Since this weekend a lot of outlets have flat out lied about Microsoft marketing being racist when it came to Fable 3. According to John McCormack himself, Lionhead Studios marketing was responsible for shooting down the idea of having a black female as the cover of Fable 3. Microsoft wasn’t involved whatsoever.
According to McCormack, “it wasn’t Microsoft’s marketing. Marketing was like its own department.” How could he have been clearer? Why are all of these websites blaming Microsoft when the blame lies on Lionhead’s marketing department? This goes back to the fact that there is clear favoritism and bias in the media when it comes to certain companies and that trumps all ethical standards or even basic concepts like fact-checking. Despite the fact that numerous gamers like The Red Dragon have pointed out how these websites are spreading libelous rumors, this fallacious story is spreading like wildfire.
Did anyone bother to read the Fable article? Guy says it wasn’t Microsoft marketing that objected to a black woman pic.twitter.com/ZEIbVm74lx
— THE RED DRAGON (@TWTHEREDDRAGON) May 15, 2016
The fact that websites like GameSpot, Video Game and News, and YouTubers have been misquoting John McCormack is a complete disgrace. Not only do they tarnish Microsoft’s image when they did nothing wrong, they also demonstrate a severe lack of ethics and reading comprehension. It’s shocking that this is the state of gaming journalism currently. I don’t think this will ever change to be honest. Until gamers start questioning what is being reported to them, gaming journalism will remain like this. All of us need to use our own minds rather than believing what these poor sources tell us.
Asher is a games journalist, former News Writer (Gaming) at Windows Central. They contributed 1110 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: wrote over 1,100 ICXM pieces on Xbox news, hardware reviews, and platform commentary before joining Future plc’s Windows Central in 2017.