You're right with me up to the point we reach the kinds of censorship you happen to support.

What's the penalty for incurring the ire of the social justice elite? Well, only that you'll be branded a sexist or whatever by the entire gaming media, perhaps have your Twitter account banned or your videos taken down from YouTube, or maybe you'll just be arrested on false charges of harassment. It's a storm that a strong individual might weather, but from which any company will steer away automatically. Of course it's censorship.

Games are being censored (they came for the japanese bikini simulators and I said nothing...); social media is being censored: Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, Wikipedia and any number of even less reputable sites are being censored - all in response to social justice histrionics. This crybaby, zero-offence, closed-minded, closed-mouthed malaise is damaging to our culture: damaging to art, to academia, to journalism. And if you acknowledge the need for open expression, you will oppose it.

"There is more than one way to burn a book," wrote Ray Bradbury of interest groups taking offence, "...each ripping a page or a paragraph from this book, then that, until the day came when the books were empty and the minds shut and the libraries closed forever." You don't recognise any of this?

Yes, 'critics just don't have the talent to create' is a tired old fallacy and I regret echoing it, but there I was thinking particularly of the likes of Wu and Quinn: loathsome reptiles and degenerates whose own creative efforts are so miserably inept that to garner sales, patreon donations, and fraudulently positive reviews they resort to pretending themselves the brave minority voices raised against the misogynistic, LGBT-phobic, uni-racial establishment - in an industry that has never actually had any of those problems.

As for Anita Sarkeesian; that liar, mountebank, fascist collaborator, and 21st century Jack Thompson; that professional victim and demagogue who harnesses manufactured outrage for profit; or in the most generous possible light, that half-educated nincompoop who somehow rode a tide of hysterical activists-without-a-cause to a broadcast platform for her worthless, narcissistic rambling:
It isn't the fact of her fuck-witted critique to which the gaming community so righteously objects but the baffling inaccuracies and outright slanders therein, her self-promotion via false claims of harassment, her attacks on artistic expression and internet freedom.

And these are exactly the kind of sub-intellectual trash who will presume, against all standards of rectitude and conscience, to instruct their betters on what kind of jokes they're allowed to tell.

You never cede an inch to these fucking people. That's how you get Mary Whitehouse, or the Comics Code Authority, or McCarthy, or the FCC, the BBFC, the OFLC, the IWF.

@ChaosEngine
so spurr makes a mysoginistic assholery game,(which we agree) and to defend the response he receives.you point out that there was/is immense hatred for sarkesian which could translate to real world violence.

am i correct so far?

so we have sarkesian who has a large population that hate her guts.have posted the most vile threats towards her in the form of death threats and i can only imagine other very imaginative physical threats.basically a band of the most repugnant,online thugs and bullies.(i agree with you this is repulsive and disgusting).

am i still on the right page?

ok ok.lets assume your position is correct and lets also assume that sarkesian feels a real threat from this online harassment.

how does this group of vile and despicable people who hate sarkesian connect with a face-punching game? how does this game (distasteful as it is) translate to real physical harm? are you suggesting that this face-punching game somehow would CAUSE physical harm?

if so,please explain how that could be.

furthermore,you gloss over the jack thompson game (also created by spurr) as somehow being irrelevant.yet thompson does not have a security force to attend to his needs,and thompson was making the very same spurious and unsubstantiated claims that sarkesian was making.thompson was actually taking it a step further by trying to bring legislation proving the video games promoted violence.

same argument.
same reasoning and the same impetus for creating a face-punching game.

so why was it a moral imperative to expose spurr as a mysoginist in regards to sarkesian but not a misandrist in regards to thompson?

to take a stand on one and not the other is morally inconsistent.

but ok...not a big deal in the long run right?spurr didnt pay too much of a price for his poor taste,he was working poor to begin with and of little consequence.

and as i have been lectured over and over the past few days:choices/words have consequences.a position i totally agree with,just wish there was a tad more consistency in its execution.

so ok.spurr got what he deserved for putting this distatsteful,or in your words "mysoginistic assholery" of a game out there in the first place.suck it up buttercup..you got what you deserved.

ok fine.

but again,you either willingly or unwittingly ignore that the only person who is facing charges is greg elliot NOT spurr.

you would think that the man who created the actual game would be the focus of the indictment,but no..that goes to greg elliot.

who,by YOUR own standards,was a victim to a massive online group of hateful bullies who targeted him for disagreeing with the political position of guthrie,a well known toronto feminist.guthrie filed charges against guthrie for harassment.while at the very same time her followers had uncovered elliots private contacts and began a smear campaign against him,accosting and berating his family and friends. costing him job,80k in legal defense and is STILL awaiting a verdict after 3 years.

the mans life is in ruins.

and here is a little caveat that you may find interesting.in canada you do not have to prove actual harassment.you just have to "feel" harassed.

so this guthrie woman,along with her minions are abusing a court system to make a political point and using elliot to set a precedent that should disturb us all.

if you cannot see how easily this can be (and IS being) abused to control opinion and silent dissent.i dont know what to tell ya mate.

how many examples do we need where the accuser did so out of pure malice and/or revenge only to pay zero consequences for that abuse?

i implore you to read the link i provided.karen breaks it down quite succinctly.

so then what is your response to the hundreds of other "face-punch" games?
featuring justin beiber,to hillary clinton,to even jack thompson who was making similar arguments that sarkesian was making.

where was the outrage in those cases?
those people received threats as well.
how come in those cases were viewed as either satirical or just in bad taste,but in sarkesians case it had the possibility of translating to actual violence?

even though there is absolutely zero evidence to substantiate that claim?
couldn't every single one of those face-punch games be viewed as indulgent fantasy?

and if they ARE all viewed as such,how come there was nary a peep in regards to those games,yet the sarkesian one is supposed to be taken as an actual threat of physical violence?

do you not see the hypocrisy here?

this is playing victim to a victimless crime.
it is political theater dressed up as "oppression" using fear as the main driving force.

and it draws attention away from real,actual womens grievances,and THAT my friend,is the real crime.

@Jinx
here is what you are missing,and i think should be a focal point in this situation in regards to burr:

1.while we may view burr creating a game where sarkesian gets punched in the face offensive,and maybe it is to you (i just find it in poor taste).this is a perfectly acceptable position to take.

what is NOT mentioned in this video is that burr created a very similar,distasteful game,with the exact same mechanics,for the exact same REASON a few years earlier,but in that case the face being punched was jack thompson,who was seeking to legislate by using unsubstantiated claims that video games promoted actual violence,but in THAT case it was a man whose face was being punched.

so where was the moral outrage then?nobody gave two shits.

2.guthrie responded by recruiting her fairly large feminist twitter followers to barrage burr contacts and businesses who he did work for.so it wasn't just guthrie but a group of like-minded women who banded together to,dare i say..harass? a video game developer who offended their tender sensibilities.

could we call this gaggle of offended women a cabal?
meeeeh..i think that maybe stretching the meaning just a tad in that regard,but i think it safe to call them a group of offended women.

did they have a right to band together and expose a person they felt offended by?
yep.they do have that right.

do i think it hypocritical and morally inconsistent to use the victim card,when years earlier burr created a similar game for similar reasons?but in that case it was a MAN getting smashed in the face?
yep..i sure do.

but here is where it REALLY goes off the rails.
you would think the target should be burr right?
after all it was him who created the sarkesian/thompson games.so it would stand to reason that burr would be the focus ..right?

well,you would be wrong my friend.
guthrie went after elliot for having the audacity to disagree politically with guthrie.
he never threatened her.
never used violent language.
in fact he AGREED with a large portion of guthrie's position.
he just felt it counter-productive to make a federal issue out of the situation,and advised a more cautious approach.

thats it.thats all he actually did on twitter.

and guthrie's response was,and i paraphrase "elliot seems to be unaware of our power as women.should i sic the internet on him?"

"sic the internet on him"

think about that for a moment,and let the larger implications come into focus.

so this mans life is ruined.
lost his job.
80k in the hole.
and for what?
HE didnt create the offensive game,so in what context can this be viewed as justice?equality?fairness?

no.
this is a lynch mob.
this is mob rules.
this is about privilege playing the victim in a victimless crime,and utilizing the internet to silence and punish dissent.

will elliot be absolved of all charges?
most likely,and that is even after the prosecutor changed the charges in the last minutes before sentencing in order to create a broader charge.

but that does not change the fact that elliot's life as he knew it...is over.

which is why i see a real and present danger with an overly PC community and social justice warriors who wish to impose their own set of morals on all of us.

we can look back in our own history and see the dangers of institutionalized morality police (looking at you christians).

this form of social control by way of internet bullying promotes censorship,stifles debate and literally quashes dissent.the fear of speaking your mind because it may draw negative attention from those who disagree and then translate to real world consequences that are long-lasting.

and as i said in another video,this new brand of feminism has almost nothing in common with the feminism you or i are accustomed and familiar with,at all.

i urge you to watch the video i linked to from girl writes what.she breaks down this case in a most excellent way,and it will become apparent that this new breed of feminists are just that...a new breed.

Yes, she's great at pointing that out.

What's the solution?

Quota's of protagonists sex? Replacing "damsel" with "prince" in distress? Getting rid of chainmail bikinis?

Oh, and how do we propagate that to the entire entertainment industry?

There is nothing wrong with playing a prince and rescuing a princess. There is nothing wrong with the princess being helpless. There is nothing wrong with Femmeshep kicking the shit out of the reapers and saving every being in the known universe, one of the most badass female protagonists around. More female protagonists = great, bring it on, but that's no reason to throw out a trope as old as time (incidentally, a trope enjoyed by a great many women who like to watch sappy romances where the charming fellow rescues the woman from her crappy life...).

Her series predicates on the concept that players are too fucking dumb to understand the difference between real life and the game. That if you play Duke Nukem, you'll walk around slapping girls tits and saying the most inappropriate things you can think of.

It's exactly the same tripe that Jack Thompson was peddling back in the day, games change how you think. And, for most people (ie. the mentally stable...), it was wrong then and it's wrong now. Your upbringing and parental guidance, and the relationship your male role models have with women, are far more likely to determine whether or not a man is likely to be sexist/misogynist than a few games with scantily clad girls needing a big strong man to save them... Society has changed to become more accepting of race, creed, sexual orientation and, of course, women, and it will continue to become so even if the old trope of the princess is in another castle hangs around. It may take generations before inequality dies out, if it ever does. It's not something you can fix by complaining about games.

If this is objectification, then I don't even what to know what other games like GTA4 are in your mind. It isn't real, they are pixels. There are no real people like this simulated thing, just as Vice city isn't a real place and you didn't really kill those school children. Game over man, game over.

Simulations can not, by their very nature, be objectified because they are themselves actual objects, not complex figures of which we are denying their autonomy (because they don't have any!), or denying their subjectivity (as they don't have a subjective mind!). While we may comment on the type of person that plays this game, the game itself is not objectification, there are simply no real figures to objectify.

In short Fantasizing != Objectifying. If so, then people who play GTA4 are fucking murdering lunatics and people who play Black and White are blasphemous. You tread a slippy slope because you find the content objectionable to your tastes, but your inability to separate out fantastic from reality smacks of Jack Thompson.

Well, no matter the videogame precedent this scene is going to catch a lot of heat - and I figure ActiBlizz likes it that way.

*Spoilers ahead*

*No, I'm serious*

We know the game will be wildly popular. We now know its first level involves the player controlling the shooting of a large number of unarmed civilians running in terror. That combination of popularity and opening-intro-controversy will get the Jack Thompsons of the world back on the news talking about the game which, again, is likely more than just a happy PR coincidence for the publisher. Furthermore, we know the Jack Thompsons of the world don't even need a coherent argument or slice of reality to bash the entire spectrum of videogaming. No matter what artistic statement Infinity Ward is trying to make or no matter how 'normal' such a scene would be in an R-rated movie, they know they're going to be slammed over this.

Anyway:

As a game concept and mechanic, ignoring for the moment the likely upcoming controversy? Not sure if I like it. To me personally there was something deeper about Modern Warfare 1's movement restriction in the 1st level where the player watches a military coup through the eyes of a deposed president. The helplessness in controls reflected the helplessness of the situation and afforded the player more observation; by not having to decide where to walk and being literally taken for a ride, the player was instead able to focus their attention on watching the scene that unfolded. The design choice felt purposeful and, to me, increased the emotional affect.

This issue of control, to me, is a key distinction with the prior title versus the opening of Modern Warfare 2. Modern Warfare 2 allows the player to gun down those civilians and in a sense encourages it by requiring the player to keep up with the other terrorists who perform the same actions. I reserve full opinion since I've only seen the shakycam video, but on a conceptual level it just doesn't seem as purposeful. Being placed into the body of a civilian? That would have been interesting from a design standpoint as well; not necessarily better or worse, but I think you could have conveyed the same gameplay message. To me, the official PR response that "the scene establishes the depth of evil and the cold bloodedness of a rogue Russian villain and his unit ... By establishing that evil, it adds to the urgency of the player’s mission to stop them" does not justify the choice from a design standpoint.

Again, clearly this is just ruminating on the designers' decisions without getting deep into the moral or PR aspects of the level. However, I do wonder just how much backlash this is going to get as a result.

TL;DR

Here's a working link: http://www.gametrailers.com/user-movie/modern-warfare-2-leaked-footage/333509

Personally I think this looks like Jack Thompson's wet dream.

From Wikipedia:

As Nasty As They Wanna Be and "Me So Horny" controversy
The group released their album As Nasty As They Wanna Be in 1989, which also became the group's most successful album, largely because of the single "Me So Horny", which was popular in spite of little radio rotation, thanks, in part, to prevalent play on MTV. The song was based on a quote from a Vietnamese prostitute in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket and took a sample from Mass Production's Firecracker. This album was also produced by Mr. Mixx.
The American Family Association did not think the presence of a "Parental Advisory" sticker was enough to adequately warn listeners of what was inside the case. Jack Thompson, a lawyer affiliated with the AFA, met with Florida Governor Bob Martinez and convinced him to look into the album to see if it met the legal classification of obscene. In 1990 action was taken at the local level and Nick Navarro, Broward County sheriff received a ruling from judge Mel Grossman that probable cause for obscenity violations existed.[2]
Navarro warned record store owners that selling the album may be prosecutable. 2 Live Crew then filed a suit against Navarro. That June, Judge Jose Gonzalez ruled against the album, declaring it obscene and illegal to sell. Charles Freeman, a local retailer, was arrested two days later, after selling a copy to an undercover police officer. This was followed by the arrest of three members of 2 Live Crew after they performed some material from the album at a live performance held at the Futura Night Club in Hollywood Florida. They were acquitted soon after. In 1992, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit overturned the obscenity ruling from Jose Gonzales, and the Supreme Court of the United States refused to hear Broward County's appeal. A notable feature of the case was the distinguished literary critic and now Harvard University professor, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. as an expert witness on behalf of the defendants. He argued that the material that the county alleged was profane, actually had important roots in African-American vernacular, games, and literary traditions and should be protected.
As a result of the controversy, As Nasty As They Wanna Be sold over two million copies. It peaked at #29 on The Billboard 200 and #3 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. A few other retailers were later arrested for selling it as well. Later hard rock band Van Halen sued over an uncleared sample of their song "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love" in the 2 Live Crew Song "The Fuck Shop". The publicity then continued when George Lucas, owner of the Star Wars universe, successfully sued Campbell for appropriating the name "Skywalker" for his record label, Luke Skywalker Records. Campbell changed his stage name to Luke (and changed the record label's name to Luke Records) and the group released an extremely political follow up album, Banned in the USA after obtaining permission to use an interpolation of Bruce Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A. 2 Live Crew paraphernalia with the Luke Skywalker or Skywalker logos are usually sought after as collector's items.

"Jack Thompson. Ex-attorney. Video game industry's joke."

Fixed that for you, Jack.

>> ^westy:
I felt the Kid with a gun although giving some nice visuals ,undermined there argument because it was as unscientific and as stupid as Jack Thompson CAT scan images.


They acknowledged that, though, and on top of that stated that it wasn't even arranged by them.. didn't hurt to include it.

Yah pretty good apart from the bit with the kid which was stupid,

the sports point at the end was good.

The only thing needed to have antentoin drawn to is that violence is only bad if summone suffers from it. Dosent matter how graphically violent something is if its not "real" then its not shocking.

The other important point is weather kids can tell the difference and its good that they focused on this and the fact that there is no scientific evidence to suggest that kids cannot tell the difference. I felt the Kid with a gun although giving some nice visuals ,undermined there argument because it was as unscientific and as stupid as Jack Thompson CAT scan images.

He sounds like that Ned guy from South Park with the voice box....

I take it all back, video games do have an effect on the young, he clearly believes he can sing and is doing harm to everyone because of it!

Come back Jack Thompson! All is forgiven

Lol... I love it.

In reply to this comment by MarineGunrock:
HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA From the website:

"Jack Thompson?

Someone informed me that an Attorney, Mr. Jack Thompson may be able to help me. As he has had much success in raising awareness about problem video games.

Does anyone know how I can get in touch with him?

Turns out that Jack Thompson is a terrible lawyer.
People are emailing me so much stuff, I don’t know which people are being sincere and which are not.

For example, I got a message from the supposed mayor of McCamish, KS. Claiming that he will make sure the game is kept out of their store. I have no way to verify the info, though."

A couple comments on that thread:

"Jack Thompson 10 Sep 2008 at 8:16 am 17
I will see your case only if you pay me in stupidity."

"CATSon 10 Sep 2008 at 8:17 am 18
All your base are belong to us"

"Jack Thompsonon 10 Sep 2008 at 8:22 am 24
Dear Admin,
The Florida Bar would have me disbarred for ten years on the basis that I’m bat-shit insane; which I believe makes me the perfect candidate for the position of representing you in court when we sue EA and the inventor of the Theory of Evolution, Mr. Will Wright.
I’ve already accepted your offer and have taken ownership of this website as payment. I look forward to assisting you in all future endeavors.
Love,
Jack Thompson."

HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA From the website:

"Jack Thompson?

Someone informed me that an Attorney, Mr. Jack Thompson may be able to help me. As he has had much success in raising awareness about problem video games.

Does anyone know how I can get in touch with him?

Turns out that Jack Thompson is a terrible lawyer.
People are emailing me so much stuff, I don’t know which people are being sincere and which are not.

For example, I got a message from the supposed mayor of McCamish, KS. Claiming that he will make sure the game is kept out of their store. I have no way to verify the info, though."

A couple comments on that thread:

"Jack Thompson 10 Sep 2008 at 8:16 am 17
I will see your case only if you pay me in stupidity."

"CATSon 10 Sep 2008 at 8:17 am 18
All your base are belong to us"

"Jack Thompsonon 10 Sep 2008 at 8:22 am 24
Dear Admin,
The Florida Bar would have me disbarred for ten years on the basis that I’m bat-shit insane; which I believe makes me the perfect candidate for the position of representing you in court when we sue EA and the inventor of the Theory of Evolution, Mr. Will Wright.
I’ve already accepted your offer and have taken ownership of this website as payment. I look forward to assisting you in all future endeavors.
Love,
Jack Thompson."