5. Death Race

Getting retro here, and this one’s especially absurd in a modern context. Released pretty much forever ago in 1976, this game was based on the David Carradine and Sylvester Stallone cult film, Death Race 2000. The object of the game was to drive down “gremlins”, which were probably kinda meant to be people, but since the lo-fi black and white graphics couldn’t manage much more than a few non-specific blots on the screen, it wasn’t much to get thrilled about. At least, that’s what any reasonable, intelligent person would think.

Meanwhile, back over at Panic Station, the game prompted a media frenzy. The American National Safety Council denounced it as “sick and morbid”, 60 Minutes ran one of those lurid, proselytising public service information specials about the dark psychology of video gamers, and arcade cabinets were reportedly dragged out into carparks and burned. 

4. Modern Warfare 2’s No Russian chapter

In this sequence, a bunch of dissident Russian paramilitaries – including a deep cover US CIA agent (that’s you) – go through an airport, killing everyone in it. And there’s no denying it’s all a bit disturbing. The point is, it’s supposed to be – a point conveniently overlooked by vociferous anti-gaming UK parliamentarian, Keith Vaz. With the sort of casual disregard for narrative context that people like him rely on, Vaz pulled the free-pass-to-credibility FOR THE CHILDREN card and declared that, “If a young person gets hold of Modern Warfare 2, for example, they will be asked to participate in a terrorist attack; they will be asked to shoot at civilians in Moscow airport as part of the game.” 

The game’s 18 rating locally apparently notwithstanding, the tabloids jumped all over it, with every moral authority drably predicting the end of the world. Again. 

3. Black zombies in Resident Evil 5 = RACISM 

This one’s particularly dismaying since it came from someone who really should’ve known better – Newsweek and Edge columnist, N’Gai Croal. After seeing the game’s trailer, Croal wrote that, “There was a lot of imagery in [it] that dovetailed with classic racist imagery.” Resident Evil 5 is, of course, set in Africa. So, like, African zombies, right? WRONG. But apparently shotgunning Spanish peasants in Resident Evil 4 was totally okay. 

The internet subsequently exploded with all the usual sorts of contrived, politically correct rhetoric about the poor “dark continent” and international perceptions of its savagery (with its own casual disregard for actual reality), and the apparently relevant shames of colonialism. Funny how sometimes it’s all “just a game”, but sometimes it’s an insidious sociopolitical agenda. 

2. Mass Effect “Sex-Box” scandal

Speaking of agendas, Fox News. Yes, this gilded bastion of journalistic integrity was at the centre of an astonishingly stupid controversy when they ran an astonishingly uninformed story about Mass Effect. Fox News, who’d have thought it?

It all started with ultra-conservative blogger, Kevin McCullough, who wrote an article titled, The ‘Sex-Box’ Race for President. This amazing article included such instantly quotable quotes as, “Mass Effect can be customized to sodomize whatever, whomever, however, the game player wishes,” and “with its ‘over the net’ capabilities virtual orgasmic rape is just the push of a button away.”

Shortly thereafter, Fox ran the story, with presenter Martha MacCallum claiming the game “leaves nothing to the imagination” and features “the ability for players to engage in full graphic sex”.

Of course, anyone who had actually gone to the effort of playing the game – apparently such petty so-called “academic research” isn’t relevant over at the Fox News desk – knows the scene in question was a non-interactive sequence of low-lit, thoroughly bland imagery without so much as a nipple on show. 

1. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and the “Hot Coffee” incident

During development of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, it appears the developers had worked briefly on a sort of sex mini-game. The sequence was abandoned, probably because it was boring and looked ridiculous, although the incomplete code was still in there somewhere when the game shipped. Soon enough, some enterprising basement dweller went through the game’s code, found this stuff, and promptly compiled it as a downloadable mod. 

Predictably, a $20 million class action lawsuit transpired. Yes, people who had downloaded and installed a mod for the sole purpose of replacing a sex minigame into GTA: SA sued Rockstar for failing to disclose the game’s otherwise inaccessible sexual content and for having grievously offended their delicate sensibilities. If that’s not a compelling argument for state-enforced eugenics, I don’t know what is.