Church of England to Sony: We have nothing better to do than go after your video games

June 15, 2007
By Ken Worsley

This week’s award for being out of touch with both the market and Japan goes to the Church of England. According to the Christian Post:

The Church of England on Wednesday urged the people of Japan to join its campaign against a violent Sony Corp. computer game that allegedly uses a British cathedral as a backdrop.

“For a global manufacturer to recreate the interior of any religious building such as a mosque, synagogue, or in this case, a cathedral, with photo realistic quality and then encourage people to have gun battles in the building is beyond belief and in our view highly irresponsible,” the dean of Manchester Cathedral, the Very Rev. Rogers Govender, said at a news conference.

In Tokyo, Sony’s video game unit said Wednesday it had begun talks with the Church of England over its complaint that Manchester cathedral in northwest England had been used in the shooting game for Sony’s new PlayStation 3 console.

First of all, no one buys Play Station 3s. If this was a Wii game, it might be relevant, and people might have heard of it. I suppose this is the Church of England’s way of officially announcing they have nothing better to do, no more pressing issues than attempting to police video game content.

But the best part is the attempt to urge the people of Japan to speak out against a video game (which Japanese people know isn’t real - thus the word ‘game’) which depicts violence against a church. About all I can say is that delusion runs deep in the West. If they do persuade more than five Japanese people to take up their cause, I’ll sign up for their marketing course.

Filed Under Econ Light, Foreigners, Japan