Tuesday 12 June 2007

The gates of Sony shall not stand

Traditional games for me

Should we call it righteous indignation or holy anger?

Now, I am no fan of what others might call serious computer games that try to imitate reality, simulating the most gruesome aspects of evil committed by human-beings in the quest for some cheap thrill.

The most I have done with computer games is Chess, I did try Monopoly many years ago as graphics resolutions switched from EGA to VGA - that was real come-alive stuff, if you had ever worked with CGA on those now antique IBM monitors that weighed a tonne.

Nowadays, I play Sudoku on my PDA phone, I am climbing up the levels, I enjoy having my brain ticking away on things like that.

A new game has had a major entertainment company incur the wrath of the church - The Anglican Church - that is, in Manchester . The game called - Resistance: Fall of Man uses the backdrop of the interior of the Manchester Cathedral for a shoot-‘em-up game - Do these people have no restraint, are they so inured to the sensitivity of digging up this kind of seemingly sacrilegious act?

License to kill in church

Sony would have us know that all the necessary permission to use the setting of the church in their game was granted. Presumably, they met up with the Bishop and said, we are planning this seriously violent game that we believe would make it to number 1 in the gaming charts, the church can have a percentage of the takings as we use the altar for a bullet-to-heart sacrifice - I think NOT!

Cynically, one can say that Sony did plan to cause this uproar to drum up essential patronage for their game considering the travails of battery recalls they had last year as well as the late launch of their latest games console.

The title - Fall of Man - is ironically the Genesis of the concepts of Christianity; Sony cannot now pretend it was not their intention to seek a respectable religious establishment to exhibit their computerised art of unrestrained murder, it is not reality but it is engaging enough.

Utterly insensitive

The insensitivity of the matter stems from the fact that there have been a number of violent murders in Manchester recently, the cathedral then served as a meeting place to remember and honour the victims, the cathedral in a sense has both been denuded and desecrated by Philistines - uncircumcised in ethical comportment.

As the church leaders demand an apology and a withdrawal of church depictions from the game, one wonders if as a Japanese company, Sony would have had the temerity to depict a Shinto Shrine in this manner when one of the things you should not do there is to engage in activities that makes great noise - Quick! Fit the silencers.

Like Jesus said then, the Church has been built on a rock and the gates of Sony would not stand against it - In fact, this might just be the allegory for the Fall of Sony - Can they repent? I think not; can they be redeemed? Not with filthy lucre - by their acts have they begun to bring on their own downfall - No, I shall not cry - To Hell! They scream and I am not in a pulpit yet.

NB: Wanted! Developers to craft Judgement day - New game by the Church of England featuring the demise of Sony.

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