Kotaku
Having had the thrill of appearing live on Fox News to try and clear the waters over a vast video game misrepresentation, I have to say I feel for Geoff Keighley. In the first two minutes the anchor says that Mass Effect has full nudity and sex and a psychologist "expert" talks about how statistics show that games are played by young boys and that Mass Effect is all about objectifying women. Oh wait, you can play as a woman too, Keighley points out and the full-on nudity? About half a boob for 30 seconds of a 30 hour game.
Keighley totally took charge of the interview. How much, you ask? He goaded their expert, who seconds earlier was talking about sexism, to call him "darling." Nice, maybe ask him to bend over and pick up a pencil next darling.
Let me end by saying it's obvious that every one of the people who they had discussing it after the fact have not only never played Mass Effect, they probably heard about it five minutes before they were supposed to offer an opinion. Very shoddy. Though, at least they got his name right.
Comments
Woo! go remix of Five Iron Frenzy!
Go Geoff go!
Man I hate [loathe] the mainstream media/news!
I am so glad I don't watch it!
oh wait nevermind... thats itunes.. whoo embarrasing.
Wait, thats Itunes playing...
"objectifying women", "full on nudity" & "sexism"
Are they talking about Mass Effect or Atari's Custard's last stand?
I must add, typical sensational news, they don't get the full facts, put up their bullshit one liners that make the sheeple assume it is fact, and they expect to be taken seriously.
I like how they spin the whole situation around to make it look like Geoff is crazy. Typical mainstream asswipery.
This clip makes me sad.
That's it. Sad.
Didn't even give Keighley a chance...
Fox Noise... fair and balanced.
Now I will leave you all and go have marital relations with my (SE)Xbox!!!
Whoo! Geoff Keighley owned that b*tch! To bad they took him off the air and their "panel" said what FOX wanted to hear.
Wait, you mean parenting actually involves work?
Who can argue that Luke Skywalker meets Debbie does Dallas is a good thing. -Idiot in glasses
best quote ever.
what's worst is the stay-at-home moms who watch shows like this believes every word coming out from these pompous idiot's mouth are "true"
I want to just... omg... Fox news is a joke!
how much you wanna bet that each one of those douchebags has a nanny?
Sigh.
When the world around them is a-flame, can you blame a child for playing with matches?
I like that they broadcast the one scene they are talking about.
OMFG, I just watched id, the panel at the end, I wanted to VOMIT. Total scapegoat!
I give up, no more clicking on these videos... vision of Michael Douglas in "Walking Tall" are running though my mind. Now I know why I don't watch this tripe.
And glad I don't. FUCK!!!!!!!!
*goes to cool down and meditate*
What? Does that lady think parenting should be a walk in the park? Leave your kid at the mall while you go get your nails "did"? Parenting hasn't become more difficult - they just imagine that now that kids CAN theoretically find what theyre looking for at their computer, its different from before when they had to go out and get it. Face it, if your kid wants something that badly, they'll get their hands on it one way or another. Before it was the dime novels in the corn crib and rolled down socks (*gasp*), and now its virtual orgasmic rape.
Wow, that's frustrating. Someone should tell that bitch that the average age of gamers is 33, THIRTY THREE, not 12.
It's "unfortunate" that parents need to monitor what their kids do? Is she actually encouraging government censorship because this game has an ass in it? Has she ever seen an R rated movie in her life? This game pales in comparison.
Most commenters would say something like "I hate the mainstream media" at the end of this post. But I'm just going to go ahead and say I hate 90% of people in the world. Idiots. At least the one guy on the panel made sense.
I just want to mention something about "30 seconds of a 30 hour game" line, because I think it's slightly misleading.
Yes, it is a lot of work to get to that point, and yes, the game is about MUCH, MUCH more than that 30 seconds, but say it was 30 seconds of something that mattered - it wouldn't make a difference how long it was shown, or what was shown around it, but the fact that it WAS shown.
Our argument here is not that it's just 30 seconds, but rather whether or not that 30 seconds REALLY, TRULY matters. And for some it does matter. The way these people are going on about it in the uninformed matter they're doing it, though, is just embarrassing and shows most of us their argument isn't really backed by solid information.
Go Knightly!
Yeah thats Fox news for ya...always reliable. I can see that ignorance rules once again for Mass Effect. I wish I would've seen the "full digital nudity". I bet you no-one on that panel with the exception of Keighley has played that game. I bet they never saw what else was in Mass Effect besides that glorious love scene. They probably never saw when Wrex was torn between his friendship to Shepard, and a cure for his people. WHEN WILL THEY LEAVE MASS EFFECT ALONE?
Fucking FOX! LMAO!! Seriously? How does this pass as informed reporting? "I'm not letting Mass Effect in my house!" This is about the saddest thing I've ever seen. Where is the informed impartial panel? "I pick up the box and have to look at back for rating." It's in the front and on the back and more visible than any tape, cd, or DVD movie ever is! What they did to Jeff as shameful but this is the typical treatment to a guest for any television show that has an agenda. To top it all off? Microsoft actually mentions how to stop all the scenarios they go on and commiserate about during the rest of the clip such as stopping your kids from using the system when you (the parent) aren't there. This is sensationalism in the media at its finest. If you think you are immune to it then look at what they did to Tom Cruise and think about your impressions of Tom Cruise as a person. For rating, the media will destroy anyone and anything with lies.
Mainstream Media is such a fucking joke, and is chock full of lies & deception. It's the main reason why I never watch the news anymore. It's fucking rediculous.
I'm trying not to laugh, I really am. But in all seriousness, this is very much expected of Fox news... or a great percentage of conservative adults who don't know what a "parental control" is or doesn't care about video games at any level. We need to be in positions where we can expose and educate audiences about this form of entertainment. And even then, I think Fox will continue to be infested with ignorant drones.
Wow...they know absolutely NOTHING about the d*** game and yet they act all high and mighty. That video made me sick. *barf* How ignorant are these people?!!
ughh, the ignorance that went on in there little chat they had afterwards made me sick... "luke skywalker meets debbie dose dallas" whatever you half-rate journalist.
@EnigmaNemesis:
Sorry the movie is "Falling Down" ... damn they have my head spinning!
I'm sad that no one mentions Walmart, Best Buy, Circuit City, or Gamestop's carding policy. My 44 year old dad got carded for buying an M rated game. He doesn't have to get carded when he buys alcohol, but he does when he buys a game.
Holy crap, I hate these people. They are so damned stupid.
The guy goes it's the parents job to regulate things, then that damned owman says unfortunately.
I wanted to force feed her a box of Tigers.
@okenny :):
It's not "Fox" my friend, it's "Faux".
:D
Ignore these people. Don't watch the channel. Don't give a second's thought to anything that they're saying. This doesn't matter and it won't affect your life. The ONLY thing that you can do by responding to this is show that their particular brand of idiocy is worth purveying for the buzz.
Btw, $100 says that the only reason this is coming up at this stage is because of that idiot who wrote the article on Mass Effect being some sort of virtual-rape-a-tron. Because people responded to it as a controversial story, Fox News picked it up. Go figure.
I'm not sure because I never had the need to do it but I thought the 360 parental control would also restrict what type of games kids could play, eg: Rated E-M. If thats right then that just makes the 3 panelists point moot. Seems to me like she doesn't even want adults/husbands to be playing Rated M+ games.
@dead_red_eyes: ooohhhh! Good one! Can I use that?
Forget to mention the idiot that suggested an adults only rating for the game. That's like suggesting that Braveheart should have been rated X...
"When you buy your video games...which I just had my first experience recently...you have to pick up the box and look at the back for the rating."
What backwards ass game was she shopping for? Every game I own has the ESRB rating clearly printed on the FRONT cover.
She mentions that twice.
And as for the panel, the last guy was the only one who seemed to have the right idea.
No one will have sex with me in real life, and no one in Mass Effect wanted to either.
Lmao. Shes funny. If you read the back of a book, do you know what the full contents of said book is about? Or if you watch a trailer for a movie, have you seen the whole movie?
Geoff did the best he could before being cut off, the fact is Mass Effect has nothing to do with sex. Its a small love scene near the end of the game, that he rightly pointed out not everyone will get. Got to love how they basically gave him no chance to talk compared to the woman though that seemed to have a huge opinion from what she even admitted was "just trailers" off the internet.
Just another excuse to complain about videogames.
@bohlberg:
ROFL ... thanks!
ARGH
Thats my response oh and going "LALALALA, you don't know what you are talking about."
Come on the sex in there is tasteful and beautiful and not very reviling... Come on Matrix is/was market to adolescent boys yet look at their sex scene.
OK No more of this... Or else I'll just get angrier, back to playing Some Mass Effect.
oh my fucking god! who is this bitch (the main anchor) and how do we email her ... anyone know? nice integrity do some fucking research before you open your mouth you cow!
I am actually writing my Term paper over this subject for my English class. I'll email it to Kotaku maybe when I am finished with it.
I couldn't hear the entire segment over the noise of me passionately humping my Sexbox.
Games?
@Khabi: I agree. That guy seems like a total square.
Fox News is shit-falvored shit, with shit filling.
That is all.
Outside of Keighley, that has to be one of the most uninformed, craze-inducing pieces of rubbish I have ever heard.
There are plenty of choice quotes from this piece, but my 'favourite' has to be: "Is Luke Skywalker meets Debbie Does Dallas a good thing? I don't think so." Perhaps the stupidest thing I've ever heard, and I study politics!
The funny thing is, they kept going on about the 'state today' of children. In fact, I think this whole ordeal has displayed how problematic discussing such matters is.
We keep telling them (and I use 'we' because we're in this together) until we're blue in the face that these games DO NOT contain the suggestive themes that they proclaim, and that as video games become more and more complex (in terms of visuals, sound etc), then naturally story lines will also become adjacently complex.
"I feel so old, what happened to Atari and Pong?" Said one moronic Fox News panelist. Well, what happened to cinema? Does she honestly think films like Dead Man's Shoes, The Woodsman or Fight Club would have been allowed back in the 50's?
Just in case these catastrophically ignorant people are reading this, let me make this final point:
Video games, as a medium, is still in it's infancy. Much like any other medium - the press, film, television, it's youth is almost counter-productive. It's a very decentralised medium, with the larger community struggling to accept it as a comfortable medium unlike the aforementioned forms of communication.
You have to stop this "Won't someone think of the children?" attitude, because The Simpsons parodied that a long time ago, and you didn't listen.
I blame kotaku. Had ya'll not blogged about it, there wouldn't be this media uproar.
First rule about alien lesbo sex scene:
YOU DONT TALK ABOUT ALIEN LESBO SEX SCENE.
Besides, this is Fox News, which has as much journalistic integrity as Cracked Magazine.
IMO, Kevin Mcullough and anyone else who thinks that Mass Effect is all about sex should watch Mass Effect: Sci vs Fi or at the very least watch the trailer for it. If they did, they'd see that Mass Effect is nothing like they thought it'd be.
Also: "They don't show women as being valued for anything other than their sexuality."
I don't know about you guys, but personally, I always value a woman who can save the universe from total and utter annihilation.
@spaulding360: [www.google.com] :) I heard it's very good at finding things you are looking for. :p
Fox news, where our cameras are glued to dead rich blond white girls in a foreign country, but not the poor dead Black, Hispanic, Asian, Native American girls in our own country!
Someone had to say it!
Keighley played her like a fiddle
Cooper (fantastic name BTW) made false comment after false comment and he called her out on it. Examples include:
A) Women have no roles other than being objects of sex (Ashley was the character I relied most on in my playthrough with a male)
B) It's a man deciding how many women he wants to be with (I'm playing with a Paragon female right now!)
This is just typical media sensationalism when it comes to videogames and its only magnified by the medium in which its presented. Fox News loves using strawmans in their arguments, and this is one of the same.
Oh, I just checked Cooper's credentials- all she has is a Master's right now. No offense, but I'd like my authoritative comments to come from somebody with tad more in educational background. She was called a "psychology expert"- what the hell is that? Her argument rested on the fact that ME would screw up adolescent conceptions of gender- for better or for worse, videogames are the last place our conceptions of gender are built (OMG Aeris was so hot, I'm going to go objectify females now).
Bravo to Geoff for venturing into hostile territory though. That panel was a joke, especially that very hip looking dude with the glasses: "I'm not letting Mass Effect in my house." Clearly he stinks at Princess Diaries so he has no chance in ME :)
@EnigmaNemesis: I think you meant "Falling Down"? "Walking Tall" (the one I'm thinking of, anyway) stars the Rock.
Anyway, After watching this clip and cringing through its entirety, I know a few people who need to be paired off and given the "one cup" treatment... Wouldn't be much different than what I just saw in the clip (people talking shit about something they know nothing about, then each one of them taking turns regurgitating the same shit).
Speaking of which, why don't they do a story about that? That site is incredibly easy accessible by anyone with a computer and an Internet connection.
Won't anyone think of the children?!
FULL digital nudity?.. I saw those videos.. They were as covered up as a TV Soap Drama sex scene. Their is absolutely no full nudity in the game, in fact DOA has more nudity. But no one bitches there. People gotta drop the act and argue over whats really bothering them. The fact that there IS sex in an M rated game. Why are people trying to make it sound worse than what it is? They do, however have a case in which an M rated game does have sex in it, and their children are discovering it. ALTHOUGH, M stands for mature - so i take that back. They don't have a case. It's all the irresponsible parents' fault who give their young children these games and ignore the rating system.
Aye... people are just so stupid.. No one ever wants to take the blame, even when its so obvious its their fault..