Earlier this week Faux Fox News ran a typically ill-conceived tabloid style piece revolving around the admittedly juvenile sexual innuendo ridden Skillshot naming system in the upcoming Bulletstorm. Fox News intimated that Bulletstorm would link explicit sex acts to graphic violence.
Fox News went on to haul out ‘experts’ whom were convinced that video game violence was some sort of endemic problem in society, and one even went so far as to suggest that “The increase in rapes can be attributed in large part to the playing out of [sexual] scenes in video games.” This last quote can be attributed to Carol Lieberman.
Those interested should read the full Fox News report – Is Bulletstorm the Worst Video Game in the World? – as the sensationalist nature of Lieberman’s comments is juxtaposed with comment from pro-gaming experts and a discussion on the effectiveness of the rating system on games.
Lieberman was subjected to the wrath of the Internet as a result of her contributions to Fox News, with the Amazon page for one of her books suffering a number of disparaging reviews and remarks, and plenty of down-voting. She also claims to have received plenty of abusive e-mails. This is painfully ironic, as gamers would rather like to dispel the assertion that they are affected by games to the extent that they resort to violent and vulgar responses to conflict. A few bad eggs give the rest of us a bad name.
Game Politics contacted Liberman to get her side of the story, and unsurprisingly, she claims to have been quoted of out context by Fox News, but she also defends her claims. Her full statement is reproduced below:
“My FoxNews.com statements were taken out of context and made to sound more inflammatory than they were meant. Nonetheless, I stand behind my view that media violence, and particularly video game violence is harmful. Thousands of studies have shown that the more violent media a person consumes, the more desensitized to violence and the more aggressive they become. When this violence is sexualized it is even more stimulating. And rape is a violent crime. Furthermore, research has shown that, not only do people become more aggressive in a general sense, but they also act out copycat violence in response to behaviors seen in movies, TV shows, and video games.”
“Since the FoxNews.com article didn’t describe my background, it made it seem as though I was simply making a flippant remark. Actually, I have been a researcher in media violence for over twenty years and, as such, have testified before Congress several times, been the head of the National Coalition on TV Violence, and have stopped the ‘Schwarzenegger rocket’ (a NASA rocket that had planned to have an ad for “Last Action Hero” on its exterior). I was also invited to contribute an essay to Larry King’s book Beyond A Reasonable Doubt, about video game violence (Click here to download it).”
“I have received an onslaught of abusive emails, phone calls, and angry comments from gamers to the point of harassment… What has been most disturbing is the Amazon-bombing that gamers have done, regarding a book that has nothing whatsoever to do with video games.”
“I wrote Bad Girls: Why Men Love Them & How Good Girls Can Learn Their Secrets in an effort to help men and women find the love they deserve. The so-called reviews have served to prove that video games do make people more aggressive, indeed.”
Discuss the ‘rapestorm’ controversy on the MyGaming forum.
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