LBP delayed due to offensive content

by sweep

This news has been buzzing round the IRC today, and I'm sure ps3 owners everywhere are fairly miffed. However its quite an important issue as it actually reflects the current social and political state of the western relationship with the middle east. An Extract from the Qur'an For those who haven’t figured it out by now, this blog is going to be pretty heavy stuff - if you are going to take th...

This news has been buzzing round the IRC today, and I'm sure ps3 owners everywhere are fairly miffed.

However its quite an important issue as it actually reflects the current social and political state of the western relationship with the middle east.

An Extract from the Qur'anFor those who haven’t figured it out by now, this blog is going to be pretty heavy stuff - if you are going to take the piss or post insensitive comments then I suggest you click somewhere else. Go and look at SuperMoosemans blog. Also, vote for us.

Ok so LBP features a soundtrack that contains several lines taken from the Qur’an, the central religious text of Islam. To some Muslims this has caused great offence, and a representative has requested/demanded that the content be removed. I doubt Sony intended to cause offence to anyone, but now the problems have arisen they have to be dealt with. You can read all about it here.

This has caused outcry on many levels. Most importantly it has roused up despondency towards Muslims - as gamers everywhere blame the Islamic faith for this delay as oppose to Sony - who are the ones at fault. This is just stupid, although entirely predictable.

Several points have been raised in the IRC as a result of Sony's response. I'm going to try not to mention any names, so we can be subjective in our opinions.

A large group of people believe this Islamic interference is unjustified. Someone pointed out that people should be allowed to say what they want without fear of persecution - essentially presenting the notion of "Freedom Of Speech". Fine, you can say whatever the hell you want and you don’t have to care what people think about you. But you DO have to deal with the consequences. If what you are doing is fundamentally insulting to a culture or religion, then that’s just wrong. Sony seems to have realised it's mistake and is obviously trying to remedy it - hence the 1 week delay. There should be a level of respect for people everywhere, and that involves a level of tolerance. This is about what they think is important, not what you think is important.
I would like to point out to everyone that Freedom Of Speech is a western luxury, and that many cultures have strict social restrictions. We do as well, we just dont realise it because they are intergrated into our culture. Using this freedom to insult people just because they are so far away in another country is both cruel and unfair. I appreciate that no individial has been directly targeted, but supporting the "Who gives a fuck what Islam thinks!" ideology just proves how ignorant you really are. (Nobody said this, but it reflects the mentality).

The idea that we have become restricted by Political Correctness was also presented - and that people now live in fear of offending alternative cultures. Political correctness is there exactly for this reason - to avoid insulting people. I will agree that some aspects of political correctness are unnecessary but this is one of the cases where you should be paying attention because you are going to fuck off a lot of people if you screw this up, as Sony has just discovered. Criticising the concept of Political Correctness is understandable in terms of saying "Trial and improvement" over "trial and error", but if Sony had been more politically correct then this entire issue would have been avoided and their game would be released on time. Do you really think they care if a ten second cut of their soundtrack has the Qur'an in it? Of course not, they will have no issues with removing it - its just unfortunate that the problem was only spotted so close to release.

People are going to disagree with me. Well, let me know what you think. I would consequently like to recommend travelling the world, to everyone. It really does broaden the mind. If you believe that Islam is wrong on this issue then I suggest you travel a long way away, immerse yourself in a different culture and get some perspective. 3 years ago I travelled to Thailand, a country where they have infinite respect and loyalty to their royal family - to the extent that even saying insulting things about them is considered almost blasphemous. So you don’t walk into Bangkok and start shouting shit just because you are from somewhere else and you think these rules don’t apply to you. You shut the fuck up, nod, smile, and eat your fucking rice just like everyone else. You dont have to do it when you are at home but at least it would teach you respect for other peoples cultures.

(Thailand is awesome by the way, I would recommend it to anyone)

So that’s my blog for today. Its a bit more serious than I have been posting recently but hopefully there is room to accommodate these issues within the GiantBomb community. Please let me know your opinion - but keep comments and replies clean. This is not a opening for you to start banging on about how "Muslims are all terrorists" or suggesting we nuke every country that doesn’t speak English.

Thanks For Reading
Sweep