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Gamers’ revenge is served cold on Amazon Planning to go on Fox News and bash a video game you’ve never even seen? Then prepare to have your book torpedoed on Amazon.com. Psychologist Cooper Lawrence was a guest on a recent Fox News segment that denounced the “full digital nudity and sex” featured in Mass Effect for the Xbox 360. One problem: There isn’t any full digital nudity and sex in the game. Sure, there’s a bit of mildly salacious alien love (which, as you can see on YouTube, is about as hot as watching two mannequins being moved around a store window). Game publisher Electronic Arts has asked Fox News to “set the record straight,” but the more interesting reaction has been from the gamers themselves. Lawrence, who chuckled dismissively when asked on the program if she’d ever played the game, soon saw her book’s Amazon listing bombarded with more than 500 one-star reviews (which Amazon has since taken down) and several uploaded “customer images” (ditto). I’d be tempted to join in, but I’ll be tied up for a while watching all the other clips I found through my YouTube search for “graphic sex with an alien.” UPDATE: In a New York Times piece, Lawrence apologizes for misrepresenting the game: “I really regret saying that, and now that I’ve seen the game and seen the sex scenes, it’s kind of a joke.” —Posted by David Griner

January 24, 2008 in Griner | Permalink

Comments

I'm sure that she was called up last minute to comment on this video game and asked to represent a certain point of view. But it's a lesson to at least watch, read or play what you are commenting upon. She was obviously trying to work her way back to her own book, but it just made her look silly. Did I mention that PR opportunities can bite you in the ass? Because they totally can. In the ass. Bite.

Posted by: thatguy | Jan 24, 2008 4:28:43 PM

You can't lose with video games, the over 40 hate them, the under 40 love them. What the over 40 need to remember is that we like our sex and violence in our video games. Besides, Fox is the #1 cable rated news network, whatever you say there the world's gonna hear.

Posted by: Bobby | Jan 24, 2008 5:22:00 PM

Reviews are back up in case anyone wants to see how the gaming community retaliates. I agree with "thatguy" that she was probably called last minute to do this but in general everyone, except Geoffe Keighly, sounded as if they stopped absorbing new media channels after Fox was inducted into the Network TV higherarchy.

The only hope was the last panelist who focused on the fact that this should wake parents up to the fact that they are not helpless in preventing what media their children absorb. All they need to do is take the time and learn how to use the tools that have been provided.

Posted by: Jake | Jan 24, 2008 5:54:34 PM

I like the headline of one of the new one-star reviews: "She wants to Bash a game without playing it, heres a review of her book without reading it"

Grammar aside, it highlights the poetry of the protest.

And yes, it appears the reviews are back up, although the total of one-stars was hundreds less than when I first saw it.

Posted by: DavidGriner | Jan 24, 2008 6:06:55 PM

King of Kong -- on DVD -- January 29th.

Can't wait!

Posted by: Paul | Jan 24, 2008 7:53:52 PM

Oh, how I love the internet. If they'd let me review on Amazon.com I'd probably have to mention the (frankly horrific) section on sexual intercourse with dogs that is in Chapter 34 of this book I haven't read. Really, it's shocking what people are writing these days.

(Also, there have been alien sex scenes in video games for ages. Star Control II, anyone?)

Posted by: Rodge | Jan 24, 2008 8:12:52 PM

Ahaha - the tag cloud at the bottom is also pretty entertaining. This is great - love 'em gamers. They're hardcore.

Posted by: Emma | Jan 25, 2008 9:20:54 AM

I have Mass Effect. The sex scene isn't really sex, it's more spiritual. I've seen way more salacious stuff going on in PG-13 movies.

oh and by the way MASS EFFECT RULZZZZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted by: Asari Commando | Jan 25, 2008 9:47:48 AM

When a member of my species, the Asari, joins with one of another species, it's much less to do with the physical than the mental. Information impulses transfer directly through my skin between myself and my partner. That is why the Asari can reproduce with any other species in the galaxy. It proves that all life is one. The universe is a whole and we are indivisible from it.

Posted by: Liara T'Soni | Jan 25, 2008 9:53:19 AM

Liara is correct. I have been confused by how the media has been representing a member our species mating with Shepard as “hot lesbian action.” Asari are neither male nor female and our mating is not sex in the sense that humans interpret it. There is no conjoining of egg or sperm. It is not necessary for the partner to have a genetic code that is compatible with our Asari physiology in order to reproduce. Nor does the sex of the partner species matter.

Posted by: Shiala | Jan 25, 2008 11:14:03 PM

Shiala-

Well said.

I must also point out that "hot lesbian action" is even more inaccurate in millions of parallel universes, where I joined with a male Commander Shepard. Though I, in this universe, joined with Commander Shepard as a female.

My first experience joining with another sentient being was wonderful. Goddess willing, I will come across a willing Elcor within the next hundred years.

Posted by: Liara T'Soni | Jan 28, 2008 10:59:09 AM

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