The opinions expressed in the following post are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of Untold Entertainment Inc., its employees or its affiliates.

Pursuant to our comparison of the Church of England’s complaint against Sony for depicting a bloody violent shoot-out in a digital Manchester Cathedral in Resistance:Fall of Man, versus some guy’s complaint about two Qur’an verses being sung in Somalian on a background track in Little Big Planet, i have decided that as a concerned Christian, i should take similar action.

Offensive? Take Your Pick

So which game offends my Christian sensibilities? Gosh – there are so many to choose from. That’s to be expected, because few game companies would heed a similar complaint from a Christian, while a Muslim’s complaint causes them to bend over backwards ordering a worldwide recall.

For the sake of this illustration, let’s go with Rock Band 2. Just like the offended Muslim gamer, i posted this message in a public forum related to the game in question:

Subject: very urgent about Rock Band 2

To: Electronic Arts and Harmonix

While playing your latest game, “Rock Band 2″, I have noticed something strange in the lyrics of some of the game’s music tracks. When I listened carefully, I was surprised to hear some distortions of very familiar Bible verses, as well as some questionable content regarding Jesus Christ, the central figure of Christianity.

The words are:

1. In the track “Man in the Box” by Alice in Chains: “Jesus Christ, deny your maker”
2. In the track “Let There be Rock” by AC-DC, the vocalist repeatedly sings the refrain from Genesis 1, “Let there be”, but replaces the word “light” with the words “guitar”, “drums”, “sound” and “rock”.

I asked many of my friends online and offline and they heard the exact same thing that I heard easily when I played that part of the track. Certain Christian hardcore gaming blogs are already discussing this, so we decided to take action by emailing you before this spreads to mainstream attention.

We Christians consider altering the sancitifed words of our holy scriptures deeply offending. From the Word of God:

I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book. And if anyone takes words away from this book of prophecy, God will take away from him his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book. – Revelation 22:18-19

Further, to suggest that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, should “deny [His] maker” (denounce his Father), is particularly sensitive for many of us.

We hope you would remove these tracks from the game immediately via an online patch, and make sure that all future shipments of the game disk do not contain it.
We hope you act immediately to avoid any confusion and unnecessary controversy, and we thank you for making such an amazing game.

Regards,

Ryan
XBox Live id : UntoldEnt

Granted, this is not a perfect experiment. We’re talking about two different world religions, two different games, and two different publishers. We also have Sony, who need some serious publicity to boost their system-selling game’s profile to bail out their flagging PlayStation 3 console. EA/Harmonix are not in such dire straits with Rock Band 2, but who can say? When the first Rock Band was released, i imagine they spent a pretty penny refurbishing or replacing broken peripherals to avoid public outcry about the toys’ shoddy workmanship.

And with the impending release of competitor Activision’s Guitar Hero: World Tour, this controversy may be just what they need to draw all eyes to their title. Sales of Resistance: Fall of Man spiked during the Manchester Cathedral controversy.

My Hypothesis

i’ll put money on the forum mods locking the post or, more likely, deleting it, mere moments after it goes up. If the post stays up, i’ll be widely accused of trolling. No one will be afraid that certain radical Christian factions will torch EA head office. Absent of the vague threat or fear of violence, the Christian concern will fade into the background.

Let’s sit back and watch it unfold, shall we?

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