mis·in·form
–verb
to give false or misleading information

Ms. Cooper,
After watching your segment on Fox News, I could not help but notice the overwhelming amount of incorrect and misleading information that you spoke regarding the video game Mass Effect. I implore you to read this email in its entirety.

"It's a man in this game deciding how many women he wants to be with." Have you ever played the video game? Clearly not. In the character creation process, you can choose to be a female or male player. That right there debunks your false statement of the male figure. As far as the main character deciding how many women (or men, if you've chosen to be female) they want to be with...this is horribly inaccurate. The ONLY way to have the alleged explicit sex scene is to develop a relationship with one of your teammates throughout many hours of gameplay. At the very end of the game (after 30+ hours of gameplay) the scene in question will appear, and only if you have been selecting specific lines of dialogue with the teammate. The scene itself has absolutely no graphic sex whatsoever. Any man, woman, or child may see scenes on a daily basis on basic cable television that have far more graphic sexual content. Where is your segment on that? Last time I checked, you didn't have to be 17 or older to turn on a television.

"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 a video game and the real world if they don't have that experience." Now that statement is a bit confusing. Do you mean to tell me that a young boy that plays an E (Everyone) rated video game that depicts their character flying will think that they are flying in the real world as long as they have not flown themselves? If what you're saying applies to the sex, surely it applies for things such as that too. What's to say that it's a BAD thing for someone to get as much gratification out of video game sex as the real thing? If what you're saying is true, wouldn’t it be preferable for adolescents to get sexual gratification out of a video game than to expose themselves to the possibility of pregnancy and disease? Unfortunately, what you said has very little credibility.

"I'm not sure why it didn't get an Adult Only rating. That's the highest rating it can have. So first of all, this board that rates them needs to have their head examined." What exactly do they need to have their head examined for? Being smarter than you? Having common sense? Functioning in reality? Let's have a look at the ESRB rating system. (http://www.esrb.org/ratings/ratings_guide.jsp)

ADULTS ONLY
Titles rated AO (Adults Only) have content that should only be played by persons 18 years and older. Titles in this category may include prolonged scenes of intense violence and/or graphic sexual content and nudity.

MATURE
Titles rated M (Mature) have content that may be suitable for persons ages 17 and older. Titles in this category may contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and/or strong language.

Ok, quick analyzation. Graphic sexual content. What is it? To me, and many other individuals in their right mind, graphic sexual content includes detailed scenes of explicit sexual acts (ie. Penetration, genitals, etc.). The so-called "graphic sexual content" in Mass Effect amounts to nothing more than roughly 30 seconds of romance where the only viewable things are the side of a breast and the buttox. I have seen far worse things on basic television...women and men getting into bed with each other and moaning under the sheets, steamed up car windows with suggestive noises, prolonged kissing and fondling, and much more. What I find to be even worse are the shows on television that depict people being unfaithful to their spouses and having steamy affairs. In my opinion, things like that are far more damaging to developing minds. If an adolescent grows up seeing unfaithful couples every day, how are they expected to cherish loving relationships and have a strong sense of moral values? 30 seconds of censored romance (no nipples are visible, no pubic hair, no insertion, nothing.) that appear after many hours of gameplay are far less damaging than things that are freely available to every home with basic cable television.

"If you look at the statistics, who's playing video the video games but adolescent males, not their dads" - This statement could not be further from the truth. Have you ever taken the time to actually look at accurate statistics? According to the ESA (http://www.theesa.com/facts/gamer_data.php):

"Ninety-three percent of people who make the actual purchase of computer games and 83% of people who make the actual purchase of video games are 18 years of age or older. The average age of the game buyer is 40 years old." My husband is the manager of a major video game retail store, and it is strict company policy that anyone who purchases a video game with an "M" rating must be asked for identification. If a video game is sold to an underage person, the employee responsible for the transaction would be immediately discharged. "M" rated video games are dealt with just as strictly as pornography and tobacco products. If a person under the age of 17 is to purchase an "M" rated game, it is the parent's decision as the child would NOT be permitted to purchase the game whatsoever. Is it too much to ask that a parent take responsibility for their child's upbringing?

The average age of video and computer game players is 33. Adolescent? Only 28.2% of video and computer game players are under the age of 18. Also, "Thirty-eight percent of game players are women." and "Women age 18 or older represent a significantly greater portion of the game-playing population (30%) than boys age 17 or younger (23%)". I am among the 30% of female gamers that are 18 years of age or older.

"What happened to Atari and pinball and Pacman?" The world evolved "darlin". Wake up and face the FACTS instead of fabricating a web of lies.

BOTTOM LINE: Parents need to take responsibility for their children, and you need to do research on a topic instead of spouting off blatant lies on television.

Sincerely,

Jessica K.