Combat Vets On CoD: Black Ops, Medal of Honor Taliban

An anonymous reader writes "Thom 'SSGTRAN' Tran, seen in the Call of Duty: Black Ops live action trailer and in the game as the NVA multiplayer character, gets interviewed and talks about Medal of Honor's Taliban drama. '... to me, it's a non-issue. This is Hollywood. This is entertainment. There has to be a bad guy if there's going to be a good guy. It's that simple. Regardless of whether you call them — "Taliban" or "Op For" — you're looking at the same thing. They're the bad guys.'" Gamasutra published a related story about military simulation games from the perspective of black ops veteran and awesome-name-contest winner Wolfgang Hammersmith. "In his view, all gunfights are a series of ordered and logical decisions; when he explains it to me, I can sense him performing mental math, brain exercise, the kind that appeals to gamers and game designers. Precise skill, calculated reaction. Combat operations and pistolcraft are the man's life's work."

Comments

Bad guys and good guys

[Nichotin]

This is Hollywood. This is entertainment. There has to be a bad guy if there's going to be a good guy. It's that simple.

Is it? I just saw the Chan-wook Park movie Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. It is a South Korean thriller movie. The main person are a deaf guy and his sister, who abducts a child who later dies in their custody. A lot of the movie is about the father, who seeks a very gruesome revenge. The main characters are certainly not good guys, and the way the father seeks revenge does not make him one either. This was very different from the good guy-bad guy-movies that I have seen from Hollywood, and is one of the few movies that have managed to stir up some strong feelings inside me while watching. All in all a very different movie (seen from a western perspective, I come from Norway). This is a movie, not a videogame, but I think the same could apply to a video game. The whole good guy-bad guy-thing should not be written in stone, and perhaps many game developers should think of new dynamics instead of having a very clearly defined good guy (often played by you) and clearly defined bad guys.