Wednesday, November 21, 2007

In Defense of Jade Raymond

I saw something earlier this week that really made me angry.

I try to wait to write about something if I'm angry. I'll take a couple of days, cool down, and try to approach it from a more reasoned angle.

After four days, though, I'm still angry, so here goes.

There was a webcomic created last week about Jade Raymond. If the name doesn't ring any bells, she's the producer of Assassin's Creed, which was just released last week.

There's been an ongoing "controversy" for months over whether Ubisoft has used Raymond's looks (she's pretty) to promote the game. There have also been allegations that Raymond was unqualified to produce the game and her looks are what got her hired.

So this comic (which I'm not linking to) was created last week, and what it shows is a cartoon version of Jade Raymond performing sexual favors for gaming nerds in exchange for them buying the game.

In a word, the comic is vile.

That's a word I never used to describe anything when I was twenty-five, but maybe things seem more outrageous when you get older.

I must have missed all the interviews that Jade Raymond did wearing a tube top and Daisy Duke shorts. I guess I didn't see her suggestively crossing and uncrossing her legs while she was discussing the game. All I've seen is her be completely professional and entirely knowledgeable when she discusses Assassin's Creed, which, by the way, kicks ass.

[Turn off the HUD elements in the Options menu. Just a recommendation.]

So the game is excellent, and it's selling extremely well for new IP, and in the sports world that would be called scoreboard for Jade Raymond and anyone who worked on the game. Good grief, why is that people assume that attractive women are incompetent?

Ubisoft made the situation ten times worse by serving Something Awful (where the link was posted) with a cease-and-desist order. That gave this stupid comic far more attention than it ever deserved.

Yes, I know that satire is protected as free speech. Hey, I love the First Amendment. Right next to pictures of Einstein and The Three Stooges in my study, I have the First Amendment. It's my hero.

I think many people forget this, though: the First Amendment is not a Dick License.

Here's one final reason why that comic was pathetic: it's not funny.

You know what have been funny? After performing the sexual favors, a Ubisoft executive could have unzipped a Jade Raymond costume, then stepped out of it, saying "Man, I hope this game ships soon."

THAT would have been funny.

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