October 9th, 2007

Church slams gun-battle in PS3 video game

Obviously you might ask yourselves what has a Church got to do with a video game. Well, apparently the Church of England has demanded from the British Academy of Films and Television Arts (BAFTA) to remove the PS3 video game title “Resistance: Fall of Man” (RFOM) from the list of awards because the game presents a desecrated version of the Manchester Cathedral.

According to the newspaper “The Guardian”, the Dean of Manchester said that the parishioners were disgusted by the fact that there is an extremely violent gun-fight in the virtual version of the cathedral from the above mentioned game, while another church official’s words were “it’s like rubbing salt in the wounds”. BAFTA’s response was that RFOM has been nominated for the PC World Gamers’ Award, which is voted upon only by members of the public and that the category contains the top-selling games on each platform.

Sony and the Church of England are in big conflict ever since the game was released in April. The Church even considered taking action against Sony as they have never given them permission to use the building interior in the game. Sony replied in a letter that they did not intend to cause offense but that there would be no connection between "contemporary issues in 21st century Manchester and the work of science fiction in which a fictitious 1950s Britain is under attack by aliens".