"Sony Blocks Pick-Up Artist Game 'Super Seducer' On PS4."

Forbes reports.

Super Seducer is a dating advice game that barely qualifies as a video game to begin with. The game is the product of 'dating guru' and author, Richard La Ruina, and is more a series of choose-your-response live-action vignettes than an actual video game. Super Seducer has been widely panned both for its sleaziness and, well, just for being a bad game....

I'm not saying we should censor pick-up artist blogs or burn their books or anything like that, but I do think bad ideas should be roundly and routinely mocked. But the PSN doesn't have to be home to games like this, or to porn games or any other games that Sony isn't comfortable having on its console. Ultimately, I guess it's hard for me to sympathize much with someone who makes a living exploiting women and lonely men. But I'm generally suspicious of 'self-help' gurus and motivational speakers to begin with, and dating gurus even more.... 

IN THE COMMENTS: themightypuck said:

In Japan, where Sony hails from, there are tons of creepy dating simulator games.

They pander to the Japanese and they pander to us. So they're not hypocrites. They're merchants.

They're reviving "The Gong Show."

ABC is "We are thrilled to add The Gong Show to ABC’s schedule spearheaded by the incomparable Will Arnett."

I've got to say I loved "The Gong Show" — back in 1976-1977. And I was able to watch it, even though it was a daytime show and we didn't have a Betamax back then. Almost no one did. I saw one in a rich person's apartment once around that time. It was gestured at as some kind of marvel. The thing was the size of a sofa cushion. We didn't even have a color TV. Why should we, when we were home futzing with artwork in the middle of the day and taking time out to watch "The Gong Show"?

Here's a NYT book review from 1976 by Christopher Lehman-Haupt that begins:

It's too bad Nick Lyons's “The Sony Vision” ultimately reads like a piece of company‐sponsored prornotipn [sic], because it isn't, and, what's more, there is so much about his subject that is intrinsically appealing. To begin with, there's the Sony product itself, which I myself happen to love in all its forms, from pocket transistor radio to Trinitron color television, for its design, its workmanship, its intricacy, and the sense it gives me that I am at the controls of my little corner of technology. (Amazing, when you consider how short a time ago the label “Made in Japan” was synonymous with junk.) If Sony's future success depends in part on the company's persuading people that they need its new Betamax video tape recorder, the machine with which you can record television shows and play them back at your leisure,. then I'm optimistic for Sony. I know I badly need a Sony Betamax, though I can't imagine just why....

That was 1976 — the year Apple was founded. We had no idea what design, workmanship, intricacy, and sense of being in control awaited us. Sony was wonderful. A Trinitron with a Betamax was the best you could imagine. And it seemed hip to watch "The Gong Show" on a weekday morning. Now, we've got iPads and iPhones and the controls to look in on everything in the world, any time, and, somehow, "The Gong Show" comes back.



(You've got to picture that in black and white.)

"Ben Affleck has admitted he was 'embarrassed' about a slave-owning ancestor..."

"... and said that’s why he lobbied television chiefs to hide his story in a documentary about his heritage."

The Hollywood star said he regretted trying to influence what went into the programme and was now glad that his family history would be part of the discussion about the impact of slavery in America....

Affleck spoke out after hacked emails from film studio Sony Pictures Entertainment, leaked online, revealed that he had asked producers of the television programme Finding Your Roots to suppress details of the ancestor. The revelations have provoked a censorship scandal in the US: the programme’s producer, Henry Louis Gates, a history professor at Harvard, had to issue a statement insisting he retained “editorial control.”

Affleck's efforts to control PR are what you'd expect from an actor. The focus should be on Gates. He's the one with the serious obligations here.

"Researchers from the cyber intelligence company Norse have said their own investigation into the data on the Sony attack doesn’t point to North Korea at all..."

"... and instead indicates some combination of a disgruntled employee and hackers for piracy groups is at fault."

Norse’s senior vice president of market development said that just the quickness of the FBI’s conclusion that North Korea was responsible was a red flag.

“When the FBI made the announcement so soon after the initial hack was unveiled, everyone in the [cyber] intelligence community kind of raised their eyebrows at it, because it’s really hard to pin this on anyone within days of the attack,” Kurt Stammberger said in an interview as his company briefed FBI investigators Monday afternoon....

“Whenever we see some indicators or leads that North Korea may be involved, when we follow those leads, they turn out to be dead ends,” Stammberger said. “Do I think it’s likely that [U.S. government officials] have a smoking gun? … We think that we would have seen key indicators by now in our investigation that would point to the North Koreans: We don’t see those data points. So if they’ve got them, they should share some of them at least with the community and make a more convincing case.”

Hillary Clinton calls the movie about Kim Jong-un "disgusting and reprehensible."

"The United States government had absolutely nothing to do with this movie. We absolutely reject its content and message. To us — to me personally — this movie is disgusting and reprehensible. It appears to have a deeply cynical purpose — to denigrate a revered world leader and to provoke rage..."



Oh... wait... that was that "Innocence of Muslims" movie about Muhammad that some sleazy guy made. Is he still in jail? This Kim Jong-un movie is a different matter. Free speech! Free speech! How dare the North Koreans object to "the fiery, slow-motion assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, to the tune of Katy Perry's 'Firework'"!

“We will make it less gory," the [director Seth Rogen responded to Sony Pictures' Amy Pascal who had some concerns]. "There are currently four burn marks on his face. We will take out three of them, leaving only one. We reduce the flaming hair by 50%." In October, Rogen sent Pascal a follow-up message with the subject line "Kim Face Fix," noting that "the entire secondary wave of head chunks" had been removed. A special-effects technician later weighed in with an update: "the goop from the head pop is darker, specifically to make it less flesh-like and more surreal."

I'm all for free speech, myself. Even for corporations like Citizens United and Sony. But why is this movie deserving of high-level government support when "Innocence of Muslims" was treated like the garbage that — on an artistic/expressive level — it actually was? Let's have some consistency! Do we love free speech and stand up to foreign bullies or don't we? Pick one!

"I believe that the international motion picture audience is racist — in general pictures with an African American lead don’t play well overseas."

"But Sony sometimes seems to disregard that a picture must work well internationally to both maximize returns and reduce risk, especially pics with decent size budgets."

From the leaked Sony email, the remarks of an unnamed producer. This was in the context of explaining why a particular film didn't do well in foreign countries, but the analysis extends to future planning:

"No, I am not saying ‘The Equalizer’ should not have been made or that African American actors should not have been used (I personally think Denzel is the best actor of his generation).... Casting him is saying we’re ok with a double if the picture works.... He’s reliable at the domestic (box office), safe, but has not had a huge success in years. I believe whenever possible the non event pictures, extra ‘bets’ should have a large inherent upside and be made for the right price. Here there isn’t a large inherent upside."

"Double" isn't some movie-industry term, apparently. It's "double" as opposed to "home run." A baseball analogy. That baseball analogy gives way to a gambling analogy, and we can see that the people channeling the money are trying to make money. It's a money-making business, not a lofty art project or a social-change movement.

But let's take a hard look at the old argument: I'm free of racial bias, but my customers are not. That's the argument restaurants used to defend a whites-only policy half a century ago, before Congress made it illegal. Movies, of course, are a form of expression and not places of public accommodation. There can't be any laws relieving movie-makers of the urge to cater to the racial bias of the audiences. That's true even if we think the producers have nothing sincere to say to us and only use expression as a means to an end to get us to hand over our money.

We can withhold our money. The movie business seems to notice when people avoid a movie. That's what the unnamed producer was doing in that leaked email. And yet it's difficult to imagine people staying away from movies they want to see in an effort to contribute to some inchoate message to the film industry that it should treat black actors the same as white actors.

But to see the leaked emails is to get a clearer picture of the decision-making that underlies the product that we are invited to purchase. We don't buy food when we know the factory is squalid.

"This whole thing is just scary... It’s emails, it’s your private stuff. And the whole town is scared . . . nobody knows what to do."

"You say the wrong thing — you see what happened to [Sterling]... I’m not defending what Sterling said at all, but if that’s not the First Amendment then what the [bleep] is? And what did he say, ‘I don’t want my girlfriend hanging out with black basketball players’? Me neither!"

Said Chris Rock. 

"Hours after an announcement that U.S. authorities determined North Korea was behind the recent cyber-attack on Sony Pictures..."

".... the entertainment company announced it was pulling the release of the film The Interview."

"How come I know you don’t write anything you don’t want broadcast in an email? How come I know that? Who’s advising people?"

Said the actress Lisa Kudrow, commenting on the leaked emails of Sony executives (in which, for example, Leonardo DiCaprio was called "despicable").

"It doesn't matter how many times [an email] says 'This is confidential, meant for just between the sender and the recipient,'" [Kudrow] said. "Why don't we know that there are no rules? Everything is broadcast and published. That's the part I just don't understand."

That tough reality has made Kudrow extremely cautious of what she says.

"I mean, I have almost no opinions anymore," she joked.

Kudrow asks a good question — and she seems to imply that the answer is that these executives were embarrassingly ignorant and out of touch with modern life. But there could be other explanations. I thought of two:

1. Email is an efficient way to conduct business, but only when the speech is sharp and clear and cuts through all the crap. The successful executives are the ones who can communicate like this, and for them, at least until now, it has been worth the risk. Email couched in pleasantries and euphemisms would waste everyone's time and make you look insufficiently hard-assed. The risk of leakage was far outweighed by the potential to succeed, and those who weigh the risk otherwise don't get to these positions of power in the first place. It's fine for an actress to cultivate her niceness image, but she's got a entirely different kind of career. And having "almost no opinions" is a good low-risk strategy for her.

2. The Hollywood executives actually don't mind if these opinions leak out. They won't come forward now and own up to actually thinking Leonardo DiCaprio was "despicable" to withdraw from whatever commitment he made to play the role of Steve Jobs in another Steve Jobs biopic or that Angelina Jolie, who was bothering them somehow over another biopic of Cleopatra, is "a minimally talent spoiled brat." Pressuring/controlling/manipulating celebrities is what these executives need to do, and creating anxieties about whether they will get their projects funded or will get work in the future is part of how they play their game. Maybe the executives want Leo and Angie and the others to know that the executives expect better compliance.

I'm not saying I'm sure either or both of those things are true. I'm just playing with alternate scenarios and trying to open up the discussion.

"Avoid American themes."

From the Sony Powerpoint collection:

"What exactly is wrong with making a movie accurate?"

"And since when does an authentic film translate as an 'art' film?"

What really happened to Soderbergh's "Moneyball"?

ADDED: "We've noticed that studios like it when true stories are told through blatant fabrication!"