We reported on this in today's Globe and Mail (Toronto). Sony deletes terrorist attack. From the story: Electronics giant Sony Corp. yesterday bowed to intense pressure from Quebec politicians and decided to delete video-game scenes featuring separatist terrorists engaging in bloody gunfights in a Toronto shopping mall and subway.
Syphon Filter 4: The Omega Strain included terrorists from the fictitious Quebec Liberation Front attacking Toronto with biological weapons, machine guns and grenades. The video-game player is told to “mow down” the terrorists.”
Here's the paragraphs I wrote for that story that didn't make it into the paper or online version. Please note, that the following really should be viewed in context with the story at the link above:
Almost all ex-FLQ members now live away from the spotlight, working in trades such as librarian, university professor or union executive.
The FLQ began in 1963 with a series of bombings against symbols of the Anglophone establishment in Quebec — army depots, factories, mailboxes — and culminated in the October, 1970, kidnapping of British diplomat James Cross and the murder of provincial labour minister Pierre Laporte.
The real FLQ of the 1960s and 1970s never attacked any targets in Toronto or outside of Quebec.
Reached by telephone afetr Sony made its decision to change the contents of his game, Mr. Garvin seemed to be in ill humour and quickly hung up the phone.
Mr. Garvin heads up one of Sonys in-house software studios in Bend, a medium-sized city of about 60,000 people in the central part of that state.
As with previous Syphon Filter games, the player works through various levels or missions.
The meta-mission for the series to stop a global terrorist consortium from unleashing the fictional Syphon Filter virus, a biological weapon that could kill millions.
Syphon Filter 4 started in a Toronto shopping mall. The player comes across dozens of dead people, victims of the Syphon Filter virus. The player must then avoid some gun-toting scientists while trying to perform an autopsy on one of the bodies. Subsequent missions put the player in Torontos subway system where the player must jump up on the roof of a moving subway and defuse a bomb while fighting bad guys.
The central character is named Gabe Logan, who works for a group known only as The Agency. The Agencys mission is to rid the world of the Syphon Filter virus.
Logans goal and, by extension, the goal of the games players, is to destroy the terrorist organizations who are planning to use the virus, and prevent an attack on Moscow by Chechen rebels.
Hm. Here is the notice of the story sent by David Akin to Delan McCullogh's PoliTechBot, a vaguely rightish net newsletter:
Hey Declan —
This is the first time I've ever heard of a game publisher pull content
because some group found it objectionable. Go figger.
>From today's Globe and Mail:
Sony deletes terrorist attack
Electronics giant Sony Corp. yesterday bowed to intense pressure from Quebec
politicians and decided to delete video-game scenes featuring separatist
terrorists engaging in bloody gunfights in a Toronto shopping mall and
subway.
Syphon Filter 4: The Omega Strain included terrorists from the fictitious
Quebec Liberation Front attacking Toronto with biological weapons, machine
guns and grenades. The video-game player is told to “mow down” the
terrorists.”
[Full story at http://tinyurl.com/s7mm%5D
I've provided some additional information on this story at my blog:
http://davidakin.blogware.com
David Akin
—
I find the tone of the email odd, dismissive, as though it's no big deal that Quebec separatists are being depicted as modern terrorists in this video game. There is obviously no requirement that video games be true-to-life, but when they pander to obvious (and false, and hurtful) stereotypes it should not be surprising that people express outrage.
I fear that some of the sentiment expressed in the email finds its way more covertly into the article, where we have people 'snickering' instead of 'laughing', for example.
I find this bit very disingenious: “Mr. Garvin was confused about the furor his game had caused in Canada, although he was aware that separatist terrorists operated in Quebec in the 1960s and '70s. 'How big is this flap? What's going on?' he asked.” It's clear the he asks what he asks because he doesn't know about the reaction, but the story makes it read as though he knows about it but doesn't understand *why* people would be upset.
The story is worth reporting, obviously, but I think we could have done without the spin.
Hey Downes —
Thanks for the reply.
First l: Je suis ne a Montreal! (I have no idea how to get accents to appear here so please pardon my French)
Second: The guy doing the “snickering” in the story was the former FLQer, i.e. the former member of what was then called a terrorist group!
Bah. The funny part of the story is how the foreign executive just can't comprehend the twisted Quebec politics.
But then that's not surprising as I doubt most Quebecers understand why this would be such a sore point.
Duh, the people complaining about the game are the hypocrits that want to somehow ride the coattails of the racists like Parizeau and the terrorists like Villeneuve (yes kids, FLQ terrorists still exist in Quebec, our lovely government let them back in years later and plays politics treating him with him kid gloves) and yet keep their respectability and claim they're above such things.
I love how the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Society guy equated FLQ terrorists with “blacks or Jews” like terrorists are an ethnic group in Quebec.
Incidentally, any chance you could point out to your employer that spelling it “Quebecker” only makes the Globe and Mail appear that much further out of touch with Quebec. It's like they're intentionally trying to flaunt their ignorance and spell it in the most Americanized fashion they can imagine. It grates every time I see it and I imagine every time any Quebecer sees it.
The Globe and Mail Style Guide is getting a little long in the tooth and there have been some memos around that a collection of all the updates and revisions should be published very shortly. In the meantime, all I can quote you is what's in the guide right now:
http://www.sikhsentinel.com/sikhsentinel0212/sikhe-hitman2outcome.htm
Sikhs got Eidos to change content in Hitman2 that showed a Sikh temple…