EA at it again

For those few of you who aren't here exclusively for articles about miniatures gaming here comes something else courtesy of Electronic Arts.

Sigh, EA can you ever do something to NOT make me hate your organization more? Can I stop boycotting you, so I can re-boycott you? You're always finding all kinds of ways to show you have no respect for your customers. Seriously, what is the point of a single player game if you have to be online to play it anyways? News flash, people buying single player games and not MMOs or online shooters are likely to want to play offline. Maybe on a laptop on an airplane?

Now the next thing that bothers me is this:

Electronic Arts will play host to a panel on homophobia in videogame culture organized by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation this Saturday<...>

Topics will include "how to provide safe spaces for LGBT people online, how to ensure the best policies are in place to prevent virtual attacks against LGBT people and how to educate the users of online communities about the effects of homophobia."

Emphasis in bold is mine, I don't care about the rest. I'm of the opinion that most people playing games want some time away from the issues of the real world. Pick a political hot button issue and people want away from it. I really don't want my games trying to educate me about homo-anything. Most popular games are a variant of "kill things and take their stuff", where does sexuality have anything to do with it? We aren't talking obscure japanese hentai games here. In any guild I've been in leadership for this rule has always existed: We don't talk about politics, religion, or sexuality in guild chat. People have strong opinions about those subjects and talking about it in guild chat tends to break an otherwise fun guild based around roleplay, raiding, or PvP. In WoW I was particularly vicious about guild kicking and /ignoring anyone who used gay pejoratives and I would lurk around on alts to enforce it with new recruits. I'm not promoting the behavior, I just don't think anybody trying to have fun wants EA or anyone else to have a homesexuality debate shoved down their throat.

But given EA's media circus at E3, maybe it isn't homophobia they should worry about but maybe religious phobia's?

But they don't want my respect and I don't want to support their disreputable activities by buying their games.

U.S. Constitution, Amendment 1

Sigh, I think I've had my fill from the U.S. media this last week. Get ready for a religion & gaming rant in this blog (or stop reading now).

Does it seem like the only thing that won't get mocked by the U.S. news when it comes to religion is Atheism and Islam? Even though combined they still make up less than 10% of the total U.S. population. Earlier this week I read and watched lots of news about how every Christian and all of the Right Wing media is incitement towards domestic terrorism. Yet just before and also the same day we saw terrorist/hate crime acts by Muslims played down in the mainstream media. Thank goodness for the internet and bloggers who will present things that the Cable news networks and Newspapers won't.

I think what was really over the top was the media response to President Obama's speech this week. I'm not going to talk about the speech or the merits of it, you're all welcome to your own political persuasions. But in the U.S. I saw the media stooping to a level deference for Islam that would knock me over flat if they did the same for Christianity, Judaism or even Buddhism. Here is the media emoticon version:

Muslim World = 8D
Christian Nation = ~:(
Jewist State = >:-[

Now I'll be open and honest, I've got respect for a lot of religions but the "Religion of Peace" has yet to win my good neighbor "wouldn't it be nice to have more of those nice folks living next to you" award. While I appreciate the cultures and people of Europe and the Middle East, the months of my life spent in those parts of the world have made me very, very, very grateful to be living in a country with Freedom of Religion protections for as long as it can be made to last.

So what does any of this have to do with gaming? Enter Electronic Arts, already known for draconian measures against paying customers to take control of their computers and make sure you're not doing anything they don't approve of because you've played one of their games. Known for paying bottom dollar in the game industry to its employees, being the first to layoff, hostile corporate takeovers, and having the most MMO games close servers after release. Well here is another one:


EA is now inventing fake religious controversies over their games to try and get media attention.



Easily believed to be another wacky group of Christians right? Well a lot of people believed so, but this is actually an EA publicity stunt. If this had been done as a joke, I might have taken it as one but AP news actually had to do some research to determine it was a fake. I find this as funny as a fake Suicide bomber, fake Self-immolating monk, or an Anti-Semitic joke.

It has already been my policy to not buy EA games because you have no idea what their software is going to do to your computer since they have demonstrated time after time having 0 respect for their customers. But after this kind of gross public misconduct I'm ready to start my own Electronic Arts boycott that extends to Wii games and every platform. I'm not into boycott petitions, but just hurting them where it counts... their bottom line.

Now on to another E3 note:
I guess the good side of the fake Electronics Arts protest is that the E3 security recognized their constitutional right to assemble on a public sidewalk and FAKE protest. Unfortunately they didn't do it out of principle as they tried to have these booth babe protesters removed from the public sidewalk. This also happened to be another fake protest, fake protesting the $3,000 fine for having booth babes wearing bikinis inside the Adults Only E3... in Los Angeles.

Soooooo, yeah. Skip E3, if you have any sense go to PAX which so far has never failed to have more common sense and more respect for your 1st Amendment Rights.