Mass Effect and the Sex Debate

Posted on January 29, 2008

The Mass Effect controversy began when a Fox News segment on The Live Desk With Martha MacCallum accused the Electronic Arts game of containing digital nudity and sex scenes and of marketing to children. This greatly upset Electronic Arts who argued that the game is no more graphic than a prime time tv show. Kotaku posted an excerpt of a letter sent from Electronic Arts to Fox News complaining of the inaccuracies Fox News made about their game.

Your headline above the televised story read: "New videogame shows full digital nudity and sex."
Fact: Mass Effect does not include explicit or frontal nudity. Love scenes in non-interactive sequences include side and profile shots - a vantage frequently used in many prime-time television shows. It's also worth noting that the game requires players to develop complex relationships before characters can become intimate and players can chose to avoid the love scenes altogether.
FNC voice-over reporter says: "You'll see full digital nudity and the ability for players to engage in graphic sex."
Fact: Sex scenes in Mass Effect are not graphic. These scenes are very similar to sex sequences frequently seen on network television in prime time.
FNC reporter says: "Critics say Mass Effect is being marketed to kids and teenagers."
Fact: That is flat out false. Mass Effect and all related marketing has been reviewed by the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) and rated Mature - appropriate for players 17-years and older. ESRB routinely counsels retailers on requesting proof of age in selling M-rated titles and the system has been lauded by members of Congress and the Federal Trade Commission. In practical terms, the ratings work as well or better than those used for warning viewers about television content.

The New York Times has a story explaining how the Fox News segment angered gamers and how angry gamers went after author Cooper Lawrence for her comments on the segment.

So the game world has been ablaze with indignation since the Fox News program The Live Desk With Martha MacCallum said on Monday that Mass Effect, one of the most critically praised games of 2007, contains frontal nudity and explicit depictions of sexual activity. The assertions of virtual lasciviousness first appeared earlier this month among conservative bloggers incensed by brief YouTube clips excerpted from the 30- to 40-hour game.
Mass Effect, a science fiction game, includes a complicated romantic subplot that is no more risque in its plot or graphic in its depiction than evening network television.
To exact their revenge, gamers have turned their vitriol on Cooper Lawrence, an author who appeared to mischaracterize the game when she said: "Here's how they're seeing women: They're seeing them as these objects of desire, as these, you know, hot bodies. They don't show women as being valued for anything other than their sexuality. And it's a man in this game deciding how many women he wants to be with."
In fact Mass Effect allows users to play as either a man or a woman, and the few suggestions of intimate contact occur in the context of a detailed interpersonal story line. Asked on the air by Geoff Keighley of Spike TV whether she had ever played the game, Ms. Lawrence laughed and said, "No."

Gamers went after Cooper Lawrence who appeared on Martha MacCallum's show by writing negative reviews of her book on Amazon.com. Many of these reviewers may have not read Lawrence's book but Lawrence had not played their game either.

Later Cooper Lawrence had a chance to play Mass Effect and look at the scenes. She then changed her mind reports Wired.

"Before the show I had asked somebody about what they had heard, and they had said it's like pornography. But it's not like pornography. I've seen episodes of 'Lost' that are more sexually explicit," she said.
If you'd like to take a moment to be morally outraged at an "expert" offering up her opinion based on what other people "had heard," go ahead.
In her role in the segment as a "psychology specialist," Lawrence offered the opinion that adolescent males "not their dads," are the ones playing videogames, and that games like Mass Effect "don't show women as being valued for anything other than their sexuality."
"I really regret saying that," Lawrence told The New York Times, "and now that I've seen the game and seen the sex scenes it's kind of a joke."

You have to admire someone who can correct themselves. It is never easy to do admit when you are wrong and she was clearly very wrong. Fox should really issue an apology for the show. Instead, they have invited Electronic Arts to appear on the The Live Desk With Martha MacCallum. If you don't have the game and you are curious about these scenes there are plenty of Mass Effect clips on YouTube so you can decide for yourself.