This game is not intended to be offensive towards any religion in particular. Its aim is to push the gamers to reflect on how the religions and sacred representations are often instrumentallly used to fuel or justify conflicts between nations and people.
The game contains a depiction of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be unpon him. If you feel that such a depiction would be offensive, we ask that you play the censored version of the game in which the character's face have been removed. Or better yet, don't play the game at all.
The reaction to this game has me a bit puzzled. No one god is being singled out... everyone is on the same playing field or i should say fighting field. So why the fuss?
This also makes me question the legal rights that religions have to their set of story characters. Disney has exclusive rights to Mickey and Minnie... Marvel has Spiderman and Hulk (though Stan Lee was the creator)... you get the idea. Celebrities are in a way public property but if their image or likeness is used for commercial purposes, permission is required.
This also brings to light how religion has been the video game industries' archenemy in terms of censorship. So i am left with the impression that violence is ok as long as it's in the pages of a holy book, but expressed in the world in the name of their god they are silent and when illustrated in a virtual medium they cry bloody murder.
www.mediawatchwatch.org.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)
[edit on 28-4-2009 by The All Seeing I]
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