However – the main draw of LBP is the user-generated content. i.e. as some random internet poster called it a ‘built-in offence machine’. Two out-comes. First, many of the pissed off will let it show with lots of ‘offensive’ levels. And secondly, the arse-holes who like to find offence in everything will go searching, and might even expect to have some traction to their petty complaints. If this leads to levels getting pulled and thus censored, it will destroy the game (think of it as an eerie parallel to the recent you-tube shenanigans).

Really a very very dumb move. Leaving it alone – or even silently patching it – might’ve generated some noise from a minority of easily-offended muslims (there is even disagreement amongst different groups as to whether it is even offensive), that they could always ‘patch’ later/or change for that market. But blowing it out of proportion like this leaves a bad taste in the mouth of every other customer. Suddenly censorship/offence is front-and-centre before the game is even out, rather than those easily offended just (easily) avoiding levels they don’t like. It takes some of the innocent fun out of it before you’ve even started.

And isn’t it sad that only religions’ offence ‘counts’. The rest of us can be offended to high-shit and all we get is ignored. Of course, we don’t have quite the power to change elections or the will to behead people, either.

That said, I hope it all just blows over and is forgotten about within a couple of weeks. It looks like an awesome game, and Media Molecule (the developers) have put together an outstanding piece of software that could help re-define what a game is. I feel sad for them the most (being a software developer myself), but not too sad – they’ll do rather well out of it i’m sure! 🙂 I’ll still buy it.