1.25.2008

romney erupts!

This clip from The Daily Show does a great job of showing how television media completely blows things out of proportion.


Here's another example. This report on a new video game called Mass Effect, claims the game shows full digital nudity and graphic sex, implying the player has complete control over the different types of sex acts you're able to perform in the game. They bring on a guy to defend it, and everything he says is true. Funny enough they cut him off early and go on to a 'discussion panel' (of completely uninformed idiots) where they continue to bash the game without knowing anything about it or having actually played it themselves.



Let me tell you, after playing through this game completely, this story is completely unfounded and completely false. Here's the real deal: The game shows nudity and sex on the level of a PG-13 movie. You see the top of a butt, and the profile of a breast. They don't show the sex, and there is no frontal nudity. None. Also, the sex comes as a result of establishing a romantic relationship throughout the 30 plus hour game. When it does show up, it is not interactive in any way whatsoever. It's even very possible to not even establish this romantic relationship at all...leading to, surprise surprise, no sex. The game is 30 plus hours of dialogue, space exploration and space shootouts, with a possible 2 minutes of PG-13 rated sex.

Seriously...no research at all was even attempted in this story. It's completely and utterly blown so far out of scale it doesn't even count as journalism. They basically just made stuff up (or made zero attempt to check their facts, which is just as bad) and there has been an outcry from the video gaming public about the issue. In response, many gamers have left numerous negative 'reviews' on Cooper Lawrence's book on Amazon without actually having read it...just as she did with the game Mass Effect. And while this is basically stooping to her level, I think it also has the possibility to make a serious impact on how she'll 'review' things in the future. What kills me is that when she was asked whether she'd even played the game, she laughed happily as she said, "No". THEN she makes the claim that the game objectifies women and isn't respective of them, yet refers to her male counterpart as Darlin'. Yeah, great objective and insightful reporting there Cooper.

I know this probably all sounds trivial...but I just want everyone to realize how preposterous television news channels are. They all have an agenda. None are fair and balanced, especially Fox (as the game manufacturer has asked for an apology and a correction, with the argument that 100's of people worked hard on this game, have their names attached to it, and do not deserve to be slandered on completely unfounded accusations. Yet Fox has refused this request). So please don't listen to everything they say and remember to think for yourselves first. I'm not saying television news outlets are completely bad or worthless. Not at all. Just don't follow them blindly.

My apologies for the rant. At least The Daily Show clip was funny.

3 comments:

Justin Scott said...

If only that was the only terrible piece of reporting from Fox News.

Justin Scott said...

Did you notice they've deleted all the bad reviews on Amazon that mention "Mass Effect?" Crazy.

mac said...

yeah. cooper actually made a statement in the new york times saying she sat down and watched someone play for a couple of hours and that she misspoke. she mentioned the sex was "kind of a joke" and that she'd seen worse on lost. i doubt the retraction will be aired on fox, but at least she got the message.

amazon removed all the reviews of people who hadn't read the book or used the words mass effect in their review. the book atill only has 1 and 1/2 stars as a rating though.