Hey “Journalists”, Check Your Facts

I though we in the bloggosphere were bad at copy/pasting news around without checking facts.

With all the recent kerfuffle over “Muslim Massacre“, the highly offensive and politically charged indie game, I’ve been trying to keep up with the swathe of badly reported, shock-based news articles appearing online and I’m spotting a trend. Most of them are wrong and the writers haven’t played the game.

Take the article from the Press Trust of India which states that the game was “launched on the anniversary of 9/11 attacks”. A fact being reported in a lot of the articles coming out. A quick check of the announcement of the game soon debunks this as it’s timestamped at August 18, 2008, 08:39:26 PM.

Proper journalism.

Continuing that topic, there are also a lot of articles condemning the game, clearly without the author even playing it (some being more honest than others about this fact). But why stop at simply condemning the game? Why not take it to the next level and go for the designer himself?

Michael Trapido from ThoughtLeader.co.za writes:

The only message that this brain donor had in mind when he put this together was that Muslims are the baddies and killing them, even by remote control, would be great fun. [...] [H]e’s trying to tell us that he should be neutered and then incarcerated, never to be allowed out again, with a message pinned to his chest ‘œunder no circumstances should this be allowed to breed’.

Once again the great irony of all this is that nobody would likely have played this game if it wasn’t for all the negative press being given to it.

Still, in amongst all of this condemnation of something somebody did in their bedroom then put on some website, the odd balanced article has surfaced. Though I’m still waiting with baited breath for such an article to come from the gaming press.

[A Negative Gamer review of the game is currently being written and wil be released within the next few days not going to be written as it would be unfair to review a game the creator does not wish distributed.]