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GameStop Pulls Medal of Honor From Military Bases
donniebaseball23 writes "EA's Medal of Honor reboot doesn't ship until October 12, but it's already seen a fair amount of controversy thanks to the publisher's decision to allow people to play as Taliban in multiplayer. The controversy just got escalated another notch, reports IndustryGamers, as the world's biggest games retailer GameStop has decided it won't sell the title at its stores located on US military bases. The new Medal of Honor won't be advertised at these stores either. GameStop noted that they came to this decision 'out of respect for our past and present men and women in uniform.'"
Seems more like discretion to me.
It looks like someone forgot to close an <i> tag. Good thing it was near the end of TFS, or it would have been less readable than usual.
"Gimmie that!" *yoink*
"But...!"
"Because I respect you!"
... that they can't emotionally handle this
In group behavior: 'because they're evil/morons/sheep/crazy' is not 'insightful' it's 'oversimplified'
I can still play as Germans in WW2 games, though? Phew. For a second there I was worried.
Out of respect or out of fear of vociferous soccer moms? They have certainly never found issues with war games in the past, even when the opposing sides were concurrent.
Do we not trust our servicemen and women to stay loyal to the US Government/Military when they play this game? Are we afraid they will decide the Taliban are a more noble cause? Are we afraid they are sitting on the fence and this game will push them to cross to the other side?
Or is the pendulum of Political Correctness just swinging even farther into the ridiculous zone?
Not all of them are, but the ones likely to get upset by this have: access to weapons; combat training; learned how to deal with the emotional cost of killing someone. Not the kind of person you want to risk upsetting.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
If they really were doing this out of "respect", they'd pull the game altogether. Not that I think it should be pulled, but pulling it only from military locations makes no sense. This is just saying "If you're in the military, you can't have this game. Not yours."
Respect would be acknowledging that our men and women in uniform are adults and can decide for themselves how they want to spend their leisure time.
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Aren't military games pretty popular among soldiers? I would wager that many are going to play this game anyway, and will just be annoyed that they can't get it on the base. I guess I am also a little surprised they even have video game stores on military bases...
I can see why they would do this. Being a prior Air Force member, not everybody who gets deployed, comes back the same. I do agree though, if it was truly respect they would pull the game all together. I know it is easy for non-military people to say that we should let the solders decided, but in all honestly, it could end up being very traumatic to some. PTSD doesn't show up right off the bat. I know you can play as German's in some of the WW2 games, and you can be "terrorists" in CS, but with the level of realism that games are coming to, it really could push some people over the edge.
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
I'm more confused by the fact that there is commercial stores inside USA military bases in the first place.
From the summary they mention the reason for their decision to be "out of respect for our past and present men and women in uniform."
If they really want to respect them they should be giving them the choice to choose on their own. Not forcing their own decision upon them.
Enough with the spoonfeeding mentality...
They are just trying to repeat the success Activision enjoyed with it's shockingly scandalous "in bad taste" scene where you had to kill the civilians at an airport in order to proceed. Despite all the "bad press", Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 went on to generate more than 310 million dollars in sales on the first day and broke sales records by a huge margin.
Of course since this is an EA game, they will probably drop the ball and bungle the release completely. But that's just my opinion, since I believe there is a special circle of Hell reserved for Electronic Arts.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
So American soldiers shooting American soldiers would be better?
It's almost been a decade since 9/11. Besides, this isn't even a recreation of 9/11. Hell, it's not even Al Qaeda. This has _zero_ to do with 9/11 unless any and all Arabs are considered terrorists connected with 9/11. Hell, you don't even have to be of Arab descent to join the Taliban. So this isn't even a race issue. People just don't like the idea that you can play as "the enemy" (whoever that is) and shoot at people _you_ consider friendly. Oh noes, what about all the WW2 games where you can play as the enemy? Shit.. Or all the games that happen way in the past, say, Age of Empires? Where do you want the line drawn? I guess you want it drawn where Arabs are _not_ allowed to be playable. Especially Arabs with weapons and "Americans" are targets.
Quite funny, considering that the Army itself is freely distributing a simulation that allows you to play any side you want: video 1 & video 2>
So even if they wanted to buy it they won't be allowed?
They are allowed to die in battle but not to chose what to play?
Imagine the game was very realistic - It would give them big advantage to see their own weakness through the eyes of the enemy.
How is that any different than any WW2 game?
And, somehow shooting Germans or us Japs is better, because it is less recent? I lost about a quarter of my bloodline in Hiroshima, yet games still involve nukes.
I do love how nobody is upset about the option of killing americans, just that the cluster of polygons doing the killing (removing from rounds of tag for a 10 second cooldown time) are labeled as someone we don't like.
The ______ Agenda
A quick re-skin and no one would care. Oh noes! Your fiction involves something I morally object to! STOP THE PRESSES!
A few years have passed since WWII to let the raw emotions ease. I am very sure that if games like this existed at the time, there would be a near riot if a company tried to release one where you got to play the German side just after WWII (never mind while it is was ongoing as is the case now). My father was a veteran of that war (front of the front line combat from France to Germany) and he had strong feelings many years after the war. They eased somewhat later in life, but he still had issues about what he saw and did. Except for one he told my mother, he would only tell us stories where no one was hurt even though combat was going on (e.g. How many guys can you fit under a Bren Gun Carrier? Eight, as long as they are being mortared at the time. How far can a guy throw a dud 88 shell when it crashes through the stone wall of the house you are in? A long, long way... while shitting bricks at the same time.). He buried his rifle and side arm very shortly after armistice was signed (while still in the army in Europe) and refused to carry or use a weapon after that. They busted him from Staff Sargent all the way to Private after he refused to tell them where he buried them and refused to carry a weapon. It is easy to sit in a chair in front of a computer and pass judgment. The same as it is to compare society's feelings at the time events happened 65 to 71 years ago to how they feel about them today (and some folks still feel as strongly and think playing the German side is repugnant).
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Pulling the ads is sensitive. Pulling the game at ONLY military outlets is wrong. If the game is "bad" enough to be pulled at military bases, where very mentally tough individuals reside, you sure as hell better not sell it to 14 year old suburban couch potatoes. They certainly will not be able to handle it. I do applaud them for pulling the advertising -- no need to waive it around inside bases.
... that they can't acquire the game some other way if they really wanted to.
I didn't realize "making sure computer games are readily available to soldiers" was a priority of the US military, much less a priority for a private company who themselves have the freedom to do what they want.
"We're fighting for your freedoms, just don't exercise them."
The difference is that WWII vets aren't even close to the target audience age-group for such games.
For the new Medal of Honor, on the other hand, game's target age group and age of the actual veterans aren't all that different.
The Taliban (former government of Afghanistan) are the name Fox News & other US Government outlets have marked as "evil" because they "harbor Terrorists". Complete and utter nonsense. We now see, how complete nonsense, if repeated enough times propagates everywhere, becomes reality and starts affecting various other aspects of life.
They don't teach you to cope with the emotional cost of killing someone - that's left for the public to deal with when they get back from war and are dumped into the streets.
You can't teach that - you either cope with it, get help coping with it, or go stark raving mad.
I've known a few lifers who went over to Iraq who've told me that since coming back they've thought an awful lot about eating a bullet.
Let's stir up as much heat as possible about frivolous issues that distract from what actually needs to be done.
Not only that, what better target is there than video games?--a medium that is already stereotyped and reviled by millions of people who don't know any better and don't really care to consider other possible viewpoints.
My apologies your highness. Lets not make any games about my post you didn't like either. You might find that "a bit repugnant" as well seeing as it was a bit "too soon".
And the Japanese are still trying to rewrite history so as to make it look like they were victims and didn't perpetrate war crimes like using poison gas in China and murdering two or three times the people the Germans murdered in death camps and as slave laborers. The people allowed fanatics to run the country just as did Germany. The bombing of Japanese cities was brought on themselves. Besides, more people were killed in the incendiary attacks on Tokyo than in Hiroshima (and about as many in Dresden). Why is the fact that it was a nuclear bomb that makes it more terrible than what was done in Tokyo?
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
I've been playing terrorists in Tac Ops for nearly a decade.
I've played right along side a friend that fought in the second gulf war, and one who was army intelligence in Korea.
It is nothing that they can not handle. If anything making it unavailable would be seen as disrespect.
allowing soldiers to play games about the same war they are fighting. Hhmmm I wonder what an army psychologist think about this... You don't need to be Einstein to figure it out.
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"Some of you feel that this does some kind of injustice to your brothers in arms, so we're going to allow you to pretend it doesn't exist while still selling it to everyone else. We're doing this because we respect the fact (which we pulled out of our ass) that you can't handle things that make you upset as much as people who don't travel to foreign countries to get shot at for something they don't believe in."
This is a suitably ridiculous response to a ridiculous situation. I'm surprised GameStop had the nads to go there.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
'out of respect for our past and present men and women in uniform.' So should we not play as Nazi's and Japanese in WW 2 games?
All Mario games are now off-limits to people allergic to mushrooms. They might get upset. And don't even get me started on the trauma of Burger Time.
TFA doesn't make this clear. Here's a better one: Video Game Pulled Globally From Military Stores Over Taliban Inclusion
This has _zero_ to do with 9/11 unless any and all Arabs are considered terrorists connected with 9/11.
That is exactly the problem, anyone of Arab decent is a terrorist until proven otherwise in this unfortunate age. If you want to test this try to travel via a US airport with an Arab friend, good luck in customs and I hope you both make the next flight.
I don't know how many military people would be offended or not by this. Why not let them decide for themselves by buying the game, or not, or complaining to the store if they find it's mere presence too much? If it offends, it won't be in the store on base very long, and if it doesn't - let them choose to buy it!
It's all about Gamestop thinking that closed minded politicians or a nit witted public think it's unpatriotic and end up boycotting Gamestop--such that sales go off a cliff.
If they were really smart, soliders should use the game and play as the bad guy--cause for them to think in the ememy's shoes equates to a better solider from getting hurt. Heck, if you knew your opponents chess moves, guess who wins? Granted, the game probably has crappy agent logic for foes.
If one can think about your enemy and 2nd guess, you're better off. The military should be using it as a training tool. But then again, we live in a lemming, non-intelligent world nowadays. It is... all about control, control of cash (gamestop) in this case.
Modern Warfare had players as "taliban" or Iraqi soldiers (though it wouldn't call them that - As Yahtzee put it, they're all from Unspecifiedistan), and they wouldn't pull that from store shelves. So because the enemy is identified in this case, that suddenly makes it less appropriate? In a multiplayer setting, you can't both be the US forces unless you pull an America's Army and just have the enemy show up as OpFor all the time while you appear to be American all the time.
I mean, I have a hard time imagining why, exactly, there's any controversy over this at all. But I guess no publicity is bad publicity, huh?
Screw the rules, I have green hair!
last I checked, Germany is still touchy about this. All games must be free of basically anything to do with Nazis, Hitler etc. Sure you can find that in the US, but it still wont fly in Germany.
insert funny sig here
Do they let the American soldiers in the game shoot civilians, rape young Afghanis and bomb weddings with UAVs?
Try to remember this is only a game.
What's next? No selling/advertising Grant Theft Auto games near police stations? No selling/advertising Diablo games near churches? No selling/advertising StarFox games near animal shelters and zoos?
Their dependants who shop on base are for fucking sure sensitive, far more so than G.I.s.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
This is a simple leverage in free press.
Maybe someone who just lost a friend to the Taliban might not really be in the mood for seeing a game where they can re-enact killing their friend.
Perhaps my father was killed by VC, does that mean that nobody should make historically accurate Vietnam games? What if my grandfather was killed by a German, does that put ww2 games in bad taste?
Sure the time scale is greater, but its just being fucking 'PC stupid' to go to lengths like this. I think if I was killed in Afghanistan, I would be pissed off by politically correct assholes who want to sweep everything under a rug, 'out of respect for the survivors'.
What the HELL is wrong with a factually depicted game? Telling an accurate story is very respectful of those who served.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
a company making an individual decision to sell/not sell a game doesn't classify as censorship. If the chinese gov't said it would not be allowed in the country under penalty of death, that's censorship. I say kudos to gamestop for placing empathy over money. Too bad more companies didn't prioritize that way.
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They'll just buy it from the BX/PX game section instead of the gamestop on base.
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
'Forward, the Light Brigade!'
Was there a man dismay'd ?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Some one had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do & die
Gee, and just think, if it wasn't for those damned Americans we could all be wearing German jack boots now. They ruined it for all of us. I guess the South Koreans and people in Taiwan are pretty pissed off at America too. Eastern Europe must be really angry with America since America was the biggest roadblock to Soviet Russia making all of Europe just like them. Hell if it wasn't for American forces helping in NATO at least the Berlin wall could have stayed up. Yep, damn those American bastards for outlasting the Soviets. [/sarcasm] By the way, name democracies that were toppled by America. Real democracies, not those that were democracies in name only, like [insert list of dictatorships that you seem to support]. I agree with anyone who slams America for getting into Vietnam and Iraq. But other than that you're talking out your ass. As for Iraq, I suspect the people who were gassed or otherwise abused by Saddam Hussein might beg to differ with your or my feelings on the subject. Personally I think Iraq forced a loss of focus on the real issue, the rogue state of Afghanistan. I was not sad to see Hussein go, but sure didn't like the timing or piss poor management of the whole thing.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
"They are voluntarily risking their own lives while travelling halfway cross the world to kill people that never harmed them in any way"
Hosting Al Qaeda would certainly qualify as an act of war by the Taliban. That was rather harmful to the folks in the WTC.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Explain then why the war in Iraq is apparently "needed" to secure free speech? Was Saddam Hussein wiretapping US citizens? No wait... that was our own government... Oh wait! I know the Taliban was screwing up our economy! No wait... that was congress...
How did we not start the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? Lets see here, Bin Ladin was the leader of Al-Quada which claimed responsibility for the 9/11 attacks and where is he now? Oh wait... Hes still missing... Oh, oh I know! Those weapons of mass destruction Iraq has! Now that the government has been overturned we have found them all! Oh wait... we didn't...
The reason we invaded Iraq was a lie. After what, 8 years we still haven't even accomplished a basic goal in Afghanistan? At the cost of how many lives? How many billions of dollars?
Plus, look back in your history book a bit, we supported all these fundamentalist Islamic regimes back in the 80s!
So lets see here, either you are right and Iraq attacked us and started the war... or it was started by what "our" leaders told us... which turned out to be a total lie. So explain to me when this invasion of America happened? When Iraq landed planes, boats, etc. on American soil and fired missiles at us, etc.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
It's not quite like that: Remove the red bracelets, Nazi leaders and SS symbols, and you'll be good to go, so if you are recreating a WWII battlefield, more often than not you won't have to change anything unless you are trying to portray one of the SS divisions.
So just change the Taliban to Nazis? Problem solved.
Now how should they sell the game in Germany... Change them back to Taliban? Problem solved.
But what about US bases in Germany... Change them into... lemmings? Now comes copyright infringement. The studio is doomed.
I Hope i'm not duping someone else who already fixed the the misconception here. The game just won't be sold at the On base version of WalMart. It's a decent, convenient place to shop, sometimes has good deals, but it's just one fucking store. Porn isn't sold there either but you really thing Soldiers or sailors don't have porn? (I was both, and I never wanted for my playboy) Airman are of course Androgynous A-sexual drones they don't count for this discussion.
A board game had gone on sale where you could play the Americans or the Japanese, likely the factory would have mysteriously burned down! Of course, great big board games were at that time played by the Generals and Admirals in "what if" scenarios. And I would presume now they use computer simulations. The difference in both cases is that a commercial game seems to involve the trivialization of an event in which lives of our troops are at stake.
>> By the way, name democracies that were toppled by America
This is actually a wonderful question. Start with:
Chile, Nicaragua, South Vietnam.
Plus Hawaii, Cuba, Philippines, Honduras, Iran, Guatemala, Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan, Iraq, Indonesia, Haiti.
Others?
Frankly if I were in that god-awful fray I would WELCOME the game with the supposedly offending feature. I'd be appreciative of a tool that allowed me to understand the enemy more completely. And nothing teaches you about an opponent better than climbing around in their pelt for a few hours. In general I think this type of overreaction is indicative of the black and white simple minded dogmatic world-view that so many people are championing as virtuous these days. Also, the best comment I've heard so far is the one pointing out that WWII games allow for play from the German side of things.
Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.--Mark Twain
... little bitty bunnny wabbbitt children from any sort of outside influence.
Cannot have trained killers running around with ideas in their heads from some source other than the officially approved sources. Killers with wrong ideas is just wrong.
The idea of solving problems without training killers is heresy. Burn the heretic(s)!
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
This is the result of hand-wringing do-gooders who don't know the military from the bible.
You think the military isn't conducting training exercises with real humans in the role of the Taliban?
Putting it in a video game just makes it cheaper to repeat for the newbies.
Someone tell GameStop they're totally fucking stupid, here.
How was Iraq involved with September 11th again?
There's a whole bunch of people out there like me who think the military action in Afghanistan was a good idea and the military action in Iraq was a bad idea.
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So Gamestop stops selling it, most bases have Gamestop right outside their PX - I am sure the Soldier can walk the extra few feet to the Electronics section and pick it up there... Where is the problem other than Gamestop making a stupid choice? I mean it's not like they are not going to sell it in any gamestops around the Pentagon, or near ground zero right?
Look out, you'll shoot Dorkus.
Nice try, I said democracies that weren't democracies in name only. I'm still waiting.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Everyone is way off base with the motives here. This isn't about protecting the soldiers or respecting them. The real story is a bunch of top level gamestop employees got their asses handed to them last night in a game of CTF by a bunch of people with "USMC" as their clan tag so now their trying to take precautions to prevent that from happening again.
Coalition forces use a computer game to learn to fight as their opponents fight. Might be useful intel?
This decision should be re-thunk.
"Flight Simulator" for War in Afghanistan; what's wrong with that? Mind the innocent civvies, please.
Give 'em the game. It'll be good for them.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
I think he would prefer a better behaved Taliban, one that treats Afghan women with respect and only attacks American soldiers.
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
stores right outside those bases better stock up.
Taliban or otherwise.. they're going to want to play.
Chile, Nicaragua, Iran and Guatemala, maybe. Hawaii was a monarchy, Nicaragua was ruled by a junta, Honduras, South Vietnam, and Indonesia were never toppled by America, Panama was a dictatorship, Afghanistan was not by any definition of the word a democracy, and before Spain ceded the Phillipines to the US, it was not a democracy.
Assuming that my fellow service members who like myself have never even seen a gamestop on a base even stop to consider the moral implications of buying this game as they drive to the gamestop that will be within a fifteen minute drive or 30 minute bus ride of a military installation (I needed to find a gamestop once near whidbey island naval airstation and I literally just drove around for 20 minutes until one showed up)they may wonder why Gamestop feels the need to take a game that allows them to play US soldiers who kill taliban members, which is what I signed up for and continue to support, literally all day and night. Do they think that if I took issue with it I might accidentally select the taliban side in multiplayer and go to bed hating myself? The concern is touching. Besides, I assume they didn't go all out on the realism of the game anyway. Unless I can play by driving a crappy car packed with explosives that will kill me, or sit at a mortar tube waiting for a hellfire missile to hit me out of no where, or log on when players aren't in a map to place IED's, then it's not very Taliban-ey sounding. I think it's probably a fancy (read: douchey) way of saying a guy with an AK-47 instead of an M4, who can't call in helo strikes or anything fun like that. Also, I don't think many service members would enjoy being a realistic Taliban soldier, because they are culturally much more into hand holding than we are in the US. Like, way more into it.
He's five foot-two, and he's six feet-four,
He fights with missiles and with spears.
He's all of thirty-one, and he's only seventeen,
Been a soldier for a thousand years.
He'a a Catholic, a Hindu, an Atheist, a Jain,
A Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew.
And he knows he shouldn't kill,
And he knows he always will,
Kill you for me my friend and me for you.
And he's fighting for Canada,
He's fighting for France,
He's fighting for the USA,
And he's fighting for the Russians,
And he's fighting for Japan,
And he thinks we'll put an end to war this way.
And he's fighting for Democracy,
He's fighting for the Reds,
He says it's for the peace of all.
He's the one who must decide,
Who's to live and who's to die,
And he never sees the writing on the wall.
But without him,
How would Hitler have condemned him at Dachau?
Without him Caesar would have stood alone,
He's the one who gives his body
As a weapon of the war,
And without him all this killing can't go on.
He's the Universal Soldier and he really is to blame,
His orders come from far away no more,
They come from here and there and you and me,
And brothers can't you see,
This is not the way we put the end to war.
Univeral Solder
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
up up down down left right left right B A select start the light brigade
There is both playboy and penthouse sold at the Navy Exchange, and in fact you can even score some soft core on liberty weekend in Navy boot camp if you know which motorcycle magazine features the Fox Hunt. It's good for morale. And as a sailor on an airforce base I will agree with your A-Sexual drone hypothesis
The Japanese even performed live vivisection experiments on US Airmen and Chinese people from Manchuria without anesthesia. They removed and/or experimented on various parts of people without their consent and with them feeling the entire event. Then the US bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear weapons after bombing Tokyo and other cities with incendiaries causing untold casualties and hardships. Point is, war is horrible and it doesn't get any better no matter who is the one winning at any particular time.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
Your entire argument is under the assumption that democracy is the "best". This is a logical fallacy because it is impossible to determine which form of government is best for any particular group of people let alone and individual person. You realize that some decent human beings exist under different forms of rule through no fault of their own? Why bomb the shit out of their families so you can make a political statement? Before you say it, I am NOT liberal. In fact I believe with all my being in self reliance, the free market and the US constitution. Its just a shame that people actually have faith in anything the US government has done for the last 40 years. Everything any individual of the Human race does is meant for personal profit. Why are Senators, Representatives, Judges and/or the President and his cabinet exempt from being Human beings?
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
They should just have a special censored edition for military base sale in which the taliban models are replaced with hippies and beatniks. Blizzard has to make changes along those lines in order to sell games in China.
It is just a game, i am in the military and that makes no sense, it's just a game, if it offends us so much why put it out, it doesn't matter, just give us the game, now i have to go find it else where
Oh ffs, don't gimme this 9/11 bullshit.
1) That card is overplayed.
2) It gets trotted out time and time again about how the Taliban has forever and irreparably harmed the USA as a nation, people, and our way of life.
So far, they've done killed roughly 0.00002% through the attacks and the war in Afghanistan and did some economic damages as well. Last I recalled, the bank and financial systems and business have done a pretty good job fucking over the country while reaping benefits. Meanwhile, the TSA wastes billions of dollars looking at your and your family's nude bodies through X-ray backscatter scans and inconveniences millions by taking away their dangerously explosive bottled water and the drug war ruins more American lives than anything the Taliban has done.
Fine. Whatever. Keep bawling about your scraped knee or buck the fuck up.
Respect for who? Might as well ban all games on bases. In all war games you have a enemy. In all war games payback can be hell, and fun. So just who are you respecting?
I'm a servicemember. I've been to Afghanistan and seen the places shown in this game first hand. I've seen men and women die for freedom, and some die for no reason at all. I still want to play this game. I've not been home a full year yet, but I want a small piece of that time back. I want to see things I know and feel the same heart racing fear of going around a corner when Taliban snipers are looking over your shoulder. This isn't internet tough guy talk, I'm a broadcast journalist and I've shot plenty of video showing what I'm talking about. Some of us (military members who have deployed and fought the Taliban) still want to play this game. I don't live in the States and there are no GameStop's here so it doesn't really affect me, but I know that if I were in America and wanted this game, I'd like to be able to go to my nearest game store (most likely a GameStop) and pick it up. They're not removing it from all of their stores, just the bases. That makes it more about the attention will get from this move, and less about the people affected.
When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you. Friedrich Nietzsche
call me cynical if you want but the amount of free publicity EA will get from this will far outweigh the loss of revenue from the banned sales, ALL corporate decisions are based on money not ethics or respect.
I can still play as Germans in WW2 games, though? Phew. For a second there I was worried.
So was I; the Germans have much better toys to shoot with.
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Karma: Chameleon
When I would play a fps or rts game with other people, I would always pick the "bad guy." The reason I would do that is because I am below average skill wise and when I would lose, it would make me feel just a little better knowing the good guys won... haha
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
What is more scary, you can even play as a US Marine in many games these days. Talking about bad examples...
The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.
when I was in college, I had an assignment to read "Dispatches" by Micheal Herr ... there's a couple things I remember.
A) getting physically ill by the time I finished it (it was graphic and highly depressing)
and
B) a scene describing a situation some military brass absolutely looses his shit because some kids scrawled curse words on their helmets (or a helicopter or something ... this was like 15 years ago at least when I read it).
18 and 19 year olds ... literal children ... sent into the jungle half a world away for the intent of carrying out some of the most brutal and horrific acts imaginable, and they are chastised for using profanity.
That kind of *complete* and utter lack of perspective reminds me of this situation.
Let me get this right. We have been waging two wars for nearly 10 years. The general public has become *so* desensitized to it, that not only can you make a photo-realistic video game *about the real war that is still happening*, and this is not controversial or unpopular, but is instead one of the most anticipated and popular games of all time.
And it's "disrespectful" to sell the instances of the fake war to the people waging the *actual* war.
But it's not "disrespectful" to wage the *actual* war.
W-to-the-T-F, people?
WOW.
That's coming as downloadable content EXCLUSIVELY on Xbox Live.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Sun Tzu put it best why American soldiers should play as the Taliban:
So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss.
If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose.
You're missing the point. The fact they are making the games is disrespectful. But I guess respect is a victim of modern times. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. But I suspect that this is beyond you or most these days. People cry foul when Wall Street types make a ton of money for doing nothing; but this is just an extrapolation of your attitude: Just because it is wrong to take money for doing absolutely nothing to help you clients profit (which is what your job is supposed to accomplish) doesn't mean I can't take a 10 million dollar bonus, but I can so I will. It is all the same thing. Both situations are an exhibit of a total lack of class.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Airman are of course Androgynous A-sexual drones they don't count for this discussion.
I was in the USAF back in the day, flameboy. I get more pussy from you mom than your dad does; she complains about his little dick. She's lousy in bed but she gives pretty good blow jobs.
Free Martian Whores!
You refuse to stock the game. If no one wanted the game anyway, you've already failed, right? So you plan on the soldiers wanting the game. Then you wait for the soldiers to complain that they can't buy the game on-base. After which you issue a big press release announcing that the soldiers requested - nay, demanded - that the game be put back into stores, so you're bowing to their wishes.
This is a win for you, because most of the criticism comes from people outraged on behalf of the soldiers. But now you can point out that the soldiers FORCED you to make the game available to them, so obviously it must not be a problem.
The best way to beat the Taliban might start by learning how to think like a Taliban.
See if you can float a game to investors where the objective is to kill the crew on a commercial airliner and fly them into civilian structures in ... never mind America... in Europe or Canada, or even in Saudi Arabia or Dubai. I think you would be labeled as the fucking wanker that you are.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Why? That's not what I want. Flight sims were never my thing.
If someone else wants to do that, then that's their right to do so. It's the investors' rights to fund it or call the guy fucking insensitive and a terrorist but neither side can force the other.
You, I, and anyone else, may not agree with it but that doesn't mean you are allowed to choose what other people legally do.
Now you are being purposely obtuse.
And that is the crux of what the issue is. People not understanding that because you CAN do something doesn't mean you should. That is where good taste and understanding comes in. You wouldn't want people coming to your mothers funeral or following you around for a couple days after and telling 'yo momma' jokes. They legally can, it doesn't mean that they should or that it wouldn't be tasteless. People need to get along and that includes being sensitive to others. This goes for businesses as well as people. The tendency towards increasing and extreme selfishness today is, I think, a major reason for societies ills, from crime to the economy.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Hey, in Cowboys and Indians...someone has to be stuck as the bad-guys (Cowboys)
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
Oh, I agree that it is insensitive to make merely a commercial venture of a game about a current war rather than one with any specific or artistic meaning (for or against).
However, good taste and understanding isn't a requirement when it comes to expressing oneself. There's lots of messages and ideas being shared that I don't agree with but to use my disagreement with them to ban them would be flagrantly unconstitutional.
And that is why I never said 'ban the game'. However I did say and still continue to find it repugnant that it is being offered with the 'Taliban' option. People can say what they want about the American, Canadian, British, and Dutch combat troops that have fought and died in Afghanistan, but what is offered is better than what they had (never mind that Afghanistan was a rogue state openly supporting terrorist groups). Granted, they may not be smart enough to ever 'get it'... i.e. they don't understand that life can be better if they've never been exposed to a better way of life. But to offer a game up that allows insensitive clods to get their jollies trying to 'kill' Americans, Canadians, British, and Dutch troops is disgusting to me. And what I was getting at is that while the company acts like they are being sensitive by pulling the games from the shelves on U.S. army bases, they aren't elsewhere. This tells me that good taste and sensitivity are trumped by money ultimately now-a-days. A sad state of affairs. Society needs social lubricant in order for us all to get along. That used to be accomplished by manners and decorum/class, the latter incorporating sensitivity to others feelings. This is disappearing and I believe the release of this games 'features' is a symptom. That is what really bothers me. That and the fact that so many people don't get this. Perhaps in years to come when the raw edges have worn off this would be an interesting addition; especially if it allowed better research to provide accurate historic representation. But not while it is still going on. That is my opinion based on personal experience with family who have fought in war. Regards.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.