Friday, August 21, 2009

Muslim Massacre: The Game of Modern Religious Genocide


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Muslim Massacre: The Game of Modern Religious Genocide is a controversial 2008 amateur computer game by Something Awful forum member Eric Vaughn under the screen name "Sigvatr."[1][2] It is a top-down shoot 'em up video game.[3] The aim of the game is to kill all Muslims that appear on the screen.

Gameplay
Muslim Massacre's gameplay has been likened to Robotron: 2084 and Berzerk as the game's directional controls are operated separately to the direction of fire, allowing the player to move in one direction and fire in another, making techniques such as circle strafing possible.[4][5] Players control an American 'hero' armed with a pistol who has been parachuted into the Middle East. The player can also pick up special weapons such as a shotgun, a machinegun, hand grenades and a rocket laucher, supplied by an overflying plane. [6] To progress to the game's bosses: Osama Bin Laden, Mohammad and Allah,[3] the player must kill all the Muslims who appear on-screen during each stage, each of which lasts between 60 and 90 seconds.[4] Some Muslims are dressed as civilians while others are depicted as terrorists wearing a suicide vest.[7]

Controversy
The game garnered a couple of days of media attention around September 11, 2008, on the same date as the anniversary of the September 11 attacks.

On September 11 Mohammed Shafiq, the chief executive of the Ramadhan Foundation, stated that "Encouraging children and young people in a game to kill Muslims is unacceptable, tasteless and deeply offensive"[7].

On 13 September a statement was made by Inayat Bunglawala, spokesperson for the Muslim Council of Britain saying, "The makers of this 'game' and the ISPs [Internet service providers] who are hosting it should be quite ashamed of themselves. Anti-Muslim prejudice is already on the increase and needs to be challenged and not reinforced through tasteless and offensive stunts like this."[8]

Also on 13 September the Islamic Council of Queensland president Suliman Sabdia urged Police Minister Judy Spence to shut down the site; subsequently the Queensland Police launched an investigation, since the game's author (although an American citizen) is based in Brisbane.[9]

On 13 September the game's creator took down the game's download site with a statement of apology on his personal website, claiming his original intention in releasing the game, to "mock the foreign policy of the United States and the commonly held belief in the United States that Muslims are a hostile people to be held with suspicion", had backfired and not been understood by the wider public, and that its release "did not achieve its intended effect and instead only caused hurt to hospitable, innocent people."[10]. However it later emerged that the apology was indeed fake.[11]

On 15 September the LA Times Middle East blog Babylon & Beyond printed a comment from an anonymous contributor to an article on the website of the Arab TV channel Al Arabiya about the game, which stated, "if it were a game showing Muslims killing Israelis, the whole world would have sought revenge."[12] A game called Suicide Bomber does exist, but does not identify any race or religion.[13]

Reception
Game Culture's reviewer found the game "boring and tedious after a few levels" and opined that "Sigvtar got it right when he said that his game was 'pretending to be legitimate commentary.' He was wrong when he said that it was 'fun to play.'"[5]

A PC World blogger said that the game played "[s]ort of like Atari's old multidirectional arcade shooter Berzerk without the maze stuff," and that "viewed at the mec[h]anical level [it] is pretty weak and monotonous."[4]

References

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