Designing for Experience

I find it very interesting that people who are concerned with sex and violence in video games are willing to go on the record about what is in a game and the effects of that game without ever having played it, or without any factual knowledge about what it contains.  That said, let me say I have never played Mass Effect.

Fox News managed to do just this, and it was covered nicely over at GamePolitics.com, and I found it all via The escapist including the EA rebuttal to all this.  Before you start talking about how Fox News is simply pandering to its audience, and that the game is in fact rated Mature, I would like to  say that the key point of defense that EA used was that it was OK to do what they did in the game because it is similar in content to prime-time television shows.  If there is anything that people need to be worried about, it is this: we as a society, by and large, have decided that certain things are OK to show in media.  If you don’t agree with that as a parent you need to make sure that doesn’t come into your house.  If you are concerned about this kind of issue then you need to put it into words why you think the world ought to be different than it is, and then start talking, writing, blogging, and emailing about it.

Villifying the latest example of the “decline of American values” doesn’t do anything, and doing it ignorantly and making erroneous claims is a sensational, fear-mongering, and disgusting example of what is wrong with TV news in the USA.

Personally I don’t have cable, and don’t want it, if I did have cable I wouldn’t watch ANY US news program.

Let people who actually play games talk about them.