Northern Illinois Shooting Blamed on Games As Well

Yet another college shooting, and yet another bit of violence blamed on a "violent culture" of video games happened last week. After the shooting, Jack Thompson immediately sprang up in a FOX News interview, in which he obviously blamed the shooting on "the Counter-Strike Half-Life" game, which apparently the shooter had played along with most people in the world. Makes me wonder why I haven't killed anyone yet. It must happen at some point, I just wish I'd get it over with now. Anyway, then a New York Post article mentioned Counter-Strike, and an Illinois legislator blamed our violent culture rather than gun control issues. The guy came off medication, so I'm not sure why a history of playing Counter-Strike would be more responsible than that. Also, any proposed gaming legislation wouldn't even affect his playing Counter-Strike, because he's 27 years old. I hope that we're not going to suggest 30 year-olds can't play violent games either. Especially if they can have whatever guns they want.

I've Got to Admit, It's Getting Better: Cooper Lawrence Apologizes!

We Win! Hooray! Huzzah! Cooper Lawrence said she misspoke and now that she's "seen the game and seen the sex scenes it’s kind of a joke." In a good way, I swear. Just read the New York Times article for all the real information. I'm just here to rejoice, basically. Otherwise, everything on the Mass Effect story is still the same, with FOX offering EA a chance on TV, and EA still not sure whether they should accept or not.

Hooray again, whoo!

Mass Effect Story Update: The Cult of Perfection Given a Tarnished Record

Just quickly, I'm going to go over the more recent news on the FOX News coverage of Mass Effect I mentioned in my first All Together Now post earlier. I think you'll all be amused if you haven't heard of this yet.

Firstly, Jeff Brown from EA set FOX straight better than Geoff Keighley did in letter form (not like they'll show it on air, but oh well). You can read that letter here, because I've got to get on to the really exciting bit.

Cooper Lawrence, as I stated in my fun fact of the day, is likely even more hated than Jack Thompson among politically-active gamers right now due to her part in the same FOX News story. As you can observe in the video linked there, she laughed at the idea of having actually played the game, but represented Geoff Keighley's opposition and was given most of the speaking time. Therefore, the Amazon page of the book she promoted through that broadcast has:

• Nine 5-star reviews
• Zero 4-star reviews
• Two 3-star reviews
• Forty-Six 2-star reviews
• and 386 1-star reviews

Divine intervention, or more likely, gamers giving her a taste of her own medicine. Here's a nice quote:

"I'm also quite disappointed that Mrs. Lawrence would use sex appeal (the cover) to sell her book. Whether she realizes it or not there are a lot of kids in book stores today that will see this and get the wrong impression.

Image means a lot Mrs. Lawrence, and you are damaging the youth of America."

That was perhaps the nicest of the reviews I found, some of which were a bit over the top, but I think that one was pitch perfect. This just made me feel like the Internet is a wonderful place all over again this morning. I hope you feel the same way.

Also, be sure to look at the tags customers have associated with the book. The entire list is very entertaining, including "bigot", "hipocrisy", and some phrases I'm unprepared to tarnish my site with at this time.

Update Update: An anonymous source at FOX claims that they have now invited EA onto the network themselves. I'd much rather they just apologize than try to fight with more lies, but we'll see what happens.

Hallelujah, praise the lord! Divine Intervention!