Fox News recently did a report on Mass Effect, a popular holiday title this most recent Christmas for the Xbox 360. Their report was driven from an article by a widely unknown reporter from TownHall.com by the name of Kevin McCullough, who claimed that Mass Effect was a sexual machine put out onto the market by the decaying ideals of American media. However, the critics of this game who have pushed it as mainstream into the media as they have all suffer from the same condition that basically renders them unable to grasp the full concept of Mass Effect, which is they have not played the game. Their knowledge comes from hear-say, two minute long video clips on sites such as YouTube.com and sampling screenshots of the title on the internet.

This entire mess began with Kevin McCullough’s article’s original appearance  came out making dozens of accusations titling the game in his own sickened sense of a very arbitrary definition. PennyArcade.com, a popular website among gamers, covered this article, which likely had a lot to do with the peak in comments left to McCullough, now spanning over 22,000 posted on TownHall.com.

Fox News picked up the article and ran with it, bringing on a person by the name of Geoff Keighley, of Spike TV, to “get a better understanding”. He was matched against a hired psychologist by Fox News who had very strong opinions about the game’s “full nudity, control of the sex scene, and it’s victimization of women.” All false claims, however, as Fox News is known for Keighly’s appearance was basically a trap, his opinions were cutoff by the host, the psychologist or better yet by “we have to move on” and an end of the segment. What Keighly was able to get in was this “the game can be played as either a male or female,” also “that the sex scene comes after a forming of a relationship between two characters” not unadulterated random sex, as original claims from McCullough pointed out, and that “it spans under two minutes of a game that has over thirty hours of content.” From what it looks like his appearance was staged by Fox so that they could argue that they went out of their way to get a third party opinion from the gaming industry.

In reaction to the recent emergence of this story Microsoft and Electronic Arts (EA) have both released statements not only defending the game and the video game market, as did Microsoft, but EA went as far to ask that Fox News clarify their misreports of the popular title. It is not often that we see two mega-corporations stand up and ask for solace, and in this case this detail needs to be paid close attention to. Neither company was being targeted directly, BioWare produced the game. EA later bought out BioWare and now owns the company; however, they did this after the release of Mass Effect. Nonetheless, both companies saw it as an issue that they needed to take a stand in.

Microsoft defended their systems ground-breaking parental control technologies and EA stated that the reports generated by Fox News were nothing short of lies, that the game did contain a sexual scene; however, they compared it closely to television sitcoms in how the sex scene was presented in a tasteful profile vantage point and did not contain full blown frontal or tasteless nudity. EA also addressed claims that it was being marketed to teenagers which I will address later in this article.

What is important to note here is that unlike Fox’s television show this game can not be simply ran out and bought by any thirteen year old with paper-route money. It’s rating requires a proper form of identification from the purchaser stating that they are seventeen years of age, also being a part of the retail industry I know that the penalties retailers face if this requirement is not met that they face very hefty fines and the employees face termination. This game’s “sexual content” is not hidden such as in games like “Grand Theft Auto” the warning for sexual content is printed right on the back of the box. The ESRB, who is responsible for these ratings, also has all retailers display signs warning potential buyers that they need to “Respect the Ratings” and examine their purchases closely.

This is where we should all be alarmed. We have a video game being targeted for its graphic sexual content, but it is done so for all the wrong reasons. If we take a look at Mass Effect as those of us who have actually played the game most certainly have, we all know that the game, an adult rated title sold per the demands of the Federal Trade Commission, is tasteful and lines up very closely with any “R” rated movie or television sitcom. Those more knowledgeable about the game have came out to compare it to “The OC,” a popular show broadcasted on Fox.

So why is Mass Effect being targeted? A whirlwind of misconceptions and the refusal of the conservative media, Fox and Townhall, to accept video games as something more than a parade of pressing buttons, that they actually have plots, dialog, meaning, and can venture out into the same realms that box office movie titles and sitcoms do on a daily basis. Fox News said “what happened to Pac-man,” my response is “what happened to Little House on the Prairie?”  The undeniable fact of the matter is we live in an age where we seek adult media that portrays life in its truest forms containing all walks of life and delivering more than just a “full frontal,” we also seek for the full story. Adult relationships often contain sex so in result Mass Effect contains sex; however, adult relationships contain a lot more than sex and perhaps upon actually playing the game people such as Fox News, their hired psychologists and others offended by this game will realize that Mass Effect is a game with over twenty nine hours and fifty-eight minutes of things other than “sex.”