Author Faults a Game, and Gamers Flame Back
A scene from Mass Effect.
The Internet hath no fury like a gamer scorned.
The author Cooper Lawrence, who criticized Mass Effect on a Fox News program.
That’s the lesson Fox News and a self-help author learned this week after a program on that channel featured a discussion of the sexual content of the hit video game Mass Effect.
Bound by global message boards, blogs, chat rooms and of course the games themselves, gamers are perhaps the single most intense subculture on the Internet — fiercely protective of their pastime and at ease with the byways of cyberspace.
So the game world has been ablaze with indignation since the Fox News program “The Live Desk With Martha MacCallum” said on Monday that Mass Effect, one of the most critically praised games of 2007, contains frontal nudity and explicit depictions of sexual activity. The assertions of virtual lasciviousness first appeared earlier this month among conservative bloggers incensed by brief YouTube clips excerpted from the 30- to 40-hour game.
Mass Effect, a science fiction game, includes a complicated romantic subplot that is no more risqué in its plot or graphic in its depiction than evening network television.
To exact their revenge, gamers have turned their vitriol on Cooper Lawrence, an author who appeared to mischaracterize the game when she said: “Here’s how they’re seeing women: They’re seeing them as these objects of desire, as these, you know, hot bodies. They don’t show women as being valued for anything other than their sexuality. And it’s a man in this game deciding how many women he wants to be with.”
In fact Mass Effect allows users to play as either a man or a woman, and the few suggestions of intimate contact occur in the context of a detailed interpersonal story line. Asked on the air by Geoff Keighley of Spike TV whether she had ever played the game, Ms. Lawrence laughed and said, “No.”
Irate gamers have flooded the page on Amazon.com selling Ms. Lawrence’s most recent book, “The Cult of Perfection: Making Peace With Your Inner Overachiever,” sending its user-generated rating into oblivion.
By Friday afternoon 412 of the book’s 472 user reviews were the lowest possible rating, one star. Another 48 ratings were for two stars. Only 12 of the ratings were for three stars or higher. In addition, 929 Amazon users had tagged the book with the keyword “ignorant.” Tied for second place with 744 tags were “garbage” and “hypocrisy,” while “hack” and “hypocrite” tied for fourth place with 710 votes. Gamers have also attacked the book on the Barnes & Noble Web site.
Many of the reviewers admit that they have not read Ms. Lawrence’s book.
As one Amazon user put it: “I know all about this book but have never fully read it. Why? Due to the overwhelming backlash, I have no choice but to agree with the 1 star ratings. The rumors are rampant that this book was poorly written and poorly researched. So without verifying the contents myself — I give it a 1 star. Good thing video games aren’t judged in this manner — whew!!!”
On Friday “The Cult of Perfection” was ranked the 346,106th best-selling book on Amazon. Mass Effect, by contrast, has been a hit, selling more than 1.6 million copies since November. An Amazon spokeswoman said the site would soon begin to remove reviews written by users who had clearly not read the book.
In an interview on Friday, Ms. Lawrence said that since the controversy over her remarks erupted she had watched someone play the game for about two and a half hours. “I recognize that I misspoke,” she said. “I really regret saying that, and now that I’ve seen the game and seen the sex scenes it’s kind of a joke.
“Before the show I had asked somebody about what they had heard, and they had said it’s like pornography,” she added. “But it’s not like pornography. I’ve seen episodes of ‘Lost’ that are more sexually explicit.”
Electronic Arts, the giant publisher that owns Mass Effect, has asked Fox News for a correction. A Fox News spokesman would say only that Electronic Arts had been offered a chance to appear on the channel. An Electronic Arts spokesman said the company had not yet decided whether to accept the offer.
By telephone from Edmonton, Alberta, Ray Muzyka, the medical doctor who is chief executive of BioWare, the Electronic Arts studio that made Mass Effect, said: “We’re hurt. We believe in video games as an art form, and on behalf of the 120 people who poured their blood and tears into this game over three years, we’re just really hurt that someone would misrepresent the game without even playing it. All we can hope for is that people who actually play our games will see the truth.”
3 comments:
Assuming the legitimacy of FOX News as a news source, I find this troubling. With the lack of academic study, the average person may perceive that, aside from gaming magazines and web sites by large Internet companies (Gamespot, etc.), the news media are the most legitimate authorities on video games. Cooper Lawrence has compromised her journalistic integrity by make a news report on what amounts to hearsay, which turns out to be a false rumor. This, in turn, undermines the authority of other news programs and even newspapers, i.e. "the press." Sadly, nobody is going to hold Lawrence accountable for her actions and force an on-air apology, although this is akin to Dan Rather's journalistic faux pas regarding President Bush's service record that forced a public apology (see Killian documents on Wikipedia).
Speaking of newspapers, this article is actually written by the New York Times. Note that they refer to video gaming as a "subculture" and a separate "game world." I consider myself a gamer, but I also consider myself as much as part of the American culture as anyone. For such a respected news source as the NY Times to make these comments, wittingly or not, makes me feel marginalized.
- Chris the auditor
At first I wasn't with you, Chris, on the marginalization comment. But you're so right, IMHO. "Subculture" connotes a set of meanings, and judgments, that are at the crux of Lawrence's comment in the first place. What would game culture have to do to remove the "sub"?
The Times also makes it sound like Lawrence is getting her comeuppance, but... is she? When Amazon and BN can just ride in and say "okay, you people can't post anymore?" The efforts of non-mainstream thinkers to be heard in the mainstream perhaps is the exact definition of vandalism... at what point will game culture be considered mainstream enough to have a voice that is taken to be legitimate (and legal)? Or is the Times's article a sign of just that?
Forgive me, no time to go back and edit this for sense. Hopefully it's clear enough.
On the topic of mms' last question of "is the Times’ article a sign of just that?", I believe it is a sign. I believe it is a very good sign of how the public (or at least the media's perception of the public) is beginning to accept the "subculture" of video gaming. There is actual publicity from a well-circulated news outlet, the New York Times, of the consequences of wronging the Mass Effect players.
At the start of the article I was expecting criticism from a conservative perspective and the typical "we will try to fix it somehow" attitude from the company that produced the game. Instead the news article reports with specific details of how the author was punished by the gaming community outside of the stereotypical blog rant. The article reports how the game makers (EA games) stand by their product through the lodged protest and complaint of inaccuracies, how Cooper Lawrence got her self-help book trashed on various retail sites, and even following the story up with the inclusion of how Cooper Lawrence later retracts her statements after actually seeing the game in action.
The video gaming culture is still relatively new compared to other forms of medium; the majority of the widespread gaming still only spreads through the younger age brackets (8-upper 20s?). Give it another 10-15 years when video gaming becomes as common an activity as reading the newspaper.
I don’t know about everyone else, but this article is kind of making me want to play the game. Especially seeing how the game apparently has enough merit to cause the defense of it to be reported in a news article. A shame it’s a 360 exclusive.
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