Detroit: Become Human has been doing the rounds in the traditional UK press, and not for the right reasons. For those who are unaware, Quantic Dream’s upcoming game Detroit: Become Human puts you in the android shoes of Kara (and others, but Kara is the important one here). Kara witnesses a father verbally and physically abuse his child, and ultimately you have to make the choice to intervene in an attempt to save her life.

Naturally, this kind of scene is controversial, something that David Cage and Quantic Dream have never been shy of, and the gaming media have already analysed and critiqued said scene intelligently. The Guardian said that the implication of a scene like this is that the victim and those around them only have to make the right choices to escape, which of course is wrong. Traditional media, however, love a good scapegoat.

Let’s take a look at the infamous scaremongers The Daily Mail and MailOnline. The first words of the headline say more about what kind of crap they peddle than anything I could type: “Abusers will get off on this stuff”. The article goes on regurgitate comments made by MPs and support group leaders about how this game is repulsive and the producers should be ashamed, likely before marathoning Game of Thrones or The Walking Dead.

The main argument throughout is that it normalises child abuse, but that argument could be levied towards films and TV. Child abuse storylines aren’t exactly new in those realms, so it’s already been somewhat normalised. If anything, an article like this feels like another shameful attempt to invoke the Bogeyman that is video games.

The argument appears to stem from an idea that us, as gamers, would become desensitised to the issue of child abuse as a result of exposure to Detroit: Become Human, but there is scientific evidence to suggest that isn’t the case. Frontiers conducted a study that was published in March suggesting that video games had no long term effect on empathy. Whilst the experiment made use of more violent games like Call of Duty, there’s no reason why those findings couldn’t translate.

They even throw in the trademark “won’t somebody please think of the children sentiment”, which coming from the Daily Mail is laughable. I bet they forget to think of the children when they post countless articles of vapid celebrities stumbling out of nightclubs drunk and showing their tits, or in bikinis showing off that “hot post baby figure”.

It’s be much easier for a child to visit MailOnline and be corrupted by their “content” than it is for them to shell out £50 for a new game. Games like Detroit: Become Human and other controversial video games like Grand Theft Auto are age gated for a reason, and the responsibility should fall on the parents to protect their children from content like that.

But still, just like the empathy study, there’s evidence to suggest that video gaming doesn’t cause aggression in children. The study, conducted in the Netherlands, tackled children that had been exposed to violent video games at the age of nine, with a follow up study stating that children showed no aggressive tendencies as a result of the exposure. Whilst this isn’t scientists saying that kids should be allowed to play mature video games like Detroit, it is proof that video games aren’t as corrupting some outlets would have you believe.

MailOnline even goes so far as to say that Quantic Dream are using child abuse to generate profit, quoting Children’s Commissioner for England Anne Longfield: ‘it seems to end up in a clumsy, inappropriate and graphic game play that is no more than an unpleasant exploitative way of making money off the back of real suffering’.

Of course, the irony appears to be lost on The Daily Mail that they’re sensationalising this issue for profit. Just by leading with the quote from Peter Saunders, founder of the National Association of People Abused in Childhood, that abusers will “get off” on this game, they’ve turned the issue into clickbait. They’re exploiting the issue, for profit. Ethics can get to fuck apparently.

The Sun also covered the outrage of Detroit: Become Human, because we should take ethics lessons from a paper that took until 2015 to decide that topless models on Page 3 is perhaps a tad outdated. I could go into more detail about their coverage, but I refuse to give them any more of my time. Scousers still haven’t forgotten their Hillsborough coverage.

In fairness to the papers, there is an argument to be made that David Cage is not the best person to take on sensitive issues. Given the way his previous games have gone, that’s a reasonable concern. We all try to forget Fahrenheit, after all. The fact that Quantic Dream ran with the child abuse scene as its trailer has also invited this criticism. Whether or not that decision was for profit is another story, though I personally believe it was used purely to demonstrate how varied one scene can be in its outcomes, without considering or even expecting this backlash.

Whether or not this backlash is warranted or not, we should have seen this reaction coming. I spent 3 years at university studying Journalism, with a good portion of the teaching dedicated to how The Daily Mail and MailOnline sensationalises issues to generate views, making their website the biggest newspaper website in the UK. This practice isn’t new, but perhaps, in some naive part of myself, I thought we were past making games the enemy.

Games like GTA and Mortal Kombat are no strangers to being the object of the media’s ire, receiving wall to wall condemnation from news outlets, protest groups and parents. We all still remember Jack Thompson’s personal vendetta against the Grand Theft Auto series, and with every mass shooting in America, it isn’t long before fingers starting getting pointed towards the evil of video games. Guess there’s still money to made in demonising games, after all. In the end, this is just traditional media being traditional media: out of touch and ignorant.

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