Burnout Dominator Campaign Draws Fire in UK
By Shawn on Wednesday, June 27th, 2007 at 11:27 AM PST In Electronic Arts, Gamer Life, Games, Games Industry
According to the BBC News a Burnout Dominator advert has been removed by order of the Advertising Standards Authority after the organization received 37 complaints about the poster displayed in the London Tube system.
The advert for Burnout Dominator showed a wrecked sports car, broken glass and a burning tyre, and had the slogan “Inner peace through outer violence”.
Electronic Arts has responded that the ad was obviously for a video game, and that people were purposefully left out of the ad so as not to provoke or endorse dangerous drivng or anti-social behavior in real life.
The issue raised here is whether EA was truly irresponsible as the ASA charges or are people becoming hysterical over the issue of violence in video games as a result of the controversy in the media these days. Granted the slogan was not very well thought out when so easily taken out of context. With a different header, this could have been a US DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) or MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) poster. My question is has society lost the ability to distinguish reality from virtual reality?
