The Warhammer Vault has an front page column titled “Kid kills family because he is unable to dye cloak, Warhammer to blame”. That title has been appearing on feeds around the internet, which is where I saw it, and followed the link to find out what sort of tragedy had occurred..
In case you’re wondering it is just a rant piece about not being able to dye certain items. The child killing his family is just a shock tactic designed to get people to bother to read such drivel. The possibility that it might cause bad publicity for Warhammer, the Vault, or our hobby in general does not seem to have been considered.
As the title of the piece has appeared on every site that has an RSS feed from the Vault (For instance), it will have been seen by thousands. Many of these will not have clicked through to find it was simply a rant with a lack of taste. They will have taken away the belief that someone did harm their family as a result of playing the game, and that could affect parents willingness to allow their children to play. Do we really need to put fuel on the anti-gaming fire?
I sure hope the large number of extra clicks that this shock-jock style posting generates is worth giving up the pretence that the big gaming sites are any classier than the rest of the blogosphere.
The columnist, White-Orb, said:
“The only thing I can say to you who feel this was an inappropriate post is that I am sorry you did not get my joke, or that you did not think it was funny, but perhaps personal columns should be taken with a grain of salt.”
If it had been written on some little backwater blog (such as this one) nobody would have noticed or cared. Instead it appeared as primary content on an IGN website. Different rules apply, if only because IGN has actual relationships with advertisers and game companies to consider.
The Vault staff are backing White-Orb to the hilt, which I approve of on one level. Unfortunately, they too are suggesting that critics lack a sense of humour. As so often, they are not sorry about what was said, but that our reaction was incorrect.
It is not the writer I take issue with, in any case. He should be allowed to write whatever nonsense he likes. However, whoever has editorial control over there, and chose to publish him on the massive IGN platform, has extremely questionable judgement. And if I were Mythic, I would be writing a very strong letter to IGN about making untrue statements about Warhammer.
Once again, I suspect I’ve just demonstrated how horribly old-fashioned I am. I just can’t bring myself to consider family-killing to be an appropriate source of humour.
Update: Looks like the column has been renamed, and the IGN forum thread relating to it that contained all the defiant writer and staff responses has been scrubbed. Good thing I took screenshots, really.
[…] family because he is unable to dye cloak, Warhammer to blame” in poor taste, until I read a pretty harsh condemnation of that title on Ark’s […]
I completely agree with you 100% this post’s title was in VERY BAD taste and i cannot believe that someone would use it as a method of gaining attention,
I commented on this immediately after I read it, stating my distaste for the article. What was even more appalling was how fast every other staff member came to his rescue. So, everyone on the IGN Vault staff thinks that killing families is absolutely hilarious… okay, got it. Now I know what site I’m never going to visit again.
Lighten up guys, I knew it was not a real news item before I even read it. The title doesn’t sound like a realistic news item, I don’t see what the big deal is.
The question is not whether people as clever and lightened up as yourself know instinctively that it was a joke simply from reading the headline. Myself, I thought the title was oddly written, but I had to click through and read the article to find out what had happened.
If a single person took away from that headline that Warhammer had caused a death, which ,whatever you say, would be a reasonable conclusion for them to draw from it, then Mythic would have grounds to file a complaint.
My reaction to the whole business was first sadness when I read the headline, then annoyance when I found out it was just a shock tactic to draw me in, and then finally disgust when I read their justifications. If those are the evoked emotions that IGN think will encourage me to use their services, then clearly, whoever their target demographic is, I ain’t in it. More likely they thought I would think it was funny and clever. I’m obviously not quite desensitised enough yet for their purposes.
I have a sense of humour but I didn’t laugh at all. Actually, I found it a rather disgusting stunt.