I do hope Tom will clear the air, especially after awarding the non-exclusive with a 9, objectively or otherwise. Did the game deserve the 9 per his professional opinion? had he played any of the game yet when the conversation with Doug happened?

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Mediawatch UK is really just one man, John Beyer, and a secretary. Having met them both, they really are very nice people in person. They just believe that noone should be able to watch or interact with anything that might offend them, whether they’ve seen the media in question or not. Unfortunately Mr. Beyer, being a protege of Mary Whitehouse (for non-British readers, she was a self-appointed media watchdog in the seventies whose greatest achievement was the harrassment of town councils into banning The Life of Brian from their cinemas), lives with the same self-importance as Mrs. Whitehouse, feeling that he’s the last protector of decency, and so grasps at any opportunity for an interview.

This article will not actually change anyone’s mind as the audience for the Daily Mail and Mr. Beyer, would already made their minds up either on games in general, or to just follow either of the sources blindly.

For the record, I believe John has a valid case.

As far as women not being an ethnic group, I of course understand that and did not make that mistake. However, granted, I could have structured the sentence better. I identify that she is Chinese and that she worries over the lack of representation of women as well as other ethnic groups…. I should have flipped the phrasing, as I meant “other ethnic groups” to be connected to Chinese, and the female issue to stand separate. I could have said “for other ethnic groups, as well as females”. That could have been written a little cleaner, but I’m surprised you didn’t give me the benefit of the doubt there.

As per your question, Tracy John’s observations are definitely not an “outside case”. The most obvious example would be the recent controversy over Resident Evil 5 has generated, some of which was also chronicled at MTV Multiplayer. It’s not hard to find gaming sites/blogs that talk about how gaming intersects with other issues such as politics and anti-oppression activism and it would definitely be to the benefit of this site for you to do some research into the matter.

Also? When were women (oh sorry — “females”) considered an ethnic group? Are males an ethnic group as well?

You seem to believe that gamers arguing against the lack of diversity in games is a new or singluarly rare event. It’s not. Socially and culturally conscious gamers have been discussing this in forums and communities and blogging about issues of diversity and representation and continue to do so.

Even the major gaming blogs have been discussing diversity issues as well, though not regularly or frequently. Newsweek, MTV Multiplayer, and even Kotaku and Joystiq have posted articles about race in games, gender in games, and other diversity and inclusiveness issues. Or maybe you’ve forgotten all of those posts in your bid to frame this as “political correctness”?

Thanks for this post. It provided me with the motivation to finally write one of my own that I’ve been meaning to get to for some time. It pertains to the issue that I mentioned above, of games with good stories that just get too tedious for me to finish. Feel free to check it out: http://www.benjaminhoyt.com/blog/2008/07/02/its-time-for-movie-mode/.