Round 1: Roughly one week ago, US radio talk show host and author Cooper Lawrence appears on Fox News' The Live Desk with Martha MacCallum, and starts wailing on Bioware's Mass Effect's allegedly explicit sex scenes and nudity in a roundtable about the game. Footage below (thanks Gametrailers) Only one problem Cooper, you forgot to play the game...Oh, and the people on the panel also forgot to play the game. Oh boy, this is gonna be good...
Round 2: EA understandably gets a bit pissy about this and demands that the incorrect statements made about the game be retracted.
Round 3: Fox reponds saying that they've invited EA onto The Live Desk several times but have not received any response. Lawrence's most recent self-help book, “The Cult of Perfection”, takes a user-review beating on Amazon.com, courtesy of irate gamers.
Round 4: Lawrence is interviewed by the New York Times, and retracts her statements about Mass Effect, this time after having actually watched the game.
“I recognize that I misspoke,” she said. “I really regret saying that, and now that I’ve seen the game and seen the sex scenes it’s kind of a joke.
“Before the show I had asked somebody about what they had heard, and they had said it’s like pornography,” she added. “But it’s not like pornography. I’ve seen episodes of ‘Lost’ that are more sexually explicit.”
A statement from Bioware CEO Ray Muzyka, confirmed that they were not impressed by the saga:“We’re hurt. We believe in video games as an art form, and on behalf of the 120 people who poured their blood and tears into this game over three years, we’re just really hurt that someone would misrepresent the game without even playing it. All we can hope for is that people who actually play our games will see the truth.”
Good. Hopefully that will be the end of it. Did we all learn our lessons here people?
