I'll largely be playing Devil's Advocate here, but there's a lot I have to get out.
Sorry Escapist, but Fox News did not say Bulletstorm could make you a rapist... they did however, receive commentary from both sides of the issue which included opinions on the blatant sexual innuendo in the game. The reporting angle from Fox was that an extremely violent videogame is coming out, which Bulletstorm is. They then bring in the opinions of psychologists, (you know, people with expert opinions on the subject) that argue one side of the story. IE, the only side you reported on... what you forgot, my beloved Escapist News, was the rebuttal side of the article, which Destal mentioned:
"Between a great ratings system, parental controls on the consoles and the major retailers inhibiting the
sale of Mature-rated games to minors, the matter is really one for parents and adults to consider, individually," Hal Halpin, the president of the similar Entertainment Consumers Association, told FoxNews.com. "I respect the creative rights of game developers to make a game like Bulletstorm in the same way that I appreciate Quentin Tarantino's right to make over-the-top movies like Kill Bill."
They even reached out to Epic Games, and yet would receive no comment on the matter. If the opposing view point does not bring up a statistic, such as the FBI stat you mentioned, then it shouldn't be reported in an article that is about back and forth commentary. The statement Liebermann made, ?The increase in rapes can be attributed in large part to the playing out of [sexual] scenes in video games? is her statement, not Fox News's. To make the headline "Fox News Says Bulletstorm Could Make You a Rapist" is committing the exact same type of slanted headlining as "Is Bulletstorm the Worst Videogame in the World?" on the Fox News article. It's ironic that your coverage of a Fox News article commits almost the same journalistic fallacies that you accuse the article of committing. The only difference is that Fox News actually had opinions from the side supporting the Videogame industry.
Granted, Fox News is certainly not taking the position of defending Bulletstorm here, as the article is about as slanted as one can be without falling over. But that's it, the article is slanted, and almost every news network article is, because they rely on the money generated through traffic. What better way to generate traffic than to slant coverage towards your audience? This is not a new tactic. Go read Ted Koppel's article "Olbermann, O'Reilly, and the death of real news" if you don't believe me. John Brandon, the Fox article's author, did exactly what he needed to do, he gave opinions from both sides, but slanted it towards the "Videogames are too violent" crowd, which, when considering Bulletstorm's content, gives them more ammunition than it does the side this site represents.
Perhaps we should be more angry at Hal Levy... ?One thing that tends to be ignored is that if Bulletstorm consisted solely of beating people up, it wouldn't be fun to play,? as he's certainly not fighting the good fight in favor of gaming as a legitimate medium. This is certainly more disheartening to me than Fox News's babble, which will always work against the gaming community whether we like it or not. If people like this [Levy] are representing the pro gaming side of things, we better rethink our strategy. And games like Bulletstorm aren't helping either, especially when the Supreme Court is ruling this year in a case that could have huge repercussions on the industry.
