calls for ban of MoH in UK

[captcalhoun]

the Con-Dem Coalition defence secratary Liam Fox is calling for the new Medal of Honour game to be banned after it was reported (in the Daily Fail natch) that multiplayer sees players playing as the Taliban. One map apparently is set in Helmand where most UK troops are based and players are told to 'win at all costs' and 'score points for killing allied troops'.

EA's defence is "Everyone goes through this. When you're seven, someone plays the cops, someone plays the robbers. In MoH, someone has to play as the Taliban."

my defence would be: why was no one moaning when you had to play as the Germans/Japanese/'Axis' in the likes of RTCW, CoD, MoH and so in the WW2 games?

of course, MW2 sidestepped it by calling their Afghan map opposition 'OpFor'...

thoughts?

 

[Cicero]

In Britain, I can understand the government's concerns. Alone among Western nations, the United Kingdom has a serious problem with violent domestic (in fact, native) radicalism that is sympathetic to the Taliban. Given the 7/7 attacks and subsequent attempts, it might be advisable to ban a game there that featured players killing NATO (even British) soldiers.

my defence would be: why was no one moaning when you had to play as the Germans/Japanese/'Axis' in the likes of RTCW, CoD, MoH and so in the WW2 games?

From my point of view, those wars are long over, while Afghanistan is ongoing. (Playing Modern Warfare was rough for me for this reason; it strongly bothered me to see modern Marines die, even though soldiers died left and right in earlier games.)

I don't want to play as the people who are actively killing and seeking to kill Americans, Britons, Germans, etc. While I think I would feel similarly if I didn't have a family member in the military in Afghanistan right now, I don't know that that's true. I certainly have had difficulty processing the thought that there are suddenly people who want them dead, and are actively trying to kill them.

I think the video game producer in this case (EA) is woefully out of step with sense. Like too many people removed from conflict, they don't seem to comprehend it at all. This is life, not fantasy, not abstraction.

 

[Starkers]

the Con-Dem Coalition defence secratary Liam Fox is calling for the new Medal of Honour game to be banned after it was reported (in the Daily Fail natch) that multiplayer sees players playing as the Taliban. One map apparently is set in Helmand where most UK troops are based and players are told to 'win at all costs' and 'score points for killing allied troops'.

EA's defence is "Everyone goes through this. When you're seven, someone plays the cops, someone plays the robbers. In MoH, someone has to play as the Taliban."

my defence would be: why was no one moaning when you had to play as the Germans/Japanese/'Axis' in the likes of RTCW, CoD, MoH and so in the WW2 games?

er because none of those games came out during World War 2 whilst German/Japanese/Axis troops were still activily killing British soldiers?

It's poor taste, but it is a standard thing for FPS to do. EA should have given it more thought but its hardly the big be all and end all that its made out to be.

 

[captcalhoun]

well, maybe they can do a localised version where tehy call them 'the enemy' or 'terrorist forces' or something...

 

[Lonemagpie]

In Britain, I can understand the government's concerns. Alone among Western nations, the United Kingdom has a serious problem with violent domestic (in fact, native) radicalism that is sympathetic to the Taliban. Given the 7/7 attacks and subsequent attempts, it might be advisable to ban a game there that featured players killing NATO (even British) soldiers.

Or it might be more advisable to release the game and let the wannabe radicals burn off their annoyance that way instead of stewing until they do something daft in real life.

It's August - what we in Britain call the Silly Season, when the news is filled with particularly dumb and irrelevant stories. This'll be forgotten by the time the game comes out.

 

[Quinton O'Connor]

So I was born in the Silly Season. That explains a lot, actually.

Anyway, it's just how things work. In a hundred years, simulations regarding 9/11 might be a popular excursion, sick as that sounds to so many now. I'd be willing to bet a lot of the World War I and II veterans seeing all these war games featuring shallow, kill-'em-all takes on those tragedies are either sighing profusely in life or rolling over in their graves in death.

 

[Rii]

I like how it's cool to slaughter some folks but not others. To think that there are those who actually deny that these games are propaganda.

"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets."

QFT, Voltaire; QFT.

 

[Haggis and tatties]

A perfect mix, The daily mail, a politician and a computer game.......I'm sure there is some sort of surreal sitcom in all that.

 

[Quinton O'Connor]

I like how it's cool to slaughter some folks but not others. To think that there are those who actually deny that these games are propaganda.

"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets."

QFT, Voltaire; QFT.

Voltaire. <3

 

[Lonemagpie]

So I was born in the Silly Season. That explains a lot, actually.

Anyway, it's just how things work. In a hundred years, simulations regarding 9/11 might be a popular excursion, sick as that sounds to so many now. I'd be willing to bet a lot of the World War I and II veterans seeing all these war games featuring shallow, kill-'em-all takes on those tragedies are either sighing profusely in life or rolling over in their graves in death.

The only example I've seen on that subject was when one of the games TV shows interviewed actor Richard Todd, who had been a para at the battle of Pegasus Bridge on D-Day, and they asked him if he thought there should be games like this (I think it was re: MoH Airborne, or CoD3) and he said absolutely, because it's a great way to make sure the modern generation understood what it was like, and the alternative - forgetting all that stuff - would be far far worse.

 

[Quinton O'Connor]

Well, it's hard to rebuke that, but I have to say, my quite admittedly limited experience with military-oriented gaming hasn't shown me much of anything that properly illustrates the depths of hell those war have created.

There hasn't been a game of that kind that I've seen someone engaged in which has ever really done that justice, and that's what I base my claims on. But if that's all anyone has seen, I guess I'm mistaken.

I'd just as soon think it would be imperative to see documentaries on the matter and look at war games for what they are: shooting games with real-world backdrops.

 

[Starkers]

To be honest they could ban the games and it wouldn't make much difference. I spent a lot of my childhood running around a field with my friends clutching a stick that was a submachine gun and lobbing invisible hand grenades at those who were play acting Germans

 

[JoeZhang]

Since no squaddies I know give a flying fuck about this, I don't see why I as a civvy should care.

 

[SPCTRE]

It's August - what we in Britain call the Silly Season, when the news is filled with particularly dumb and irrelevant stories. This'll be forgotten by the time the game comes out.

An apt term, although I like the German Sommerloch better.

 

[SilentP]

Since no squaddies I know give a flying fuck about this, I don't see why I as a civvy should care.

Cause the moral guardians in the UK haven't had anything to rage about recently?

 

[Goliath]

I like how it's cool to slaughter some folks but not others. To think that there are those who actually deny that these games are propaganda.

"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets."

QFT, Voltaire; QFT.

Voltaire. <3

Indeed. That's why it saddens me to see that even Voltaire could be deceived by that kind of pacifist gibberish.

A soldier who acts under authority, and who obeys the laws and customs of war, is not a murderer. It's really just that simple, no matter how often pacifists try to deny this plain truth, and no matter how many sophistries they concoct in order to obscure it.

War is litigation by other means, and will continue until both sovereign states and would-be sovereign states are compelled to submit their disputes to arbitration. So long as they have no judge to decide between them, and no power to overawe them, they will and must fight. The only alternative is to capitulate to injustice.

Accusing soldiers of murder, even if they fight in a bad cause, makes about as much sense as accusing defence lawyers of the crimes their clients have committed.

But then, I wouldn't expect someone like Rii to understand such a clear moral truth. This is, after all, someone who cavalierly disregards the property rights of others, and who loudly defends his own right to steal.

 

[Lonemagpie]

Well, it's hard to rebuke that, but I have to say, my quite admittedly limited experience with military-oriented gaming hasn't shown me much of anything that properly illustrates the depths of hell those war have created.

There hasn't been a game of that kind that I've seen someone engaged in which has ever really done that justice, and that's what I base my claims on. But if that's all anyone has seen, I guess I'm mistaken.

You could create such a game, but it wouldn't sell, and the creators would go bust...

There are different types of game, though - even shooters - and I do kind of think that a current ongoing war should have really been done (if it has to be done) as a more realistic and unforgiving type of game, where the objective is not to score points for kills but to get through alive and keep your squadmates in one piece.

In other words, it's maybe ground better left to Ubi's Tom Clancy lines than to MoH.

I'd just as soon think it would be imperative to see documentaries on the matter and look at war games for what they are: shooting games with real-world backdrops.

Of course it's imperative to see documentaries and nonfiction - my point is that the person who had gone through that kind of hell and was asked on the show whether there should be shooter games like this gave an unequivocal and enthusiastic yes.

 

[Deckerd]

Has anyone created a game where the objective is to get through hostile territory (of any kind) without killing anyone?

 

[Lonemagpie]

Has anyone created a game where the objective is to get through hostile territory (of any kind) without killing anyone?

There have been a few - ISTR there was at least one (who's title I forget) where you play a guy in the aftermath of an Earthquake, and have to fight fires and stuff.

Or there's Stuntman Ignition, where you have to dodge explosions and disasters on a movie set.

And it's not quite the objective, but you *can* complete Metal Gear Solid 2, MGS Rising, Fallout 3 and Alpha Protocol without killing anyone. ISTR it's possible to complete the original Splinter Cell without any overt kills as well (though you have to render quite a few people unconscious...)

There's a good list here:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PacifistRun

 

[Deckerd]

Has anyone created a game where the objective is to get through hostile territory (of any kind) without killing anyone?

There have been a few - ISTR there was at least one (who's title I forget) where you play a guy in the aftermath of an Earthquake, and have to fight fires and stuff.

Or there's Stuntman Ignition, where you have to dodge explosions and disasters on a movie set.

And it's not quite the objective, but you *can* complete Metal Gear Solid 2, MGS Rising, Fallout 3 and Alpha Protocol without killing anyone. ISTR it's possible to complete the original Splinter Cell without any overt kills as well (though you have to render quite a few people unconscious...)

There's a good list here:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PacifistRun

Interesting list, although it seems the answer to my question might be "no", although I did laugh at:

Playing Postal 2 without ever killing anyone gives you the end-of-game rank "Thank you for playing, JESUS!"