choose to have sex.  The feature was then cut off at that and a small glimmer of hope was seen as one panelist stated that “we can’t rely on the government to sensor everything going our kids way, so we parents have to be a very active part of what our children play and see”.

The numerous problems with this contrived piece of pure ignorance continued after this show.  Legions of angry gamers struck back at Lawrence Cooper in an effort to prove to her that she had been wrong.  Their most notable action was to completely spam the amazon book reviews of her then new book “The Cult of Perfection” single handedly destroying its sales and dropping its rating on Amazon to a half star.  Now I would normally be respectful in these situations to avoid angering the people I am actually talking about should my article actually reach their attention but I here I will not.  I am openly going to say that when I first heard about this cyber attack I laughed my ass off.  It’s the perfect tale that brings pride to our chosen passion.  The stereotype of us being shut ins who would rather immerse ourselves in the digital than hold a girls hand also portrayed gamers as powerless.  In a year where everything about video games was either based on stereotypes or ignorance gamers proved that we had power and we could use it when united.  I know it sounds cheesy but it made a big hurrah, these actions not only forced Lawrence Cooper to release a statement on her website admitting to her lack of knowledge of Mass Effect prior to the show but also that she took back everything she said and apologized to Bioware.  Fox however, stuck by their feature and stood silent as their website was also besieged by angry gamers.  For Christ’s sake, even Jack Thompson weighed in on the issue calling it absolutely ridiculous!  The man who invented ridiculous in attacking video games admitted how stupid this scandal was.

In a year dominated by stereotypes and paranoia the Mass Effect controversy took top prize in the contest of the stupid.  I mean c’mon, they had a woman who was supposedly an expert on these things who doesn’t even have a PHD?  Where is the expertise?

Always Angry, All the Time!

-Ichi

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