This is one sweet week for the brotherhood. Not the Brotherhood of Mutants, the Brotherhood of the Wolf, or the Brotherhood of Iron Workers. Nay, this day belongs to us, the Brotherhood of Gamers.
This week above all others, we have united under one banner and attempted to cast out the unbelievers and say aloud in one voice, "Grief not, lest ye be griefed!" They tried to get away with slandering one of our own, but little did they know, we’ve had legions of front line soldiers training in the metaverse for days like today. Griefing used to be the pastime of the bored gamer, but now we see that it has real world applications.
Cooper Lawrence, the woman who appeared opposite to Geoff Keighley in the recent Mass Effect "debate" on the Fox News program Live Desk with Martha MacCallum, has issued an official apology for many of the things she said on that program. Lawrence said,"I really regret saying that, and now that I’ve seen the game and seen the sex scenes it’s kind of a joke."
While this might seem like the actions of a woman who has come to her senses, on closer inspection, it really has to do with the attack gamers waged on the amazon.com listing for her book which is shamelessly publicized before before the segment. (I have no problem with this, but why wasn’t Geoff Keighley’s new TV show publicized as well?)
After the segment aired, she received over three hundred user reviews for her book, and I don’t need to tell you that none of them were kind. They all go on to say how her writing is "childishly self-centered," her theories are "derivative" and "offers nothing new to say on the topic." And perhaps most amusingly that she "did very little research to prepare for this book."
The other part I like is that in the tags section where users select words that they associate with the book/author her attackers took a shot at her too. Some of the words they selected to describe her were hypocrite, hack, liar and garbage. They even got nasty, as the creatures who inhabit the internet often do and attacked her physical appearance with the mean spritited, though somewhat humorous tag, "flabby arms."
First we banded together to thwart Kevin McCullough for his ill-researched column initially condemning Mass Effect. Now we strike another victory against Cooper Lawrence. We are proving a mighty adversary indeed.
The thing I find kind of funny is that all they did wrong was pick a bad target. We’re so used to people picking on Manhunt 2 and the legit violent games that no one would have batted a lash at another Manhunt 2 segment. If they really wanted to stick with the sexuality in games bit, would anyone have cared at all if they attacked Doki Doki Majo Shinpan? A game that actually does contain sexual themes that parents should be worried about their kids playing? Chose your battles, mainstream media.
