MoH objections - back to the future?

[Stalins Organ]

A couple of weeks ago the UK's Defence Secretary slagged of Medal of Honour as its latest iteration allows people to play as Taliban & kill pixellated people playing the part of US soldiers.

And "Where Britain goes we go" the NZ Minister of Defence proved himself a pratt too....

I recall a long time ago there was a proposed ban of "toy soldiers" here in NZ on the basis that they glorified the Nazi regime - needless to say it didn't proceed, but it was a bit of a worry for boys with toys at the time!

I also have a vague memory of "Combat Mission" receiving some poor press along teh same lines but I can't find it in the archives - does anyone recall something like that?

[noxnoctum]

Stupid politicians. I'm so sick of these clowns claiming that video games make people do evil things, just because they find counter strike on a school shooter's computer. Guess what, 90% of the male population in the USA at least plays video games to some degree.

I just hate rules in general like this. It's idiotic. If I want to make a game where I reenact 9/11 from the terrorist's perspective than I should have the right to do so.

Libertarianism ftw!

[Dietrich]

Of course authority figures of various types -- politicians, lawyers, teachers, etc. -- decry video games (especially "violent" ones) and assert that they lead to school shootings and such. Saying "video games are bad and make young people violent" is much easier than confronting (let alone actually doing anything about) the multitude of other factors which are really behind the growing prevalence of school shootings and the like; and doing so makes the authority figures appear as if they're looking out for the well-being of their constituents' children, when in fact they're just using video games as a scapegoat.

[Michael Emrys]

Also, video games are the "new kids on the block" compared to the more familiar and often intractable sociological factors that simply won't go away. So suspicion naturally falls on them...at least for those who don't think too deeply.

Michael

[MeatEtr]

I consider the official start of videogame censorship or shaming was back in the early 90s. When the arcade hit Mortal Kombat was coming to the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. There was a big hoopla about the fatality's and even Nintendo censored their version of the game. Even my dad said he didn't want to buy it for me. I still give him sh!t about it to this day, of course he just laughs about it now.

Anyways, here's an update, MoH has now been banned from all military stores in the US.

http://kotaku.com/5628741/gamestop-pulls-video-game-from-military-stores-over-taliban-inclusion

IMO these controversies are created by the devs on purpose. Just look at the CoD:MW2 level where you gun down innocents in the airport. That game went on to break sales records worldwide. Surely that controversy helped achieve it.

[noxnoctum]

LOL @ the army banning the game from military stores. I guarantee you that will make soldiers want to play it more and just go to Amazon or walmart to pick it up. lol.

There are already several games you can play as the Taliban/insurgents/whatever... Project Reality comes to mind where you can actually battle it out on the gaza strip as a Hamas fighter ambushing Israeli infantry and vehicles. There are also several maps where you battle the Taliban (so half the server will be playing as the Taliban), and even a few maps set in Iraq. Also the mod "Insurgency", features combat between US soldiers and "insurgents". Will the army ban those too?

I hate censorship.

[-E]

Banning any software on a military base should have little to no effect. Only idiots (and/or zero's) pay AAFES' software prices. So what if anything, is NEX going to do? Will they follow suit?

[dieseltaylor]

I'm so sick of these clowns claiming that video games make people do evil things

Just in todays New Scientist specially for you:

DRIVING-based computer games like Grand Theft Auto and Carmageddon may be encouraging adolescents to drive recklessly when they take to the roads for real, a study of teenagers' attitudes to road risks suggests.

Kathleen Beullens at the Catholic University of Leuven (KUL) in Belgium wanted to find out if simple racing games and more reckless "drive-'em up" games might encourage real-world speeding and risk-taking. She suspected it might: "Some drive-'em-ups give you points for driving into cars or even pedestrians." Drink-driving generally does not feature in games, so she expected gaming would not inspire this behaviour.

Beullens sent questionnaires to 2000 Belgian 16-year-olds, both male and female, asking them how often they played racing and drive-'em-up games. Two years later, she questioned those who had gained driving licences on how often they took risks in traffic, and their attitudes to speeding and drink-driving. There was no statistically significant link between drink-driving at 18 and exposure to games at 16, but reckless attitudes to both speeding and risky driving were significantly linked with gaming at 16 (Accident Analysis and Prevention, DOI: 10.1016/j.aap.2010.07.011).

Admissions of speeding and risky driving were significantly linked with gaming at age 16

A spokeswoman for the UK-based Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association, representing games firms, notes the study has not demonstrated a causal link between driving games and risk-taking on the roads, and suggests other influences may be at work. "We need to explore how adolescents are influenced by a range of media," she says.

Beullens is already doing just that, studying the link between action movies and teenagers' driving behaviour.

Stupid scientists, next thing you know they will be saying advertising works and alters peoples buying habits . Sheesh!. Of course if I was a Defence Minister I would be against the game also - after all we want to get our guys habituated to killing foreigners and this confusion of playing either side is not going to help in demonising those Afghan terrorists.

[Michael Emrys]

Say, DT, did you get my PM a few days ago?

Michael

[Boeman]

Speaking of which, I'm curious; has there has actually been an FPS game with an official Axis campaign produced in Europe or the United States by a major publisher? I'm not talking about fan-made modifications here.

First Person Shooters seem to be the last bastion of resistance where consumers in North America are not given the opportunity to experience the war from the vantage point of the Axis.

In fact, both Medal of Honour and Call of Duty depict the German and Japanese as inhuman blood-thirsty gluttons. The COD brand in particular tends to take the easy (and often times cheesy) way out with respect to its treatment of WWII - only their Russian campaigns were given what one might call an interesting deviation from the norm.

Some of the popular suggestions I've seen for workable scenarios involve the Africa campaign for both the Germans and Italians and a series of short missions in 1945 featuring a tattered regular German army formation in the east attempting to escape the Russian front in order to surrender to the British and Americans instead.

Given the unfounded fears by authority figures that such games could elicit sympathy for "evil Nazis" and "barbaric Japs" by giving them a human face and having the player fire on Allied troops, this probably won't happen.

Of course, it's perfectly acceptable to play as Axis forces in other games so long as they are represented by generic icons or figurines and the results of engagements are visualized as such.

My guess is that had Battlefront's Shock Force game enabled players to kill NATO forces up close and personal, it probably would have come under the scrutiny of the press.

History really is written by the victors.

[MeatEtr]

EA is renaming the Taliban to Opposing Forces.

http://www.giantbomb.com/news/medal-of-honors-taliban-renamed-to-opposing-force/2599/

[MeatEtr]

And now a response from the Army about the renaming. Details here: http://kotaku.com/5653601/playable-taliban-jeopardized-us-armys-support-for-medal-of-honor

Funny how EA somehow "forgot" to show the US military the multiplayer portion. Which is clearly the more controversial portion of the game since players can actually be on the Taliban team, err I mean the Opposing Forces team now. EA is milking this controversy for all it's worth.

But oh boy, I can just now hear the 8 yr old spazoid kids yelling into the mic "Allah Akbar". :eek: