Fox vs. EA

Fox News has challenged EA to a video-game, alien-sex-with-lesbian smack-down on Live Desk with Martha MacCallum. After Fox aired inaccurate reports about the content on a hit Xbox 360 video game, Mass Effect, the so-called "SE" XBOX controversy continues.

Fox News recently aired a story about BioWare’s new hit video game, Mass Effect. The story recycled false information given by a conservative blogger named Kevin McCullough. McCullough said that Mass Effect was aimed at teens and colorfully charged that in Mass Effect players could:

"…hump in every form, format, multiple gender-oriented possibility they can think of".

None of it is true, nor is the game marketed at anyone under 18 as it carries an ESRB rating of M for mature. Mass Effect is an adult science- fiction role-playing game that may contain some adult situations but nothing so over the top as the writer portrayed. McCullough has since rescinded his statements and apologized. But that didn’t stop Fox News from reporting all of this as fact on Martha MacCallum’s show. The Fox News segment was cleverly entitled "SE"XBOX.

It was a faux "debate" that gave the floor primarily to Cooper Lawrence, a raving anti-video gaming psychologist. She spent much of the time citing studies that purport to tell us how dangerous graphic games are to young people.

Editor’s Tip: For a few laughs, check out the reader reviews on Cooper Lawrence’s new book, "The Cult of Perfection" over at Amazon.com.

EA, the world’s largest video game publisher and recent buyer of BioWare, joined the fray with a letter to Fox News. Jeff Brown, EA VP of communications wrote a letter to Fox asking that they correct the inaccurate claims made in their report on Mass Effect.

Just today, we learned Fox News issued an invitation to EA to appear on Live Desk with Martha MacCallum. Apparently they want someone from EA to discuss Mass Effect and the segment that aired on MacCallum’s show. So far EA has yet to accept the offer.

I smell a setup!

You know it’ll be a Fox monkey court where an EA rep will get three seconds to talk. Then MacCallum and a so-called expert will ignore what EA said and proceed to talk about how horrible it is to let children commit hedonistic sexual acts with aliens in a video game. But as they say, any publicity is good publicity.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 25th, 2008 at 11:30 am and is filed under Culture, Gaming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.