Well it is not like we did not see this one coming, and if you did not let me bring you up to speed with what happened so far. On the 12th of August a article got published in the Daily Mail and The Sun (Basically two UK tabloids which isn’t worth the paper that it gets printed on.) reporting about Madworld the violent surrealistic black and white game currently in development at Sega. Here is a snippet from the introduction of an article in Daily Mail and The Sun:
“Parents horrified as most violent video game ever to launch on ‘family friendly’
MadWorld lets players impale enemies on road signs, rip out their hearts and execute them with chainsaws and daggers. It is made exclusively for the Nintendo Wii — and looks set to wreck the popular console’s family-friendly image.
Even John Beyer, head of watchdog group Mediawatch-UK, got into the action calling for a ban on Madworld:
This game sounds very unsavory. I hope the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) will view this with concern and decide it should not be granted a classification. Without that it cannot be marketed in Britain. What the rest of world does is up to them. We need to ensure that modern and civilized values take priority rather than killing and maiming people.
You got to love how the media taps into people’s prejudice against media formats like movies and books and in this case console games. The articles continues and even at one point claims that Mad World will be the most violent videogame in history. And goes on to further explaining to the readers the “horror” that is Mad World. Well you might wonder what Nintendo’s response was to these articles. An unnamed Nintendo spokesperson had the following to say to the news papers when they inquired about the game:
Wii appeals to a wide range of audiences from children and teenagers to adult and senior citizens, anyone from 5 – 95, as such there is a wide range of content for all ages and tastes available. Mad World will be suitably age rated through the appropriate legal channels and thus only available to an audience above the age rating it is given. The game is not made by Nintendo but by Sega.
It basically means fuckoff in the most polite manner possible. I am really glad that Nintendo has taken a stance on this and I hope they keep on doing so against these media zealots. But having said that I think Nintendo should be really careful as this might turn into a PR disaster waiting to happen.
But if they play there cards right it could also have the ability to show off a high quality third party title coming from one of the most exciting new studios in the business, which would possibly get more third party publishers to develop high quality games for the Nintendo Wii console. As the current selection of high quality third party titles on the Nintendo Wii is rather limited.
If you are interested in reading the orginal news articles regarding Mad World they can be found here and here.
