Vicars wish to sue Sony, have God as key witness

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8:51 AM on 06.09.2007, Jim Sterling

46 comments | 6648 views

Vicars wish to sue Sony, have God as key witness photo

#Legal System #PS3 #Religion #STOOPID!

It's quite amazing just how violated videogames seem to make some people feel, as if any kind of link between them and a game is something dirty, filthy and shameful. When it's not some twerp whining and complaining that Grand Theft Auto IV dares to look a bit like New York, it's Jesus H. Christ himself on the warpath, crying because The PS3's Resistance: Fall of Man has a section in a church. Oh nos! That's right, Resistance features a scene inside Manchester Cathedral, and this is so terrible, the Church of England are going to sue Sony, a company that didn't actually develop the game:

The Church of England is considering legal action against entertainment firm Sony for featuring Manchester Cathedral in a violent computer game.

Sony Playstation's 'Resistance: Fall of Man' uses the interior of the cathedral's nave without permission.

The Church said Sony did not ask for permission to use the cathedral and it has demanded an apology and the removal of the game from shop shelves - otherwise legal action will be considered.

"It is well know that Manchester has a gun crime problem ... We are shocked to see a place of learning, prayer and heritage being presented to the youth market as a location where guns can be fired."

Because of course, the first thing players will think is that they can shoot mutants in high definition at every damn Church they visit. That's exactly where I'm going tomorrow, planning to pop into Sunday service at St. John's with a sub-machine gun and blast the bloody vicar right in his vicar face. Then I'll throw a grenade in the front and say something awesome like "Thou shalt ASPLODE, BITCH!" I just hope the C of E win some form of lawsuit quickly so I don't do that thing I'm definitely going to do thanks to such an insidious videogame.

[Via Evil Avatar. Warning: The above post may have contained more sarcasm than is humanly safe to read]

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45 comments | showing # 1 to 45

PKN

Great, now I am going to get cancer from all the exposure to sarcasm. You are just playing into the hands of the C of E! They will say God is smiting me because I laughed.

BluDesign

@jim

WAIT NO! It's just a video game. I know it may be difficult to communicate this to you through the heady fog of violence and murder simulating, but it's just a video game, you don't have to actually kill anyone as a consequence of seeing or virtually murdering someone! DON'T DO IT FOR REAL!

NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

DAMN YOU TO HELL SONY!
WHAT THE FUCK HAVE YOU DONE, JIM STERLING?!

TheStripe

Wait, the "youth" over 17? Oh, that's right. No one pays attention to game ratings. That and the church is smart enough to know how much more leverage you have when you parade the idea of violent children around.

Manchester has a gun crime problem?! I thought nationwide gun control magically solved all of england's gun crime problems. At least that's what they tell us it would do in the US.

Jim Sterling

Gun control is bullshit and the arguments that it'll solve gun crime is crap. You're totally right about that.

twesterm

Wouldn't it make sense (or at least more sense) to sue Insomniac sense Sony didn't make the game, Insomniac did?

MechaMonkey

Jim Sterling, I'm researching male pregnancy so I can bear your offspring and groom them for world domination. However, it may not work as you may be a different species entirely: I am fairly certain that your circulatory system contains some form of awesome sauce, rather than blood.

Apparently the Church of England hasn't read many passages from the Book of Armaments, or they'd find this perfectly acceptable. Brother Maynard, please enlighten them.

A reading from the Book of Armaments, Chapter 4, Verses 16 to 20:

"Then did he raise on high the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, saying, 'Bless this, O Lord, that with it thou mayst blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.' And the people did rejoice and did feast upon the lambs and toads and tree-sloths and fruit-bats and orangutans and breakfast cereals ... Now did the Lord say, 'First thou pullest the Holy Pin. Then thou must count to three. Three shall be the number of the counting and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither shalt thou count two, excepting that thou then proceedeth to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the number of the counting, be reached, then lobbest thou the Holy Hand Grenade in the direction of thine foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it.'"

TheStripe

@twesterm - People who don't already play videogames generally don't know shit about them. They think that because the FCC came down on ABC for Janet Jackson's nipple slip, and that means the station is responsible for content, that the same rule about content applies, and the manufacturer of the platform is held accountable. For all the moronic tendencies of JT, he at least aims his bullshit cannon in the right direction.

Kaikara

Insominiac are owned (and therefore are a subsiduary) of Sony Computer Entertainment.....I think (all of their games have been exclusively on Playstation so I always thought as much). Correct me if wrong of course. However, this is insanity on the Church of England's behalf. I mean they could just go ahead and sue EVERY TV show, film etc in England that features a violent scene in a church- and blimey there'll be a lot of them. It is simply a representation of the Cathedral and since it does not actually take place inside Manchester Cathedral the CoE can actually do JACK.

This is so stupid it draws comparison with the stupidity with Jack Thompson challenging MS over Halo 3. CoE are gonna get OWNED by Sony ;-)

TheStripe

@Kaikara - Insomniac is independent, even though all of their titles hit the sony consoles, with the possible exception of their IP Spyro the Dragon appearing on ninty handhands via other devs.

http://www.insomniacgames.com Check out the "about" section.

TheStripe

Oh, sony does most of their publishing, too. So Sony may have some "liability" when it comes to content in Resistance for not forcing Insomniac to cut the content in question, but the church would be far more effective targeting the developer instead.

jimjo

big deal, what about Bordertown in rainbow vegas!

Lightthrower

Religion is bullshit.

John Martone

@jim
Shouldn't the warning go at the beginning? I mean, the NC-17 label doesn't come at the end of pornography saying "Oh yeah, this was explicit and sexual, in case you didn't notice."

kingp

@jim

I thought you were English. If you are, are you really advocating an end to gun control in this (comparatively) peaceful isle. I have never in all my life heard another Englishman call for the legalisation of handguns. If the Americans want to kill each other everyday in their benighted society (whilst arguing that guns are a good idea), that's their business. Surely you don't want every fucking idiot with a grudge easy access to lethal force?

if I've got it wrong and you're an American then I apologise, I know you guys see things differently

brainderailment

Dumbass religious people. Sony didn't make that game.

TheStripe

"Every fucking idiot with a gun" actually deters street crime in America. Go check the statistics since cities like Dallas and Miami instituted concealed carry laws. All gun banning does is takes guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens and leaves an unarmed populous. The criminals are going to get them anyway, and if every retard gang-banger/fringe nutbag has a gun, I'd much rather Joe Average be able to fight back, rather than wait for the cops to come by and slip on his toe tag.

aborto thefetus

what sony needs to do is arrange to apoligize to the church and then when they have got all of them in one room, the sony execs need to yell out "we didn't make the fucking game you fucking morons."

Religious people are fucking assholes. They always find someone or something to complain about. The also are contradictory little bastards. What happened to turn the other cheek? Also, doesn't what they are doing count as two of the deadly sins, pride and greed?

kingp

works for us :)

(I know there are gun deaths here in the UK but they are insignificant compared to those in the US and the vast majority occur within the "criminal community")

I wasn't commenting on the situation in the US, you do what you want, I'm just saying that it would be nuts to replace a crime prevention model that is RELATIVELY successful in deterring serious violent crime with one that isn't.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,2097486,00.html

this seems crazy to me, but its your country you do what you want

TheStripe

And still not as many deaths as automobiles, liquor, or heart disease.

TheStripe

Notice that your article actually blames domestic gun violence on the War on Terror. That's rich. No one shot anyone before Bush "lied" us into war, apparently.

Jim Sterling

kingp: Some of the safest countries in the world have no gun control. Just remember, any criminal who wants a gun in England can GET a gun. The only people who care about gun laws about people who, hey, obey the law. If you remove gun control, the law abiding people actually have a chance to defend themselves against the people who're going to get guns anyway.

It's a myth that gun control would lead to people going insane with firearms in the street. Relaxed gun laws don't mean you can just buy them over the counter at Sainsbury's. Now, I don't especially care about gun control, and while I was a little more forceful in my last comment than I should be, all I'll say is that gun laws are not the safeguard they appear to be.

Gun crime in America is more a cultural than a legal issue. As I say, some of the safest countries in the world have relaxed gun laws too.

TheStripe

Some crazy Asshole gun-nut American bated him into it, too.

TheStripe

What we really need is a great idea on how to get guns out of the hands of criminals. . .

*crickets chirp*

Yeah? Me neither.

Jim Sterling

Cut their hands off. :)

TheStripe

Yeah, but then you're going to have a rash of disembodied hand shootings.

kingp

I acknowledge your point Jim, I know is not exactly hard to find weaponry here if you really want it. My concern is that we are not exactly a nation renowned for our sobriety or aversion to drunken violence. I'd think that we would lose more lives to pissed chavs on friday nights (all of whom would now be armed) than we would save by armed citizens being empowered to defend themselves from street crime. But I am basically in agreement on the cultural thing.

thestripe, I'm impressed you bothered to read the article although I'm not sure I agree with you that it implies Bush and the war on terror are responsible for rising gun crime.

mario srikers anyone? 369467 892171

DanGale

@kingp
"mario srikers anyone? 369467 892171"

I would, but my Wii and Mario Strikers is back home in Manchester with all the people going crazy and shooting up the Manchester Cathedral, hence I daren't go anywhere near home.

Jim Sterling

kingp: Not every chav WILL have a gun. Relaxed gun laws don't mean it all becomes a shootist's free-for-all. You still need to apply to get guns, have criminal checks, it's all monitered still. As I said, you wouldn't be able to just pop into Sainsbury's and pick up a six pack of desert eagles. I do understand your point, especially with the low intellect of most British Friday night drinkers, but most of them aren't murderers, and the ones that are capable of that, well they've been kicking grannies to death quite happily without guns, it won't make them any more or less likely to kill.

TheStripe

I was a bit unclear. The mother of one of the victims made that claim directly, (something like, "They see what the US military is doing in the middle east, and think, 'why not here?"'), but it's clear that the author doesn't disagree implicitly.

Please don't bother to insult my intelligence after the fact. Its easy to dismiss someone with an opposing political viewpoint as a raving nutbag, but if someone presents 'evidence' the only way I can discount it is to actually find out what it is. If you're going to link me to an article that refutes my point, I'm going to read it.

Armed citizens don't save other citizens from crime as much as they deter it. In Dallas, random street thug had better think twice before trying to roll granny for her bingo wad, because one of those stern looking rednecks already giving him the eye may just be waiting for the chance to free his brain from his skull.

America certainly has a culture of violence, guns are not responsible for this, nor is getting rid of guns a solution. Personally these gun deaths would have occured in the absence of guns. The irrisponsible father that let his two year old shoot himself probably would have let the kid drown in the toilet, the squabbling brothers could have easily ended with a fatal stabbing. Guns in America get a bad rap because everyone is afraid to blame those really at fault. Guns didn't cause the deaths in your cited article, angry teens, irrisponsible fathers, poor parenting and corrupt cops caused those deaths.

To blame these deaths on guns is like claiming the guillotine caused the French Revolution.

Im OK

Holy shit. *pause* Literally.

Seriously, it looks like Jack Thompson's brand of retardedness is contagious. I think we may have to start quarantining and amputating here, for the sake of the continued survival of our society in general.

Really, what if someone had created a game that made use of the church where, instead, you go in and just sit down at a pew (pew pew!) and pray or sing a hymn or something equally innocuous? By their above reasoning, they would still have to sue, since the church would have still been used without permission. However, I'd seriously doubt that something like that would bring down the wrath of God and/or the long arm of the law on the offending game.

While they're at it, the guys at St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans should sue Jane Jensen and Sierra (or now Vivendi, I guess), since in Gabriel Knight 1, you go into the church and steal a priest's shirt and collar. I'm sure there are plenty of other examples in the history of video gaming where real life churches (or, for that matter, any real life buildings) have been used in nefarious video games. Should all of these guys sue as well?

Hell, for that matter, they sometimes use real churches for similar purposes in media that is not in the vile and evil video game industry, such as movies and television and books and the like. Shouldn't they be suing all those guys as well? Really, what if I wrote a book where I had the main character go into Manchester Cathedral, pull out a grenade launcher, and start going to town? What if I described in loving detail exactly what the architecture looked like as it was being splintered and shattered by explosions and the like? Maybe I could even hire an illustrator to draw exquisitely detailed pictures of the scene in question as well. Would I or could I be sued by the church because I used it without permission in my story?

TheStripe

Eep. The only thing worse than a double-post is a long-winded, self-righteous double-post. ;)

My badz.

kingp

I wasn't insulting your intelligence, I'm lazy I assume everyone else is too! about the article, I'm not sure I measured the tone the same way you did, although you could say that printing that comment [i}is[/i} implicit agreement of the sentiment therein,
I think the author is just representing the views of the people affected by the problem. He makes no (implied or otherwise) comment to causality or solution.

I understand your argument "guns don't kill people, people do", but I respectfully disagree. In my opinion if guns were made (more) legal here, the number of murders would increase and conversely I believe the opposite to be true in your country.

Jim, would you carry a gun if you could? If so I'd like to know where you live that makes you so paranoid so that I may avoid it in future.

Jim Sterling

kingp: If I could carry a gun? Yes, damn right I would. I feel safer here than I did when I lived in Bromley because I don't work nights anymore, but I used to go home from work with my keys pushed between my fingers in case I got mugged like everyone else had. I'm one of the few people in fact, to have lived in Bromley and not gotten mugged. I think being over 6ft and the size of four score oxen helps.

Where I live now, if I were leaving the house at say, this time of night, almost 11pm, I'd feel so much better if I was armed. South East London is not a pleasant place to be.

kingp

LOL i hear that, I live in bush now which isn't so bad (despite what people say) but i'm from Leicester and when i was a kid we used to get in brawls all the time. This was around the time mark morrison (remember him "return of the mac" one of our most famous sons, got signed to death row records, complete tool) was at his height of notoriety. he got done for having a go at some one outside Leicester's Krystals nightclub with a tazer. can't help but think that him and his mates would have had guns if they were legal. but i respect the perspective of someone who lives where you do, you wanna move up west with the rest of us humans.

not a millwall fan are you?

michiyoyoshiku

As a youth pastor that Plays FPSes frequently I'm offended becuase you know this is just going to drive more people away from God.

I love me some FPSing too. I may hate the PS3 but I support Sony here.

deiga-the-semivaliant

This is funny, because the local Baptist Church has a game room complete with 360s and Halo. No qualms there.

Maybe it's because I live in the South?

TheStripe

It's because you live in america. We have a slightly higher tolerance for violence in our media, whether that's just desensitization or a higher respect for the idea of fantasy and fiction, that's debatable. The UK has always been stricter on violence in Media; many films rated PG-13 in the states are restricted for minors across the pond.

For now they're content to simply move away from the violence and corruption in their own society, but sooner or later, they'll want to take back their cities from the crime and the filth, and the only way to do that is with an armed populous.

TheStripe

Nothing but love for the UK, mind you, I just kind of wanted to take a dig at Kingp again.

slayer404

Of course this is ridiculous but since when has the church been known for its rationality?
As for the gun laws, of course they don't work, they really are stupid. But so are many of our laws, it's not like I expect anything better of this country. Getting rid of them however, well as much as it could work it could also make things worse. The real problem is the guns getting into the country illegally. If those could be stopped then gun crime would fall ... of course this means knife crimes would rise, but then we ban those ... and end up with a rash of spoon related killings. Sigh, I wash my hands of this matter and leave it to philosophers and politicians, you know ... those people who don't actually do anything.

Jim Sterling

TheStripe: Gonna have to semi-serve you a little bit of a retort there. British television may hold back on the violence, but compared to America, our media is as liberal as you can get. At least we're allowed to say naughty words, which in my mind, is a far sillier thing to get up in arms about.

Seriously, I love America, but your censored television is a joke. I'd rather take less violence than less freedom of expression.

Im OK

That's something I don't get. The vast majority of people (at least, from my own perspective anyway) swear seemingly every other breath. It has become so prevalent as to not even be much of an issue. I hear the f-bomb dozens of times a day at work or school or the like, and nobody bats an eye or even really thinks about it at all.

However, if one dares to even start saying something like that on television, they are in for a world of shit. Even saying something that rhymes with fuck tends to either A) get laughs far out of proportion to how funny it actually is, or B) raise high holy hell out of people who think it's offensive anyway.

BUCK FUTTER!

Mxyzptlk

People still go to church?

Raymod

this'll boost the sales of Resistance, i'm thinking of getting it myself and i don't have a PS3, i'd just like to own a copy of a banned game. :D

TheStripe

@ Jim - "British television may hold back on the violence, but compared to America, our media is as liberal as you can get. At least we're allowed to say naughty words, which in my mind, is a far sillier thing to get up in arms about. "

You're absolutely correct. How a TV show that airs on ABC at 8PM can show a mangled, burned corpse, but get slapped with multi-million dollar fines for the first nipple or F-word is beyond me. Our censored television is a huge, bloated joke. An unfunny, hypocritical joke. I was merely commenting on the discrepancy between violence in the US media and violence in the UK media, and how apparently the US is okay with presenting children with depictions violence and murder, as long as it's not in a videogame devoid of anthropomorphized animals.

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