Fist of Jesus

[qornea]

Fair enough. I find the game offensive in itself but I don't approve of the shameless click-baiting by MyGaming. It's a nothing-story about a nothing-game. Would we have missed anything if the story was never published? Except for these 25 pages of posts?

Same can be said about, say, penis gaming peripherals, or gamer porn facts.

As for nothing-games getting "coverage", we have some riveting rock simulations and...Sharknado: The Video Game?

As you can see, this kind of thing is nothing new.

I think the headlines for these articles were also pretty clear on the content they carried. Articles like the one covering Hatred were far more click-baity, and deserved a run-down of what to expect in the article itself.

Aside from the load of other stuff we carry, sometimes we cover stories that *we* think are funny, or will get people talking, as well.

I like to think that adults can read a headline and make a call for themselves on whether the content suits them and their world view or not.

I understand your position. But I don't agree with it (and I'm Christian, too, if that means anything in context). And that's fine. People can disagree - it's a wonderful, free world (for now).

[Jan]

I find the game offensive in itself but I don't approve of the shameless click-baiting by MyGaming. It's a nothing-story about a nothing-game. Would we have missed anything if the story was never published?

You are quite within your rights to be offended by something. Just like an atheist who believes all religion deserves vicious mockery might be within his rights to be offended if we decided not to cover the Fist of Jesus story because of the controversy it might create.

While it is tempting for us to make a call on what is and what is not worthy of coverage, it isn't really for us to decide. Not anymore, anyway, thanks to the Internet. If we make the call, it immediately introduces bias and since there is plenty of analytics coming from our audiences nowadays there is no reason to make the call based on our personal preferences/beliefs/experiences any longer.

For now, we use a measure related to the success of the site (clicks/hits/reads and unique visitors/browsers) to help inform what we should and should not cover. The web has democratised the decision of what is and is not newsworthy, for better or worse.

Obviously the data isn't always concrete and we do make border-line calls, which we then learn from.

"Click-baiting" is one of those weasel terms I think needs a proper definition before arguing about it. In my mind having a deliberately misleading headline is click-baiting. In this case, the headline was not misleading in the slightest.

Obviously the headline is colourful to give an article the best chance of success, but its other purpose (in this case) is also to make it clear what the reader should expect when they click.

Except for these 25 pages of posts?

For some of the intelligent discussion that has come from this thread, courting controversy was absolutely worth it.

[Saint_Dee]

I still feel that the popular construct for something to be offensive requires at least a certain amount of people to feel the same way towards said item, this requirement will prevent everything from being offensive. Maybe that's just my opinion though.

I guess we'll have to leave it at disagreeing with each other. One thought I'll leave you with on the point that a certain amount of people denotes what should be offensive, you should consider that the demographics aren't even in terms of groups represented on the site and potentially any viewership. To that end here's a hypothetical scenario (I'll use a self-censoring Myg as the base of the scenario). 4 games are on the way; game A, much like Fist of Jesus, has content that could prove offensive to Christians (for lack of better ideas I'll say it's a similar archetype as Fist of Jesus), game B on the other hand could potentially a gay man, while game C could be offensive to a woman, and game D to a black man or woman.

In all four cases, the games could be offensive to some of the people in each group, while some might declare it isn't offensive. Based on just numbers (mind you, this is my layman's assumption which could be wrong, but it is the easiest assumption), there will be more numbers from one group and less numbers from other groups. Say 25 people speak out against game A and its news coverage, 6 decry the coverage of B, 7 for C, and 4 for D (add arbitrary numbers for those in each group who won't speak up). Now, what I can say is that there will be potential reach for each potential article on these games. Does the nanny state Myg publish either of these stories? Do they publish the ones likely to offend the least people? Do they decide this purely on numbers? What message does it send to the other groups?

Personally there is no good answer for the above scenario; way too many factors to consider, which is why a non-nanny state Myg would probably cover all the games. I can't imagine the crap storm that would come with using numbers as an indicator of whether subject matter is sufficiently offensive or not in order to not cover it...

[Wyzak]

For some of the intelligent discussion that has come from this thread, courting controversy was absolutely worth it.

Yeah, it has been an interesting discussion for the most part.

I guess we'll have to leave it at disagreeing with each other. One thought I'll leave you with on the point that a certain amount of people denotes what should be offensive, you should consider that the demographics aren't even in terms of groups represented on the site and potentially any viewership. To that end here's a hypothetical scenario (I'll use a self-censoring Myg as the base of the scenario). 4 games are on the way; game A, much like Fist of Jesus, has content that could prove offensive to Christians (for lack of better ideas I'll say it's a similar archetype as Fist of Jesus), game B on the other hand could potentially a gay man, while game C could be offensive to a woman, and game D to a black man or woman.

In all four cases, the games could be offensive to some of the people in each group, while some might declare it isn't offensive. Based on just numbers (mind you, this is my layman's assumption which could be wrong, but it is the easiest assumption), there will be more numbers from one group and less numbers from other groups. Say 25 people speak out against game A and its news coverage, 6 decry the coverage of B, 7 for C, and 4 for D (add arbitrary numbers for those in each group who won't speak up). Now, what I can say is that there will be potential reach for each potential article on these games. Does the nanny state Myg publish either of these stories? Do they publish the ones likely to offend the least people? Do they decide this purely on numbers? What message does it send to the other groups?

Personally there is no good answer for the above scenario; way too many factors to consider, which is why a non-nanny state Myg would probably cover all the games. I can't imagine the crap storm that would come with using numbers as an indicator of whether subject matter is sufficiently offensive or not in order to not cover it...

All of your subjects though are items that can easily be deemed offensive - ie they have reached the critical mass on MyGaming or in SA or world-wide. It is important to cater to your audience as well. Certain audiences might be more tolerant of certain things than other audiences.

If I were to say that Lara Croft's eyes offend me in the new tomb raider because they are far too piercing and appear to look directly into my dark and corrupted soul. I doubt that that particular "offense" will be able to gather enough support to be deemed offense-worthy by anybody. This is why I disagree with the statements that everything can then be deemed offensive and we should all just sit in the dark listening to nature in order to not offend one another.

I think I've said everything that I wanted to say :P

[Saint_Dee]

Fair enough. This has been an interesting discussion to say the least.