So let's start out with a scenario. Not too long ago my wife tells me it would be worth an award to place a hogged tied woman on rail road tracks and wait for the train to run her over. No problem, well almost, my first attempt at this feat ended with the woman escaping her restraints and running away, luckily I'm a crack shot with my Winchester rifle. I shot the woman in the back and left her body in the desert. I then went to a nearby village where I was able to tie up another woman and successfully watch her get ran over by a train. I was granted the award.
Now this sounds very bad, but I was of course playing a video game, a western. This very violent action was not required by the game in order to complete it, now I was awarded a digital "trophy", but the game also took away honor points for my action. Why do I bring any of this up? Well it's because of a little game called "Medal of Honor". The Medal of Honor series is responsible for the WWII first person shooter sub-genre that until very recently, was the de-facto setting for all FPS games. I am a big fan of the series, one of my favorite video game experiences was in "Medal of Honor: Allied Assault" I played as an American Soldier storming the beaches of Normandy. It was almost directly out of the opening scene of "Saving Private Ryan". During this scene, American Soldiers around me died as German Gun Fire and Artillery rained down on them. Eventually my squad finds a path to get passed the beach head and kill the Germans holding positions at the beach.
The current Medal of Honor game is creating some controversy because in the multi player mode, you have two choices to play, US Army or Taliban. Some find this incredibly disturbing that a gamer can choose to play as the bad guy, and I understand their concerns, however, this is not the first game to do this. Any game that has multi player generally separates the opposing sides based on the single player protagonist and antagonist. So back to the original Medal of Honor, when I played the online multi player I had to choose between the US Army and Nazi Germany. Is there a difference? Maybe, troops are still fighting in Iraq (despite the lies of the US Government and mass media) and Afghanistan, where as the Nazi's where defeated over 60 years ago.
I look at this and think of how kids play games. When I was a little tike, all of the children in the neighborhood got together and played "Cops and Robbers". The rules were simple; the "Cops" job was to chase the robbers and capture them, the "Robbers" job was to elude capture. Now when playing the robber, you didn't actual rob anyone, it was just a title. The same goes for any multi player experience in a FPS. Each side has an objective that the must complete, usually its "kill everyone not on your side", but this can vary based on the game. The only difference in the two sides is the available weapons, and what your character looks like. It's not like if you play as the Taliban you have to observe Islamic prayers and become indoctrinated into the extremist cause. The same if you pick the US Army, your not given a safety briefings and have to go through the great experience of pre-mission prep before you role out.
So why is this such a controversy? Well with all things in America ignorance is the #1 culprit. Most people speaking out about this game don't play FPS or any video games for that matter. So they lack a basic understanding of multi player mechanics. There is also a huge sensitivity to violence in games that goes back to the Columbine massacre. Violent games are often criticized unfairly (in my opinion) by people who have no issue with movies with similar levels of violence. Lastly, we are still at war in Afghanistan, and the thought of anyone playing as a Taliban fighter and shooting at other players represented as US Soldiers really hits home. This last point may be the games downfall. Similar games like "Modern Warfare" have skated around this issues by using unnamed generic middle eastern fighters as the bad guys. Sometimes making movies or games about a current event are just to emotional for some to except. For example there was a push to make FPS games taking place during Vietnam, they were only mildly successful. This is because those wounds haven't quite healed.
I for one will be playing this game, the single player puts you in the role of a fictional special forces unit called Tier 1. Basically your an uber-bad-ass. Because I don't generally play multi player the whole Taliban issues doesn't really effect me. Now I started off this blog talking about my experience playing "Red Dead Redemption" (RDR), I did this to illustrate that we except a lot of violence in games, and don't think about it, especially in a game like RDR that takes place in a time we can't really relate to. Because "Medal of Honor" occurs in a time we are all too familiar with, it seems more real. So every gamer will have to make a choice, does this game hit too close to home. Parents also need to be informed and ensure their children are not playing games intended for adults. Like I said, as a Veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom I look forward to this game, and hope to kick some Taliban ass. But I'm not even paying attention.
No comments:
Post a Comment