And So it Begins…

Well, I’ll get things started with, of course, a delicious bit of absurdity towards the gaming community – and I’m not even talking about Jack Thompson! Surprised? So am I (wonder where he’s gone after that whole Bar Trial) but that’s as much face time as I’m letting that fellow get for now.

What the buzz is about right now is all about Kevin McCullough’s little spattle on Mass Effect. Here’s a bite of the cake;

“ And because of the digital chip age in which we live – “Mass Effect” can be customized to sodomize whatever, whoever, however, the game player wishes.”

For the full of the garbled rhetoric, check out Here and the defense of his comments, (after many gamer jabs over the last days) Here.

 

I could understand if I had heard this being talked about over a cup of coffee at the local coffee shop, and then someone saying, “Naw man, I’m just kidding. You can’t really sodomize people in that.”  I’d be alright with that; hell maybe I’d laugh loud enough they’d realize I was eavesdropping and an awkward silence would blossom.  That is not the case here; this is a published piece of political agenda that almost seemingly goes against a few fundamental things about writing on anything, namely doing research. At all. Any, really, would have helped here.

I can understand how having the sex scenes in Mass Effect could illicit a general grumble in the conservative crowd that is grumpy men in navy blue suits and their slicked white hair, but as far as sex scenes go, Mass Effect’s were almost more tasteful than most R movies I’ve seen.  There wasn’t any sort of glorious display of naughty bits for every 14 year old kid to go, “Oh sweet!” in the guest bedroom while his parents are cooking dinner.

The sex scenes got some reasonable press when the videos were tossed up on the web, but once the mumbles and, “Hah, sweet!” comments were quelled by the actual game coming out, there was no more.  Because they were tastefully done, and in some respects, only taught all these “impressionable youths” that you do have to talk to a woman an awful lot before she’ll sleep with you.  Unless you do a quest for an Asari escort. But that video isn’t as long.

I certainly lurk on many a forum, and when I saw this unfolding the first thing in my head that popped was, “troll”. Unfortunately, every moment we acknowledge this guy, I think we’re giving him exactly what he wanted: free publicity. How does the industry respond when the people he’s targeting are more likely to just believe him rather than drop a few keys and check that ole’ crazy contraption that binds the world together.