Mass Effect smeared by anti-gaming media

Surprise surprise, FOX News who shares the same parent company as The Times, recently aired a segment attacking Mass Effect for its alleged inclusion of full nudity (which it doesn't, not that it matters to me if it does! - we are not a bunch of old prudes here). Proving equally as ignorant as their British counterparts, the news anchor, Martha MacCallum acknowledge that the game receives an 'M' rating. But she insists that it is available to kids, forgetting to blame parents and stores for enforcements. The news anchor also ignores the fact of the parental control system available on the 360 and claims that kids can get around that if parents aren't strict enough.

As with The Times articles, this is just another excuse for some people to attempt to relinquish their parental responsibility on their own kids and just blame the industry. The anchor even admits that she saw nothing of graphic nature of the game, but continued to blame it. The segment also features an attack by giggling psychologists Cooper Lawrence, who admitted to never playing the game - yet claims that the game features full graphical nudity as fact. I could go on and on, but you just have to watch the segment to understand how frustrating it is to find a news channel that always claims to be unbiased (yeah right, like we ever bought into that!) reports lies as factual. It is sad.

A rebuttal by EA is available here. I am not normally a fan of EA, the company, but this time they really came off as passionate enough to defend their work and the industry after a series of smear attacks by the media. Cooper Lawrence, the psychologist who slandered the game but never played it has since saw her Amazon books rating gone downhill. Juvenile actions by juvenile gamers maybe, but so was her initial action.