In the game "Faith Fighter," caricatures of Jesus, the Prophet Muhammad, Buddha, God and the Hindu god Ganesh fight each other against a backdrop of burning buildings. God attacks with bolts of lighting and pillars of fire while the turbaned Muhammad can summon a burning black meteorite....
....Game designer Molleindustria told the Associated Press the game, which had been around for more than a year and played millions of times, was misunderstood, but had been removed....Molleindustria's Web site describes the company as "an Italian team of artists, designers and programmers that aims at starting a serious discussion about social and political implications of video games." Other games designed by Molleindustria include Operation: Pedopriest, Queer Power and Oiligarchy, satirizing the Catholic Church, sexual orientation and the oil industry.
From Molleindustria's website:
Today after an official statement by the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) we decided to remove the game Faith Fighter from our site.Faith Fighter was meant to be a game against intolerance that used over the top irony and a cartoonish style to express the instrumental use of religions.
Faith Fighter depicted in a mildly politically incorrect way all the major religions as a response to the one-way islamophobic satire of the Danish Mohammad cartoons.
If a established organization didn't understand the irony and the message of the game and is claiming it is inciting intolerance, we simply failed.
The game has been released more than a year ago, it got international news coverage, it has been played by millions of players on the Internet and it has been exhibited in several artistic venues around the world. Reviews have been generally positive and we only received two letters of complaints by two catholic players.
We suspect that people at OIC never played the game and only referred to the article on Metro UK that successfully manufactured this controversy.
This has happened before with games as Super Columbine Massacre RPG, Virtual Jihadi and our Operation: Pedopriest, works that attracted heavy criticism based on false assumptions spread by mass media.
This phenomenon is related to the still marginal role of the medium: commentators feel authorized to judge a game without playing it and just conforming to the common narrative depicting video game as violence generators (a narrative we tried to make fun of promoting Faith Fighter as a cathartic tool for religious hate).
We knew that this was a risky operation and we acknowledge our failure as communicators.
Taking down the game from this website is a symbolic act: copies and documentation of Faith Fighter can be found all over the Internet.
Hopefully this will help people to make their judgments by examining the actual work and not the sensationalist accounts spread by mass media.
Just now climbing back in my chair ~ haven’t laughed so hard in months!
Do the Christians get to use any of the ammo you’d buy over at crusaderammunition.com??
Where's Maimonides?
What DOESN’T offend “Islamic groups”? Ridiculous.
that was fun. I’m sure if I was caught playing it in Afghanistan or Pakistan, I would be dragged out into the street and shot.
Why not Obama? I mean he is bigger than Jesus and Mohammed!
I was joking with a friend last night that if you combined Jesus, Spiderman, Batman and Superman they would still not be as great as Obama.
Also how have little children been brainwashed on Obama? He is like a cereal product, PokeMon and an iPod combined.
Notice, no response to the Catholic objections but took it off the internet in response to one objection from the muzzies.
Who marked up the “Select Your Fighter” screen capture? I’m pretty sure Buddha is bottom center; the character on the top right looks like a Hindu deity. I forget which one is usually shown in that blue color - Vishnu, maybe.
Even a moron or one that cannot read can understand a cartoon..
Even the brain wash that most all muslims go through in their youth is eclipsed..
CARTOONS are pictures of ten thousand words.. or more..
Political religious and cultural PORN...
Muslims HATE THAT..
Gotta have it!
“The game would serve no other purpose than to incite intolerance. . . .”
No place for just plain fun in the Islamic world, I guess. Probably why the Taliban forbids music too. I wonder if they prohibit hot bubble baths as well?