In which I scrape the bottom of the Rockstar Games-related controversy barrel

Red Dead Redemption has drawn a bit of criticism in Ireland for the character of “Irish,” a drunk, which the Irish news site Herald has criticized for invoking “the stereotype of the drunken Paddy.” Sadly, negative portrayals of the Irish have a long and unfortunate history in the world of gaming, dating back to the release of Hibernian Blaster for the ColecoVision in 1983 and arguably reaching their apex in 2007 with the release of Activision's Call of Duty: Black and Tan and the ill-received God of War clone To Hell or Connacht: The Adventures of Oliver Cromwell.

Red Dead Redemption developer Rockstar Games is no stranger to controversy over its portrayals of various ethnic groups, of course, having previously come under fire for it's portrayal of Haitians in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and for alleged white supremacist themes in the controversial 2008 PlayStation Portable release Grand Theft Auto: Aryan Brotherhood Prison Assassination Stories. Rockstar has not made any public comment specifically referencing the issue, but is reportedly unfazed by the criticism from Ireland and has announced that it's forthcoming entry into the city-building/strategy genre, SimGreedy Land-Owning English Bastard, will be coming out as in early 2011.

(I'm somewhat troubled to realize that this is the second time in less than a year that both Oliver Cromwell and the Aryan Brotherhood have somehow come up in the same post. What the hell am I doing with my life?)

Study published on human rights in video games, Solid Snake scheduled to testify at interminable length before UN General Assembly

Here's a rather odd story: two Swiss organizations, children's right's group Pro Juventute and an international criminal justice organization called TRIAL have released a study on portrayal of war crimes and human rights violations in various games, including Army of Two, Battlefield: Bad Company, Metal Gear Solid 4, and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. You can read the report here (PDF).

The people doing the study are clearly hampered by their limited understanding of both gaming in general and the particular games being examined, but I actually think this is an intriguing idea. It could be quite interesting to see more games where things like rules of engagement, international law, the effects of collateral damage, and so on play a prominent role in how the game is played. Among other things, it might provide the opportunity for all sorts of interesting player dilemmas; more interesting than the usual "saint or sociopath" decisions that games promising "moral choices" have usually offered, at any rate.

That said, I just hope that the mainstream media doesn't take an interest in how video games handle issues like international law and war crimes, given how it usually deals with alleged links between games and violence. Attributing every violent crime committed by a minor to the possibility that he may at some point have been within the same county as a copy of Grand Theft Auto is bad enough. I don't want to open the paper and see the headline:

Rogue Russian general launches nuclear strike on United States
30 million dead in bloodiest day in human history; General Ivan Vasiliev reputed to be fanatical Russian nationalist, Civilization IV player

That would probably be bad for the industry.