{"id":96555,"date":"2019-07-12T18:46:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-12T18:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/346554"},"modified":"2019-07-12T18:46:00","modified_gmt":"2019-07-12T18:46:00","slug":"gears-5-to-drop-depictions-of-smoking-after-urging-from-truth-initiative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2019\/07\/12\/gears-5-to-drop-depictions-of-smoking-after-urging-from-truth-initiative\/","title":{"rendered":"Gears 5 to drop depictions of smoking after urging from Truth Initiative"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gears 5’s <\/em>rootin-tootin chainsaw-gun-wielding COG soldiers won’t be blowing any smoke when the game launches later this year. That’s because Microsoft-owned developer The Coalition has announced the development team is working to remove all depictions of tobacco use and smoking after urging from Turner and anti-smoking advocacy group Truth Initiative. <\/p>\n

The cause-and-effect of this decision is actually rather notable, as The Truth Initiative began this push by approaching Turner, who has exclusive rights to broadcast Gears 5 <\/em>esports events through the ELeague sports division. According to Variety,<\/a> Turner then worked with The Coalition and Microsoft to ensure Gears 5<\/em> would be the first Gears of War <\/em>game where characters didn’t use cigars or cigarettes. <\/p>\n

Senior VP of Turner Sports Sales pointed out to Variety that while it may seem hypocritical to keep Gears’ intense violence while removing smoking, there’s a large amount of research <\/a>indicating a correlation between depictions of tobacco use in media and use among smoking in young people (who are the target audience for Turner’s ELeague). The link between game violence and real-world violence is a far fuzzier correlation.<\/a><\/p>\n

Gears of War <\/em>development veteran and studio head of The Coalition offered a particularly interesting perspective on what Truth Initiative’s ask meant for the Gears of War 5 team. \u201cI\u2019ve seen firsthand the devastating impact of smoking.”<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s always been important for me to not use smoking as a narrative device, which is why we made the conscious choice to avoid highlighting or glorifying smoking in \u2018Gears 5\u2019 and throughout the Gears of War Universe moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gears 5’s rootin-tootin chainsaw-gun-wielding COG soldiers won’t be blowing any smoke when the game launches later this year. That’s because Microsoft-owned developer The Coalition has announced the development team is working to remove all depictions of tobacco use and smoking after urging from Turner and anti-smoking advocacy group Truth Initiative.  The cause-and-effect of this decision is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96556,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}