You have got to be joking!

Completed a meeting or two today. Yeay! More money making prospects, and the allure of more good news ahead. Hopefully this means 2009 is indeed on track as my best year ever! Financially of course as well as career wise.

Anyway, came back later, slept before a session at Pelita with the usual suspects. Was updating my blog when chatted with a friend who pointed out this board game. Holy crap! I think some people are seriously screwed and zeroed in for hell and damnation for blasphemy!

Yes, people! This is a board game? Gila ke apa???

The game is called Playing Gods: The Board Game of Divine Domination which bills itself as "the world's first satirical board game of religious warfare."

The creator says "much of the world's violence is rooted in religion," so he thought directly mocking various images of God and religious followers would "make more social commentary" and "pierce the pretensions of extremist religious zealotry with humor.

I didn't want to leave out a Muslim figure just because it might be offensive. The game is satire. But I went out of my way to be innocuous. The figure is not named. It could be any Muslim leader."



So apart from an ambiguous 'Muslim leader' there's also Kali, Moses, Jesus and Buddha depicted as playing tokens!

Seriously... some people just have no respect! The game was launched in September and has been getting a lot of coverage for its theme.

CLICK HERE for more on the game. Hope the guy who makes it comes face to face with his maker (though I think dude is an atheist for obvious reasons).

This is almost as bad as that stupid free for download video game which came out in the same month, on the eve of 9/11 called Muslim Massacre (CLICK HERE for the official site or Google it) which proudly proclaimed itself as 'The Game of Modern Religious Genocide'.


This is an excerpt of how the game plays.

"It launches with a chirpy 1980s synth-style tune and a montage of images backgrounded by ostensibly nipped and tucked audio clips of George W. Bush seeming to denigrate Islam and excoriate the religion's prophetic central figure, Mohammed. The images are pictures of apparent terrorists, wearing hoods or holding guns, bookended by blocky abstractions of American flags tacked atop multi-hued skyscrapers.

Then the game begins, you're airlifted into the middle of a desolate landscape, and little black-robed and crudely bearded figures blindly charge you, chipping away at your health. How's it play? Sort of like Atari's old multidirectional arcade shooter Berzerk without the maze stuff. Using the mouse to fire a gun or lob grenades, you point and aim in a flat 360-degree arc, slaughtering as many of these figures as possible in "60 to 90 seconds per round." Finish a round and the game launches a new one, eventually ratcheting up the difficulty level by trotting out Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the Muslim prophet Mohammed, and even Allah (the Arabic word for 'God')."
Source - PC World

The game, launched as a free download on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, invites players to take control of an American "hero" and "wipe out the Muslim race with an arsenal of the world's most destructive weapons".

It was created by a 22-year-old programmer going by the online nickname of Sigvatr (real name Eric Vaughan), who says on his website that he is from Brisbane and works part-time as a service station attendant.

The creator of the game who should meet his Creator for this game!


Sigvatr, who claims the game is "fun and funny", is also responsible for the website spreekillers.org, which ranks real-world killing sprees based on the number of victims.

"People will think I am a terrible person, but I believe that Muslims' regard in society is now just that little bit more accepting because of what I have done."

When the game caused an uproar in September, he quickly took it offline and placed this message on the website.

"I would like to make a public apology for any offense that I might have caused through releasing this game, and to Muslims in particular. My intentions when releasing this project were to mock the foreign policy of the United States and the commonly held belief in the United States that Muslims are a hostile people to be held with suspicion. I would like to make it clear that I have never shared such a belief and my intention was to mock those who actually do believe these things.

It quickly became obvious to me that releasing this game did not achieve its intended effect and instead only caused hurt to hospitable, innocent people. I believe removing this game and website will do much more to attain my desired effect than leaving it on the internet, so I am doing just that.

I would like to ask for the forgiveness of Muslims around the world and to make it clear that I did not release this game with ill intent. So without further ado, I would like to say that I am truly apologetic for what I have done and will take full responsibility for all offense that has been caused. I can only hope that any further misgivings can be laid to rest."

Which you would hope this guy has enough brains to realise he #$%^& up big time. But no... he then put his site online just shortly after with this message.

WARNING: THIS GAME CONTAINS HIGH LEVELS OF SATIRE AND MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE EASILY OFFENDED!

Accompanied also by a posting that goes :

I’m going to come out now and say that almost everything I’ve said anywhere is a huge pile of bullshit, including the apology and retrospect article I wrote. I put the apology up as a ruse to get my host to give me my account back (because I was sucking the poo poo out of their server).

That being said:

I am an enormous troll.

I just trolled more than one billion people.

I consider this a monumental success.

Cam tidak apa sangat the attitude towards the sensitivities of others. Sheesh.. when did bigotry become a commodity for entertainment??? What is the world coming to...

Need to sleep this off.



PS - Last month, Sony, I believe delayed the release of PS3 title, LittleBigPlanet, after it was brought to attention that one of the background music tracks licensed from a record label for use in the game contains two expressions that can be found in the Quran.