They think of you naked... in Mass Effect.
It seems that every time there's unclothed boobies in a video game, people get up in arms. The scapegoat this time around is Mass Effect, an XBox 360 RPG by BioWare, also known for the Knights of the Old Republic games. As in KotOR, Mass Effect players can foster relationships with non-playable characters, including romantic ones. However, this time around, your character can sleep with their romantic interest, in a very brief, tasteful scene (note that both het and lesbian options are available, but no mansex. Woe.). (ETA: kahteh has pointed to a more revealing [but still brief and tasteful] sex scene here.)

A conservative talk show host hears about this game and the sex scene, and is not amused.

The original article has been bahleeted from Townhall.com, but fortunately, it's reprinted here. In the article, he paints a highly inaccurate picture of the game, and what it can do. One example:

Starting with the disgusting idea that one can "create" their own versions of what people look like, removing warts, moles, and bald spots while enhancing - shall we say - the extended features of the game's characters tends to objectify women, sex, and human relationships. Right? We can all agree on this?

But despite the fact that the game is rated M and that most people who buy and play games are adults, he's afraid of the game's... well, mass effect:

Then there's the dishonesty behind the game' title. "Mass Effect" sounds like a war game with a deadly virus that is spreading unless the GI-Joes are able to defeat the evil and deadly substance and it's covert war plan. By it's design, kids could ask for it, or for their parents' Best Buy Card to go purchase it with nary a raised eye-brow. Generic, non-descriptive, and relatively harmless.

But it IS marketed for the X-Box 360, perhaps the most visually stimulating gaming system ever made. The software for such allows the blending of DVD video, component graphics, and the manipulation of actual pictures so that an alternate reality engulfs the fifteen year old boy playing it without much objection.

And:

Now if I have trouble with my son taking his James Bond 007 games a little too emotionally, imagine the powerful effect that hormones add to the mix when the player's own character is copulating like jack rabbits with super-models, actresses, and anyone else they can spend the patience to create, name, and "put into play."

And then he gets to his point:

Yes there will be many snickers that I decided to bring this issue up in the Presidential cycle of 2008 but how refreshing would it be for a President to prove to the nation that his own manhood was not in question and put his pen and signature to a bill that dealt with such simulated sex excess in a way that was punitive to its creators to such a degree that they would never recover from it?

Gamers, as gamers are wont to do, get pissed. As stated before, the original post and its comments have been lost. However, the talk show host posts a rebuttal (as predicted by Penny Arcade) which is still online. Lots of backpedaling commences; here's an example:

3. "...the video game "persons" hump in every form, format, multiple, gender-oriented possibility they can think of." Again true (not that there are that many combinations of human sexuality to begin with.) But since the makers of Mass Effect decided to throw in a little alien booty both hetero and homo it seems to me that they covered the range. Would these gamers have preferred that the game included bestiality? Later in the column I make a reference to being able to perform sex acts, homo and hetero, with whomever... Ok - you can't have sex with every single character in the game... But between copulating with Aliens, girl on girl, guy on girl, and according to my gamer friends who I checked with - it does not take a great deal of manipulation to add a few extra "kinks" to the mix for those who know a little bit about such things.

Some highlights from the tons and tons of comments:

- I like how you've stooped to name-calling in order to mask you're false statements. How very childish and unproffesional. I'm ashamed to call myself a conservitave when the libs have a silly clown like you to point at.

- I guess we shouldn't play Mass Effect because it has a sex scene in it. We should all just go have sex instead huh?

- Why don't you just do your job as a parent and not let your kid play this game instead of trying to ban it for everyone? I still don't think you understand that this game is rated MATURE, as in 17+. If stores aren't doing their job and selling it to kids, blame the stores, not the game developers or the predominately adult demographic who is purchasing this game. And it seems a little funny that you single out this game, a rather tame title when compared to some of the other stuff on the shelves. You could have taken the way more popular Halo 3, another M-rated game with a MUCH larger youth demographic to task for its desensitized violence. Didn't Jesus say something about loving your neighbor too? Oh, I forgot, alien lesbian sex is 1st deadly sin, isn't it.

There is much, much more along these lines.

And it's not over yet! Just recently, Fox News picked up on this controversy and aired a piece on it, with Spike TV game journalist Geoff Keighley standing in for all of gamerdom. It is a prime piece of *headdesk* material: check out both the video and the transcript here. One of my favorite lines: Who can argue, possibly, that Luke Skywalker meets Debbie Does Dallas is a good thing. It’s not. And I’m definitely not going to let Mass Effect in my house…

ETA #2 - EA (the game's publisher) is insulted by the Fox News piece. The company's VP of Communications has this to say: Do you watch the Fox Network? Do you watch Family Guy? Have you ever seen The OC? Do you think the sexual situations in Mass Effect are any more graphic than scenes routinely aired on those shows? Do you honestly believe that young people have more exposure to Mass Effect than to those prime time shows?

ETA #3 - Some fun links courtesy of iwanttobeasleep: Fox News "expert" Cooper Lawrence gets the Amazon Review Spam Treatment.