Touchy, that's what I'd call a story about the Church of England "pleading with Bafta" [British Academy of Film and Television Arts] to yank Insomniac Games' critically lauded Playstation 3 shooter Resistance: Fall of Man from the 2007 Bafta video game award shortlist. The game, a sci-fi first-person shooter about an alien invasion in Britain, has been nominated for "The PC World* Gamer's Award" -- the only one decided by the public -- alongside others like Gears of War (Xbox 360), Wii Play (Wii), and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories (PSP).
The Church of England has threatened to sue Sony over its portrayal of the Manchester Cathedral in a video game level involving a shootout between human resistance fighters and an invading alien force.
You might remember the story this summer about the Church of England coming with the long knives for Sony after the fact that a small portion of the game was set in a virtual version of the Manchester Cathedral came to light reached critical mass (Resistance's U.S. ship date was actually November 14, 2006).
According to The Guardian, the Dean of Manchester Cathedral, "called the nomination a disgrace."
"I plead with Bafta to send a signal to the industry and to Sony and withdraw Resistance: Fall of Man from the nominations," said the Dean in a statement released last week. Earlier this year, Guardian columnist Helen Carter penned an op-ed which among other things, suggested the use of churches in violent video games, realistic or no, was "virtual desecration."
Never mind that Sony apologized publicly to the Church in July, taking out a full page in the Manchester Evening News to express its regret.
"It is clear to us that the connection between the congregation and the cathedral is a deeply personal and spiritual one," said David Reeves, president of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. "As a result, it is also clear that we have offended some of the congregation by using the cathedral in our science fiction game. It was never our intention to offend anyone in the making of this game, and we would like to apologise unreservedly for causing that offence, and to all parts of the community whom we might also have offended."
Never mind as well that in Resistance, you're fending off aliens to, you know, save the world and stuff. Oh yeah, shame on all the World War II action games that have ever portrayed gun battles between opposing sides in or around holy ground for the sake of historical realism. On the opening map in Atomic's 1995 real-time strategy game Close Combat, a sophisticated WWII battlefield psychology simulator I used to practically study for love of the mechanics and relative fidelity, playing as the Allies involves assaulting a French church with guns and mortar shells. Rooftops cave, pews splinter, walls crumble, tiny bodies aggregate and blood pools in low-res puddles. Did anyone care at the time? Should they have?
Top down view of Close Combat's opening map. This isn't the church (it was the only screenshot I could find online) though it's from the same map. Just imagine a slightly larger building with little pews inside. The rest is the same, i.e. the pulverized walls and little bodies (those splotchy gray forms) surrounded by red.
What of this New York Times story published yesterday about religious ministries in the U.S. using Halo 3 as a recruiting tool, literally encouraging teenagers to "kill" each other in church?
Teenagers playing Halo at the Colorado Community Church in Denver (picture by Kevin Moloney for The New York Times).
Respecting someone else's sacred space as "[a] place of [prayer], worship, peace, learning and heritage" is perfectly reasonable. But sacrificing history or contemporaneous realism in a virtual setting on an illimitable altar of respect?
The Bafta 2007 video game award winners will be announced on October 23.
* No relation to us. Our UK edition is in fact called PC Advisor.
