I have been following the… let’s call it “Mass Effect Scandal” just for kicks. I am impressed about two things.
1. How non-gamers get stressed out about this.
2. How gamers are reacting quickly and swiftly about it.

Now, maybe I’m a nympho or maybe I’m jaded because of unknown reasons, but… does this look like an extreme scene of sex who you wouldn’t show anyone under 18, or 21, depending on where you live?

So they’ve been calling it “virtual orgasmic rape” and “They’re seeing them as these objects of desire, as these hot bodies. They don’t show women as being valued for anything other than their sexuality. And it’s a man in this game deciding how many women he wants to be with.” No. Really.

Now, to my second point. The “Virtual orgasmic rape” idea came from this “conservative” blogger called Kevin McCullough who, interestingly enough had never played or seen the game (personally, I haven’t either). However, what happened here was that gamers from all over the world went into his blog, where a lot of them discussed this intelligently with him, while a few others wouldn’t stop telling him stuff like “fuck you” or “stoopid noob”. I do NOT condone the second gamer demographic, however, after reading the comments, and hearing them call Mr. McCullough on his radio show with intelligent comments, I am happy to report that column was taken down.

Now for the funny part: “They’re seeing them as these objects of desire, as these hot bodies. They don’t show women as being valued for anything other than their sexuality. And it’s a man in this game deciding how many women he wants to be with.” This woman, Lawrence Cooper, who is supposedly an expert psychologist and bla bla bla, said that. Reading a bit about her, she writes for Cosmopolitan… COSMOPOLITAN and had NEVER played the game, probably had never played A game. Now to make you understand. Cosmopolitan is, to me personally, one of the worst publications. I see it at newsstands and I will probably stare morbidly at their blurbs but I would never, not even at a doctor’s office where there’s nothing else to do, read it. For me, this screams about just wanting to get everyone’s attention.

So gamers AGAIN got angry, with very much justified right. This time, the attack was different. Suddenly, the reader reviews of her new book over at amazon.com were terrible. Most interestingly, the people who reviewed it mentioned “I haven’t read it”. You see, gamers thought that, since she hadn’t even seen nor played Mass Effect and judged it, they could’ve not read her book and judge it. They did mention why they were reviewing it though, and the book went down under as a best seller.

So she kind of apologized “I recognize that I misspoke. I really regret saying that, and now that I’ve seen the game and seen the sex scenes it’s kind of a joke.” Probably because she found out that her book will probably not make her as much money as it would if she hadn’t said all those things.

Oh, what did she say? Here you go:

Definitely… gamers are a force to be wary of.

As a last point, EA’s Vice President, Jeff Brown, wrote to Fox News saying, among other things “The resulting coverage was insulting to the men and women who spent years creating a game which is acclaimed by critics for its high creative standards. As video games continue to take audiences away from television, we expect to see more TV news stories warning parents about the corrupting influence of interactive entertainment. But this represents a new level of recklessness.”

I am glad that we are all standing up to ourselves.