Controversy
In the September 1995 issue of GameFan, an article was printed that contained several derogatory comments about Japanese people (naming them "little Jap bastards", a racially derogatory term that was used to insult Japanese descendants and Japanese-Americans during the years of World War II). The scurrilous text took the place of one of the paragraphs of one of the sports games reviews. The article discussed a Namco flight-simulator, Ace Combat, rather than College Football '96 (which was the topic of the article) and was extremely poorly written. GameFan's official explanation was that a rogue employee had sabotaged the magazine in order to alienate its Japanese audience and fanbase. However, later reports indicated that it was filler text (nonsense text used to take up space in the layout until the final article is finished) that never got removed, and the whole thing was an internal joke that accidentally got printed. Gamefan issued the following press release, apologizing for the error:
| “ | August 18, 1995
GameFan, more so than any other American title covering the gaming industry, has been the greatest proponent of the Japanese market and culture. This is a known fact in the industry and among gamers. We are also the fastest growing gaming magazine on the market, despite the fact that our cover price is 20% higher than that of our competitors. We are thought of by readers of all gaming titles as the magazine with the highest production quality and editorial integrity. For these reasons, we are the constant target of our competitors. Our September issue was the aim of sabotage. The intention was to include language in our issue offensive to the Japanese to damage relationships and set our friends against us. During the production process, text containing various profanities and language offensive to the Japanese culture was woven throughout the text of the issue. We were able to remove the majority of the language. Despite our efforts, one paragraph contained within an editorial made it through the production process. By the time we discovered this, some of the copies were already distributed to retail outlets. Unfortunately, because our production process largely involves digitized information on disk and it travels through the hands of several outside sources, it is subject to this type of manipulation. We were caught with our guard down, never having expected such an outrageous act. We have put safeguards in place to insure that this will never occur again. The action was undoubtedly directed to harm GameFan. We ask that you accept our deepest apologies for any offense that it may have caused. Please consider that the persons responsible for this action intended not only an offense against the Japanese, but against GameFan. This type of motive and behavior should not be condoned. Carefully consider the circumstances and our integrity and help us maintain it by not reacting against GameFan, but together with GameFan. Sincerely, Dave Halverson |
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A similar, longer apology (dated August 24, 1995) was published in DieHard GameFan's October 1995 issue in both English and Japanese, and a further apology appeared in the November 1995 issue.
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Famous quotes containing the word controversy:
“Ours was a highly activist administration, with a lot of controversy involved ... but I’m not sure that it would be inconsistent with my own political nature to do it differently if I had it to do all over again.”
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