Hasta La Creative!

Planning to go on Fox News and bash a video game you’ve never even seen? Then prepare to have your book torpedoed on Amazon.com. Psychologist Cooper Lawrence was a guest on a recent Fox News segment that denounced the “full digital nudity and sex” featured in Mass Effect for the Xbox 360. One problem: There isn’t any full digital nudity and sex in the game. Sure, there’s a bit of mildly salacious alien love (which, as you can see on YouTube, is about as hot as watching two mannequins being moved around a store window). Game publisher Electronic Arts has asked Fox News to “set the record straight,” but the more interesting reaction has been from the gamers themselves. Lawrence, who chuckled dismissively when asked on the program if she’d ever played the game, soon saw her book’s Amazon listing bombarded with more than 500 one-star reviews (which Amazon has since taken down) and several uploaded “customer images” (ditto). I’d be tempted to join in, but I’ll be tied up for a while watching all the other clips I found through my YouTube search for “graphic sex with an alien.” UPDATE: In a New York Times piece, Lawrence apologizes for misrepresenting the game: “I really regret saying that, and now that I’ve seen the game and seen the sex scenes, it’s kind of a joke.”

—Posted by David Griner