Gaming Horror – it's a Game Dev's Life

“There is a rumor going around that Project Natal, because of the way it utilizes the ultra violet spectrum, is not completely functional for gamers with darker skin.”

So goes the news report on VGChartz (link removed, see below). I, for one, think this is just a play to the (highly recommended btw) comedy TV Show Better Off Ted whose episode 4 Racial Sensitivity tagline is: “A new motion-sensor system creates racial problems when it proves unable to sense darker skin.”.

Well, well, well. Who is being made a fool of, here? I mean, come on, Microsoft didn’t test this technology with “dark skinned people”? This problem is just cropping to the surface, right now? I, for one, think it’s hilarious, even though it’s not really fresh material seeing that the same kind of joke aired on TV just recently.

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UPDATE: VGChartz has removed the article in the meantime, it’s no longer on their website. They explain it on the VGChartz Twitter account on reply to user “litheon” as follows:

“@litheon We do fact check. We are reliable. We reported that story as a rumor. Then decided it shouldn’t even be that and removed it.”

They also said they were one of about 20 sites reporting the rumor. Which, personally, makes me wonder what kind of journalism spreads rumors like these which are – given some form of common sense and an intellectual individual – should at least have a sentence added to it questioning the rumor. A rumor which – given a little bit of school science knowledge – can be easily debunked as highly improbable, to say the least. And common sense would tell you that given that the players aren’t naked but wearing fabrics of varying kind and color, the amount of skin exposed to Project Natal’s camera can be as low as 10-20% (my best guess).

Which isn’t to say that some people wouldn’t be playing with 100% skin exposed, though. You can get the idea from this Penny Arcade comic (look closely):