It seems an interesting chain of events emerged in the aftermath of Fox News’s biased look at Bulletstorm that was reported in the last post. It seems that the so called “psychiatrist”, one Carole Lieberman, was unable to state any studies that supported her claim, according to Ars Technica. She even outright refused, after countless requests, to respond to the criticism of one of her more rational colleagues.
Lieberman herself claimed that video games like Bulletstorm were responsible for an increase in rape. It’s a difficult claim to make given FBI statistics show that rape (as well as violent crimes generally) have shown a trend downwards. It has become known since that Fox was selective about its sources. It doesn’t surprise me, this twisting of the facts into outright lies is simply an expected behaviour from these people.
The fun side of all this comes when one looks at Carole Lieberman herself. Her books are trashy and she is not what one would picture when a serious news station brings an “expert” in on the case. It has been reported since that her books have been trashed on rating sites and retailer reviews like Amazon the world over.
So, if you want to do your bit, here are the links to her latest work on Amazon in the UK and the US. Happy trashing.
The quick cap news
* The Battlestar Galactica Online beta is open.
* LittleBigPlanet shoes auctioned for Child’s Play, but you wouldn’t find that out via Fox News (see below).
* A new Dungeon Siege III trailer, as well as a preview for Dragon Age II.
* For fans of F2P games, Eurogamer reviewed Bloodline Champions, giving it a respectable 8/10. Also, Paradox Interactive announced the F2P MMORPG Salem, set in the early days of American colonialism.
Main news
It’s been a very interesting week for the first of my blog’s existence. The first item is that EA has closed three Warhammer Online servers, two American and one European, it is offering free character transfers off the closing servers.
In the PC v. console wars, there was talk of the effect console porting might have on Dragon Age II. On the other hand, despite not being a PC exclusive, Crysis 2 will be superior on the PC in every way according to Crytek. Quite frankly, if they can make the game stand out from the crowd in something other than its graphics, like perhaps gameplay, they will have made a superior product to the original as far as I’m concerned. There’s also a rumour that Battlefield 3 will be supporting extra features on the PC as well as the higher player limit.
Of the two big pieces of news, first we have the whole nonsense from Fox News. In service to their dark gods of hyperbole, Fox has attacked Bulletstorm on the grounds that it “ties the ugly, graphic violence into explicit sex acts: ‘topless’ means cutting a player in half, while a ‘gang bang’ means killing multiple enemies.” The fact that people at Fox think being topless is an explicit sex act almost worries me more than the fact that they won’t listen to the more rational arguments, but that shouldn’t surprise anyone; these are the people who think Bill O’Reilly is a journalist. The good news is that, apparently, if you pre-order Bulletstorm (made by People Can Fly, the makers of the excellent Painkiller) from the EA Store, you’ll get Shank for free. Fox have nothing to say on whether Shank will increase the likelihood of rape, so be careful.
Activision has cut quite a lot recently. There was news of job cuts at Vicarious Visions and FreeStyleGames as well as the killing off of Guitar Hero. This got expanded when the 2009 acquisition, 7 Studios, was closed down. This prompted Harmonix to encourage GH fans over to Rock Band. Not that Harmonix has had the best time of it, either. Activision Blizzard’s share price dropped 8% after reporting 2010 financial results on Wednesday.
That’s all for this week. A good weekend to all.
