"Muslim Massacre" Surprisingly Found Offensive

The top-down shooter Muslim Massacre instructs players to "Take control of the American hero and wipe out the Muslim race with an arsenal of the world's most destructive weapons!" And that's pretty much it. Kicking off with a George W. Bush voice sample ("Let's roll!"), the player lays waste to scores of Muslims in a bloody 2D landscape, on city streets and soccer fields, with Robotron (or, if you prefer, Smash TV) inspired gameplay. You kill hundreds of faceless men and women, some with suicide bomb vests, some unarmed, as you work your way up to "bosses" like Osama bin Laden and, ultimately, Allah. It's packed with tasteless stereotypes and unapologetic detached violence.It's unwaveringly offensive by design — it's given the tagline "the game of modern religious genocide" — so it should come as no surprise that people are voicing their displeasure with the game. According to UK publication Telegraph, British Muslim organizations are up in arms over the shooter. "Encouraging children and young people in a game to kill Muslims is unacceptable, tasteless and deeply offensive," said Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of The Ramadhan Foundation, a Muslim youth organization. Muslim Massacre, created by Something Awful forum goon Eric "Sigvatr" Vaughn, has been publicly available for a while now, but people are now starting to give it some attention. We've played the game and found it to be a rather straightforward shooter, with a surprisingly well crafted visual style and retro 8-bit musical nods. It has allusions to 80s shooters like Contra and Ikari Warriors and is stupidly "patriotic" in its execution. It doesn't play particularly well, nor is it a bad game. Muslim Massacre is, according to its creator "fun to play" but "The Muslims represented in the game aren't meant to be based on actual Muslims." As for an after-the-fact artist's statement, Vaughn is quoted as posting on the SA forums that "If I was to try and come up with a meaning for the game at this moment, it would probably be something along the lines of metaphorically destroying the stereotypical depiction of a Muslim." 'Muslim Massacre' video game condemned for glamorising slaughter of Arabs [Telegraph] Muslim Massacre [Official Site]