Just a Game

Before I start on this post, I think I should explain something here: I've never played a "Medal of Honor" video game in my life. At least I don't think I did. For about a decade there every single war shooter game was based in WWII, and they all looked and played exactly the same. I played a few of them, myself. Never liked any of them. The games I played might have been "Call of Duty", they might have been "Medal of Honor", who the Hell knows? I made it through D-Day like three times in three different games, that was enough for me.  I don't like shooter games in general, first or third person, and I especially don't like historical shooters.  That genre always seemed like trivializing the sacrifices of real men who died for their country.  We're recreating these terrible hours in history just for our brief amusement?  It never sat well with me, personally.  I'd rather fight in a fictional battlefield against fictional enemies, preferably in a setting that doesn't take itself too seriously.

So that's my obligatory "my experience with this game series speech".  You might have wanted to skip that paragraph, maybe.

Anyway, "Medal of Honor" never really caught my eye as a gaming series - until now.  Instead of mining WWII for ideas, they've instead moved on to the War on Terror.  You remember the War on Terror right?  Its that war that the US is fighting... right now.  The actual game is based on Afghanistan during the invasion back in 2001, so I've been told.  This is already controversial enough, since its detailing the initial phase of a conflict that continues to rage, but EA decided to go one mile further:  in the multiplayer mode you actually can play as Taliban fighters taking shots at American soldiers.  I'll give you a minute to take that in.

Essentially what we have here is a game where you can play as a paramilitary organization that is fighting a war against your country's soldiers at that very moment.  While you're playing an X-Box Live battle against your cousin from Wisconsin, the characters you're fighting as could be killing US soldiers with a roadside bomb.  Its unbelievable.  Remember, this is the same Taliban that banned kites (read that book by the way) and everything else that offended their insane version of Islam.  Today they throw acid in the faces of little girls who want to go to school and not be virtual slaves to their husbands.  Like all Jihadist organizations, you would be hard pressed to find any other group on Earth that is more evil.

And what is the response to this?  "We can't get away from what the setting is and who the factions are*, but in the end, it's a game, so we're not pushing or provoking too hard," says the developers.

So let me get this straight:  EA is making a game where you can play as an enemy army that is this second trying to kill American soldiers and any innocent people caught in the line of fire, all to make "a game, nothing more".   They aren't even trying to make a real point with this thing.  You aren't actually getting an understanding of the Taliban or Al Qaeda or any other one of those sad mistaken foot soldiers fighting for (there is no other word for it) evil**.  No, it isn't about that.  The Taliban is only in the multiplayer, solely because the multiplayer needed at least two factions.  When EA says they didn't mean to offend, they mean it, they're just stupid insensitive game designer with surprisingly little understanding of the implications of their game.  In a way, that almost makes it worse.  Not only are you trampling upon the memory of every soldier who has died in this war, but you're doing it for no reason other than "its the only way to make the game fun".

On the one hand, their initial intention doesn't seem to be that bad:  making a game that will actually simulate the combat conditions that our soldiers are dealing with every day.  Of course, this being a video game, everything will be massively exaggerated and overblown.  But even so, the medium of games allows us to experience the life of a soldier on the ground like no other medium ever can.  You actually feel, in at least a diluted amount, the real mortal terror that soldiers face on the battlefield.  Works of this type could radically change the perception of war by the public.  But then EA blows every one of these good intentions by throwing in this Taliban nonsense, showing that they really didn't care about any of that.  They made this game just for the "coolness" value.  Its as mindless as "the Expendables" coming out this weekend, but many times more offensive.  (And then some comments on Internet forums talk about how cool a game where you play as the Taliban entirely might be... I don't have words for shit like this.)

I'm not saying that EA shouldn't release their game, they have every right to.  But they shouldn't be surprised if people get very angry with them.  They shouldn't be surprised if pundits call for the game's banning, and yet another round of political nonsense goes around with talk of "banning violent video games".  And they shouldn't be surprised if their game generates protests and ineffectual boycotts and all the rest of the nonsense that a controversial video game had created in the past.

And all those people who get offended at this game will be perfectly within their rights.  EA has nobody to thank but themselves.  What the Hell was the point of this anyway?

Why can't people simply play "Dragon Quest IX" and have fun?

ツ

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* I note oddly that EA has completely forgotten about the Northern Alliance:  the native Afghani force that fought along side NATO soldiers during the initial invasion of Iraq.  These people were fighting the Taliban regime since 1996, and before 9/11 had virtually no hope of liberating their country from the lunatic fundamentalists that controlled it.  If it weren't for these disorganized forces (which included elements that were both good and bad) the initial invasion would never have gone as smoothly as it did.  On the other hand, the Northern Alliance virtually disappeared as a military force after 2002, being absorbed into the Afghan military and government or simply heading to the hills as independent warlord factions.  If this game is based upon the entire war, they wouldn't have much of a campaign.  So then I ask this:  are there Afghani security forces in the game?  Can you play as them?  I can't find any evidence for it.

It seems to me that EA doesn't much care about the real situation in the game, ultimately it was all about Americans fighting foreign enemies.

** I kinda miss George W. Bush when it comes to the rhetoric of our current wars with Jihadists.  Back then the President had the conviction to call his enemies "evil" when they clearly were.  Also, I don't know what the current war's name even is any more.  Nobody says "War on Terror" in the media these days, I might be the last one.  What is the name of the war we're fighting, again?  Note, I miss Bush's rhetoric, nothing else about him.  He might have had the right general strategy in exporting democracy, but he was incompetent in its execution that I can only give a sigh of relief every day that I know he's not in charge of this nation.