Video Games as ‘Kid’s’ Toys - Wordplay and the Discourse of Video Games - page 45

This statement drew the most criticism from Electronic Arts, which had
recently acquired Mass Ef ect 's developer BioWare, and gamers, but
McCullough continued,
Yet here's a question that deserves to be asked, and in all likelihood
will not be: “How much moral judgment should the President push
into legislative issues that are likely to severely damage our children's
innocence, function, and capability?” I hear the nay-sayers claiming
I'm being the wild and crazed Bible thumper I've always been—but its
[sic] a worthwhile question isn't it? 28
Later likening the game to pornography that can inspire serial killing, the key
objection advanced was the concern that the adult content in a video game
would corrupt the young. There was a clear objection to the perceived nature
of the content in the game, but his outrage was reserved for what it would do
to the children who may end up playing the game. Shelving the inaccuracies
about his portrayal of the game, McCullough's rage is funneled toward game
makers who are designing games that of er high fi delity virtual sex to chil-
dren. Along similar lines, a dif erent article was built around commentary
from Cathy Ruse, a lawyer at the Family Research Council, who contended
that Mass Ef ect is “clearly marketed to minors” and argued that “there are
cultural implications for feeding porn to kids in this way . . . it is profoundly
naïve to suggest that feeding children graphic sexual material is going to
have no ef ect on their psyche. That's just stupid to think that.” 29 Comple-
menting the two online articles was a Fox News report titled “'SE'XBOX?”
with the banner headline “New Video Game Shows Full Digital Nudity and
Sex.” The anchor introducing the story stated that she “was looking at it a
little bit this afternoon” and continued to discuss how players could see “full
digital nudity” and the player gets to decide “exactly what's going to happen
between the two people if you know what I mean.” 30 The primary concern
in the piece was not necessarily that there is sex present in a video game, but
that the game was being marketed to children. In the coverage, the game was
subsequently described as “Luke Skywalker meets Debbie Does Dallas .” T he
psychologist in the report, Cooper Lawrence, introduced her comments by
stating, “[W]ho's playing video games? Adolescent males, not their dads.” 31
The Fox panelists also expressed concerns that, because mothers were not in
the home as much as they were in the “days of the Playboy magazine,” we
really need to watch out for video games and expressed regret that we were
no longer in the days of “Atari 32 and pinball and Pac-Man .” Throughout
these pieces there may be disdain for adults who play these games, but a spe-
cial level of criticism for the video game industry is lodged based on the fear
that these games are designed to be played by the hands of children.
In response to the news coverage, gamers spoke out, as “the internet
hath no fury like a gamer scorned.” 33 Gamers generally stressed that the
scenes were taken out of context or were not as signifi cant as they were