Fox News seem well impressed with the latest video game and have written a glowing piece of hype:
Parents had better beware: There's a Bulletstorm on the horizon.
In
the new video game Bulletstorm due February 22, players are rewarded for shooting enemies in the private parts (such as the buttocks). There's an excess of profanity, of course, including frequent use of F-words. And Bulletstorm is particularly gruesome,
with body parts that explode all over the screen.
But that's not the worst part.
The in-game awards system, called Skill Shots, ties the ugly, graphic violence into explicit sex
acts: topless means cutting a player in half, while a gang bang means killing multiple enemies.
And with kids as young as 9 playing such games, the experts FoxNews.com spoke with were nearly universally
worried that video game violence may be reaching a fever pitch.
If a younger kid experiences Bulletstorm's explicit language and violence, the damage could be significant, Dr. Jerry Weichman, a clinical
psychologist at the Hoag Neurosciences Institute in Southern California, told FoxNews.com.
Violent video games like Bulletstorm have the potential to send the message that violence and insults with sexual innuendos
are the way to handle disputes and problems, Weichman said.
Carol Lieberman, a psychologist and book author, told FoxNews.com that sexual situations and acts in video games -- highlighted so well in Bulletstorm --
have led to real-world sexual violence: The increase in rapes can be attributed in large part to the playing out of [sexual] scenes in video games, she said.
The game was rated M (mature 17+) by the ESRB, the US game
ratings organisation.
In the UK. the BBFC rated the game 18 uncut with the comment: Contains frequent strong bloody violence and strong language
Offsite: Caught with her hand in the porky
pie jar
12th February 2011.
Somehow gamers don't seem to putting up with the same bullshit that anti-porn and anti prostitution campaigners get away with. Games aren't quite so immediately morally reprehensible, and so lies are allowed to
be challenged by media editors and the likes.
So when Carol Lieberman made the above claims about games being connected to real-world sexual violence on Fox News, writers were up for the challenge. After all there is very little sexual content in
Popular gaming to base such conclusions on.
See article from wired.com
:
Pundits and legislators have been attacking the gaming industry for decades now, pinning the blame for tragic events like the shootings at Columbine and Virginia Tech on violent videogames. This week, self-described media
psychiatrist Carole Lieberman took that war of words one step further, claiming explicit games trigger rapes.
Despite the seriousness of Lieberman's allegations, when Wired.com asked her multiple times to clarify
her comments, she failed to cite a single study, statistic or piece of evidence that proved her point.
Perhaps it's because such studies simply don't exist.
...Read the full
article
Offsite: Nutter sound bites fail to make any impact on the games industry
17th February
2011. See article from guardian.co.uk
Later Carole Lieberman
sent out a mass email
to journalists providing links to her sources on violence, rape and video games, it turned out to be a selection of eight studies, none of which tied sexual content in games with real-life sexual violence. John Walker at PC gaming
site Rock, Paper, Shotgun carried out a painstaking analysis of the studies and
his article is worth reading, if only for the fact that it highlights just how inconclusive the links are between simulated and real-life violence.
...
And to most of us, it should
be obvious by now, that such isolated attacks are not worth worrying about. Video games are part of the mainstream, they have powerful advocates, they make billions of dollars -- there is no threat. EA barely bothered to muster an official response; the
developers themselves tweeted about it quickly and dismissively. There is serious work to be done on the psychology of interactive entertainment, but it won't be carried out by Fox or Lieberman.
In this country, Labour
MP Keith Vaz who has made regular confused attacks on violent games, has allegedly found his point of view increasingly isolated within parliament. Last month, culture minister Ed Vaizey told Gamesindustry.biz:
I'm constantly teasing Keith and I think he is aware of the sea-change in videogames and that, particularly with the new generation coming into parliament, there are now many more MPs who grew up with games as a normal part of their
life.
...Read the full article
Offsite: Amazonbombed
21st February 2011. See article from
foxnews.com
After psychiatrist Carole Lieberman told FoxNews.com of a connection between violent games and rape, the site Destructoid ran the headline, Games cause rape psychologist's book gets raped. The article described how Lieberman was Amazonbombed
-- meaning gamers posted dozens of scathing and profane reviews of her books to the online retail site. (See example at
US Amazon )
One commenter, timetheterrible, at Destructoid wrote:
Since this woman's outright untruths will never be recognized or discussed on a platform as large as Fox News, people vent their frustration at the situation by publicly questioning her credibility.
...Read the full
article