Well, I guess if you really believe in abdicating authorship, disagreeing with the church is as good a place as any to draw the line given that they've thrown in their chips with the biggest author of 'em all.
Sarcasm aside, I'm glad Harvey stood up and fired back on this, because this whole thing seems pretty absurd to me. I never saw anyone complain that soliders shoot people from churches in Saving Private Ryan - but film is a mature medium I guess, and games are for kids (hmm... can't seem to shake that sarcasm).
Okay - seriously - here's the deal. Games can - and do today - move players in important, thought provoking and emotionally engaging ways. I'll testify to it because I have felt it. In some cases, in fact, they do it in ways that are as powerful and meaningful as I have ever experienced in other media. Currently it is rare. It is clumsy. We fail to make it happen more often than we succeed. Every step we take teaches us something, and those new things invariably set us back about 20 steps. Solving the problem of consistantly delivering meaningful and emotionally compelling content in an interactive, user-directed, unauthored context is hard.
We're working on it.
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