Gamers: 1 Fox News: 0

Segment Title Screen: “Se"Xbox? New Video Game Shows Full Digital Nudity and Sex

MacCallum (host)
It's pretty amazing stuff, I was looking at a little bit of it this afternoon. It's a new roleplaying video game that is leaving NOTHING to the imagination. Mass Effect is what it's called, it's made for Microsoft's Xbox system,and it features, in some parts of this, you’ll see full digital nudity. Imagine! And the ability for the players to engage in graphic sex and the person who’s playing the game gets to decide exactly what’s going to happen between the two people, if you know what I mean. The game is rated "M" for Mature,however, critics say that Mass Effect IS being marketed to kids and to teenagers.

Microsoft responded to these claims and said that they were innacurate. They released this statement, that says in part, [reads statement by Microsoft]
"we actively support and abide by all video game rating systems...and provide built-in, industry-leading technology such as parental controls and a Family Timer that empowers parents and their caregivers to monitor their children's experience with video games notably with respect to content, online interactions and amount of time spent."

Cooper Lawrence is a psychology specialist, radio talk show host, and the author of the new book "The Cult of Perfection," and Geoff Keighley is a game expert with Spike TV. Welcome to both of you.

You know, Cooper, it really cracks me up, right here, when I hear these companies say that there are all these controls in there, that you can monitor the time, but basically, Pandora’s Box is open. I mean, kids have access to these things, and unless you're hovering over them every second, they're going to find ways to see this stuff on the Internet. How damaging is it, really?

Lawrence:
Well, it's the whole concept that it's thirteen-year olds who have never seen Playboy because they're not supposed to. It's the idea that, let's talk about who the video game's FOR. It might be for adults, but if you look at the statistics, who's playing video games but adolescent males, not their dads. So that's the first thing.

The damage is this. We know that all the research shows that violence has a desensitizing effect. Well, sexuality does too, because this is when the developing mind is happening, this is when they're first deciding who they're gonna be, who they're going to be. This is when social development is happening. And here’s how they’re seeing women. They’re seeing them as these objects of desire, as these hot bodies. They don’t show women as being valued for anything other than their sexuality. And it’s a man in this game deciding how many women he wants to be with.

Host:
All right, let's get Geoff in on this.

Keighley:
That’s completely incorrect. First of all, you can actually play as a man or a woman in the game. Cooper, have you ever played Mass Effect?

Lawrence (giggling):
No.

Keighley:
Right, well I think the fact that, another thing you mentioned is that it has full graphical nudity, that’s completely incorrect. There’s no full nudity in this game--there’s the side of an alien boob which can be seen. It’s a small sexual situation in this game which is about two minutes out of a thirty-plus hour experience.

Host:
Jeff, let me ask you a question. I have not played this game. I went on the website today, I clicked on a lot of different trailers, I tried to learn as much as I could about it before we were going to do this. It's interesting, when you click on it it asks you your age--it says you must go through a scanning process. So I thought "oh, this is going to take forever." Okay, so I put in my age and then BOOM, you're in, no problem. So that is a pretty easy screen to get past. There's nothing graphic that I saw on the pages that I looked at on the Internet, but it does beg the question, you know, what it does to kids in terms of how they think about violence and sexuality, because you know, they're engaged and blowing people away.

Keighley:
Well, I think that's what's interesting about this. We talked about sexuality and the media. One of the great things about Mass Effect--people who have played it know this--it's sort of a choose your own adventure story. And it doesn't force you down any situation. You can actually play through this game without the sexual situation ever happening--

Lawrence (interrupting):
Right, and a young boy’s going to be choosing not to have sex. That’ll be what they choose. I mean, let’s be realistic here--

Keighley:
Cooper, it’s not a simple choice. You don’t turn on the game and it says, “would you like to have sex or not?” It’s through the evolution of a relationship with characters and the fact that this game has incredible artificial intelligence. You can actually fall in love in this game. It’s just like modeling your life, and I think that's a much more powerful form of media--

Lawrence (interrupting):
Darlin', I gotta go with the research. And the research says there’s a new study out of the University of Maryland right now that says that boys that play video games cannot tell the difference between what they’re seeing in the video game and the real world if they don't have a real experience.

Keighley:
You’re completely misrepresenting the game.

Host:
Thank you. Jeff, it was a completely fascinating game I was amazed by the artistry and what it looks like.

Lawrence:
Let me at him, Martha.

Keighley:
It’s a fantastic game and sex is a small, little part of it.

Host:
Thank you very much, Jeff and Cooper, let's go very quickly to the panel and get your thoughts on this.You know when you buy video games, which I just had my first experience doing recently, because I swore them off until this past Christmas when I said 'Okay, I'm going to break down,' but you have to pick up the box and look at the back for the rating and then, I mean, you have to be involved in what your kids are looking at. What do you think about that?

Man digitally inserted from a 1950's newscast:
Absolutely. Just last week I bought "Princess Enchanted Bride's" for my six-year old daughter, and I'm not very good at these games. I'm like with this Princess Whoever, trying to get to the next stage, and you just have to figure it out. I'm never good at it. But I will say this. Look, who can argue, possibly, that,you know, Luke Skywalker meets Debbie Does Dallas is a good thing. It’s not. It's just not good. And I’m definitely not going to let Mass Effect in my house.

Female:
And then the thing is, once it's in the house. There's a lot of grown men that love video games, let's be honest here, but once it's in the house, we live in a day and age where our children aren't always supervised. It's not the days of the Playboy magazine where a lot of moms were at home for the majority of the day. Many kids let themselves in after school, they have time--what do you think a young boy's gonna do? "I want to play my dad's video game while he's not here." And I think that's dangerous. We really have to watch this.

Female #2:
I’m not sure why it didn’t get an Adults Only rating. That’s the highest rating it can have. So, first of all, this board that rates them needs to have their head examine And this made me feel old watching this. What happened to Atari and pinball and Pac-Man?

Host:
This is incredibly sophisticated. It's like watching a full feature film, basically, it's incredibly sophisticated.

2nd Male Panelist:
But we have to careful here. Let's face it, there's all kinds of bad stuff coming through the Internet through video games. And the reality is, I would argue that the governement cannot and should not censor everything coming across the web and in video games. At the end of the day, it's just like Chet said--it's up to parents to control what their kids are seeing.

Host:
It is, unfortunately, and it makes being a parent a much harder job than it used to be, because there's such a flood, and also, you can access things on the Internet, and download them, so you're thinking "if I don't buy it, it'll be okay,' but there's all kinds of ways to access this, even on your phone to access this stuff. So it's tough to be a parent, but interesting.