Blog Post #9 - The Escapist

This week's article is from The Escapist, an online video game newsite.

This article is about a very controversial topic in video games right now: nudity. The article also addresses the issues of piracy and reselling video games.

While this is an opinion piece, it has a pretty standard inverted pyramid structure. I think this article does a good job of writing for its audience. Specifically, it makes reference to the "Hot Coffee" issue which if you are unfamiliar with video games, has no real meaning for you. Also, the tone of the article is light and uses humour. It also uses a few cliches. Now, I know that as journalists we try to avoid using them, but I think in this piece, the cliches work.

I also thought the author's choice of words was interesting throughout the article. In talking about nudity in this article, specifically female nudity, he begins by using the word "breast" and "nipple" to talk about the nudity in the game. As the article progresses, he uses the phrases "double D dividends", "virtual boobs", "boobies" and "boobs". Finally, the author uses the word "tits" at the end of the article. I'm not entirely sure why the author does this, but I suspect it has to do with the nature of his audience. I think he begins with the anatomical words because they are in large part the least offensive words to use. The author then uses more slang-style words to refer to female body parts, and then finally uses a fairly vulgar one. I believe the author does this because, at the beginning of the article the author has already told gamers the important stuff, which is how they can get their nudity, so it is likely that they've stopped reading the article to go and get their digital boobs and will therefore not be offended by his vulgarity at the end of his article.