Bishop Nigel gets a phone call
You may be aware of the big brouhaha that’s blown up around the PlayStation3 game Resistance: Fall of Man. The game contains a sequence set in Manchester Cathedral, during which the player has to shoot, slice and splatter various alien nasties. The Church of England is apparently very upset about this, not least because Manchester (city motto: “Free Guns For Everyone!”) has something of ongoing issue with automatic weapons.
You can read the full story on the BBC website. Sony claims it secured written permission to use images of the interior of the building.
Nevertheless, The Dean of the cathedral, the Very Reverend Rogers Govender (’Rogers’? How many of him are there?) is not happy: ‘We are shocked to see a place of learning, prayer and heritage being presented to the youth market as a location where guns can be fired.’
The Bishop of Manchester, the Right Reverend Nigel McCulloch, is equally cross. The BBC news website quotes him moaning about the game’s ‘photo-realistic quality’. Helpfully, the site offers video and screenshots of the whole thing, so we can appreciate the appalling horror (and the photo-realistic quality) for ourselves.
How devastated Sony must be. I imagine that the responsible brand managers are being sacked right now. ‘How dare you offend a tiny handful of middle-aged Anglicans,’ the chairman of the board is yelling at them, ‘and get our brand name, promotional images, in-game video and a free testimonial from a bishop all over one of the world’s most popular and respected news websites! It’s even been mentioned by Tony Blair in bloody Parliament! And just when PS3 sales are turning out to be slack!’
A disappointing state of affairs for one of our leading games manufacturers. As Sony picks up the pieces of this fiasco, the only thing we’re left to wonder is how the church authorities found out about the scene in the first place - it only lasts a few minutes, and I doubt that many clergymen are avid gamers.
Someone must have tipped them off. A morally-upright, concerned citizen, I’ll be bound.
Pingback by Bill Hilton's blog: copywriting, marketing, language and the web — December 18, 2007 @ 12:10 pm
[…] I being paranoid? Maybe. But as I’ve hinted before, PR people are not above this kind of thing… Posted in: Media, PR Tags: BBC, public […]
Pingback by Bill Hilton's blog: copywriting, marketing, language and the web — February 11, 2008 @ 7:32 pm
[…] regular readers may have noticed, I’m something of a fan of ecclesiastical PR stories. This one’s a corker, and the BBC (unusually) has come up with a great headline. Posted in: […]