Opponents Angered Over 'Fat Princess' Game
PlayStation will release video game with cake-eating princess in need of rescue.
LONDON, Oct. 8, 2008 -- Sony PlayStation is expected to release a new video game worldwide next year called "Fat Princess," in which players are given the task of rescuing a once-skinny princess turned "chunky." The assignment is made that much more difficult as her captors hinder the rescue attempt by feeding her vast amounts of cake.
Sony sums up the game this way in a press release: "The fat princess of the title is your own over-fed royal that you must rescue from your enemy's dungeon -- if you can carry the porky madam to safety that is."
The game has advocacy groups up in arms. Feminists and child-care groups say the game promotes negative images of young girls and women.
Tam Fry of the Child Growth Foundation told ABCNews.com the video game is "particularly concerning" because of the impact it can have on impressionable young women. "Why not chose something else, like an animal?"
A contributor for the feminist blog Shakespeare's Sister sarcastically writes this about the new game on the Web site: "[What] I can't figure out is why anyone would want to rescue a fat princess in the first place, since everyone knows that fat girls are unlovable human garbage at whom any sensible bloke would sooner hurl invective than cast a longing glance."
The blog entry's writer also took an angry shot at Sony, saying, "Congrats on your awesome new game, Sony. I'm positively thrilled to see such unyielding dedication to creating a new generation of fat-hating, heteronormative a**holes."
"Fat Princess" had already made waves among gamers in the U.S. after Sony's E3 Press Conference in California in July, when it received mixed reviews on gaming sites.
Sony describes the game as "a blast of hilarious, furious multiplayer fun."
David Wilson, Sony PlayStation's head of PR in the U.K., downplayed the criticism, telling ABCNews.com that "no one has actually seen the game," referring to those voicing the opposition. He added that anyone who had seen the game would not be able to "genuinely express" the types of sentiments being battered among advocacy groups.
