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Atomic MPC > Opinions > David Hollingworth > Sega, Hasbro, ponies and poor reportage

Sega, Hasbro, ponies and poor reportage

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By David Hollingworth
May 16, 2008

A few weeks ago Sega launched a promotional campaign for Condemned 2: Bloodshot that drew chuckles around the Atomic HQ and, apparently, was quite successful in virally promoting the title.

Offset the Evil was a simple series of cartoons, all bright colours, cheery tunes and ponies, singing about the joys and downfalls of killing hobos. It was obviously tongue in cheek, and once the initial viral outbreak passed we thought no more of it.

Until today, when smh.com.au ran a story on what it is now referring to as ‘ponygate’.

SMH reporters, seemingly sniffing a story, have effectively dobbed in Sega and passed the campaign on to Hasbro. Hasbro in turn, feeling that the ponies bear a striking resemblance to its own My Little Pony franchise, has asked that the campaign be terminated. Sega has complied, without any rancour, it appears, and now the SMH is reporting on the so-called scandal and calling for comment from the parties concerned, as well as from a group called Young Media Australia.

Now, aside from the fact that it’s the direct intervention of SMH reporters that lead to Hasbro taking action, let’s look at YMA. In the recent discussions regarding whether or not games should have an R18+ rating made available, YMA was a vocal opponent of the move. So it’s bit of a gimme that when approached about Offset the Evil it would have this to say:

"I can just see this sort of thing being downloaded to a computer by an older brother and then a child stumbling across the violent scenes.”

Which of course is printed in the story. Sheesh.

The SMH article itself opens with the misleading line "Sega has been forced to take down a child-themed website…” before going on to talk about how even though Sega has obediently removed the material, Sega has ‘failed’ to remove the cached site from Google. The inference that Sega is failing to adequately heed Hasbro’s -- and common decency’s -- call is obvious.

Which is, frankly, baffling -- given that the article itself gleefully hosts the videos in question themselves. No double standards here.

The plot thickened when, this morning, a second version of the story went online overnight, omitting the detail that it was SMH that blabbed to Hasbro.

Now, I’m all for journalists acting as agents of change. It’s part of our remit to not only report the news, but at times to actually make and break it.
But it’s another thing entirely to do the dirty work of copyright lawyers and pro-censorship organisations in order to beat up a story. On top of that, the odious value judgements on Sega’s actions are hard to swallow, as is the usual argument regarding drive-by exposure to unsupervised children who may not get the satire. Shouldn’t someone actually be, I don’t know, supervising these hypothetical kids?

Apparently not.

It’s hard enough being a gamer and having to deal with the likes of Jack Thompson and short-sighted politicians who don’t think we’re capable of rational independent thought.

It’s harder still when the mass media goes along with that, and spins Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt into the mix.

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