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Feeding Frenzy Over Violent Game
25 to Life isn't even out yet, and already it is under fire by everyone from NY Senator Charles Schumer to CNN host Nancy Grace. Commentary on the illogical feeding frenzy is available at Gamasutra, Press the Buttons, and Game Girl Advance. From the Press the Buttons article: "As you read this transcript, pay attention to how Grace and her guests frame their sentences. Although this plays out like an off-the-cuff debate, each and every spoken word is primed to invoke outrage. There are plenty of loaded words and phrases in there: 'murder simulators', 'rewire the brain', an attack on Bill Gates for personally allowing this game to exist (as if he himself is out there coding it), and so forth. The program also showed photos of real police officers who were killed in the line of duty at the same time the game's preview trailer was on screen."
Who needs a murder-simulator when you can join the police force and experience the real thing?
+ Shoot a young unarmed black man to death with 41 shots!
+ Kill a young woman by shooting a "non-lethal" pepper-spray projectile into her eyeball!
+ Needlessly taser young children, women and elderly people with 50,000 volts as you see fit!
+ Beat up, shove to the ground, handcuff and arrest blind elderly women in their own home!
Yes, order POLICE-FORCE today from your local videogame retailer and you too can be a civic-minded hero!
And by the way:
"This is what your kids will be digesting if you buy this," Grace said as game footage was shown. "One law officer after the next gunned down in the line of duty."
Kids will only be digesting it if adults buy it for them. Presumably most kids too young to be (theoretically) impressionable enough to go out and kill cops becuase they played a videogame about it don't have the $70 for an Xbox game.
"Here's a philanthropist and a powerful man, the richest man in the world, and yet he's making available to children around the world on Xbox a cop-killing game."
How much of the game centers around killing cops? For all we know, killing cops is just a small incidental portion of the game that they're focusing on because they're sick fucking perverts trying to exploit the public by making it an issue. And how is it a cop-killing game? I assure you, the cops in the game are not real. They are rendered animations displayed on the television. Kind of like a cartoon. No real cops are harmed.
Well, if you want those kids to be susceptible to your recruiters in a couple of years, you better start breaking down their inhibitions now so they'll be blood thirsty killing machines when you want them to be.
The gaming industry deliberately invokes this kind of "negative" publicity to move product. The same kind of thing happened when Take Two made Manhunt.
I had a look at Manhunt and yeah, the murder in the game is pretty gruesome (stabbing people rather vividly, suffocations with plastic bags, etc). The game itself was pretty godawful though. Gameplay was repetitive, nothing outstanding in the game to set it apart except for the violence.
I guarantee that sales will be higher for the game as a result of CNN's free publicity. Won't make the game any better though.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
What kind of sick fuck would use such images for the purpose of defaming a game? It is completely out or proportion and demeaning to the officers. Whether it's relevant or not is not important, it just shows an incredibly bad taste and lack of empathy for the people victimized by these killings.
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the fact that you can play either side of the war in this game. In fact, I typed "25 to life" into google and got this link: Choose your side You can play as gangsters or cops, but I suppose it isn't as morally satisfying to these asshats to: A) Report on the whole story or B) Complain about a game where cops kill gangsters.