Russian Media Link Moscow Bombing With Modern Warfare 2 Scene

An anonymous reader tips news that following the airport bombing in Moscow earlier this week, the Russia media is linking the attack to a scene from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 in which a number of civilians were gunned down inside an airport. "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has become a shocking reality ... with so many people seemingly downloading, playing or watching this game, you have to consider whether or not anybody actually thought this game could so closely resemble reality,' said a Russia Today news presenter in the report. It also included comments from US terrorism expert Walid Phares, who said it was possible that computer games might influence the strategies employed by terrorists. Phares, who is director of Future Terrorism Project at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said: 'The issue is we need to know if terrorists or extremists are using these videos or DVDs or games to basically apply the model.' 'I think those who have been radicalized already – that is supposed in this case jihadists, Al-Qaeda or other kind – they look at the games and say these games will serve them to train.'" As we discussed when the game came out, Activision edited out the controversial scene from the Russian version. Violent video games have been taking a similar beating in the US after the shooting in Arizona earlier this month.

Comments

Must surely be correct

[RogueyWon]

The Russian media must clearly be correct. Nobody ever attacked an airport before.

This is a strong contender for "lowest point in the history of journalism about video games". At the very least, it's tied with the whole MS Flight Sim and 9/11 "controversy". It's hard to see it as anything but an insult to those who died or were injured in the incident.

Re:Must surely be correct

[noidentity]

Games might affect the exact target of these extremists, but they are not the cause of their extremism. It's their extremism that is leads them to kill innocent people. I can't help but think of water precipitating in the atmosphere. "It's that grain of dust that caused that drop to precipitate! If it hadn't been for that grain of dust, this drop wouldn't have precipitated somewhere else."

Seems like their blame on games is like when there's a bully that nobody wants to deal with, so their anger towards him is directed at other things. Like if the bully threatens to beat someone up if anyone goes near the soda machines, you blame the kid who went near the soda machines for causing someone to get beat up, because you're too cowardly to confront the bully.

Re:Must surely be correct

[rainmouse]

This is a strong contender for "lowest point in the history of journalism about video games". At the very least, it's tied with the whole MS Flight Sim and 9/11 "controversy". It's hard to see it as anything but an insult to those who died or were injured in the incident.

You are right, there is no evidence other than reasonably close timing, but to be honest part of me feels they deserve some of the heat by using such dubious methods purely for hype and marketing purposes. Though I must stress I am completely against censorship, the fact that Activision would add content that is pretty much guaranteed to cause worldwide damage to the gaming industry for free marketing and thus a quick extra few points on the profit margins is frankly far more offensive than the actual content in the game itself.

Re:Must surely be correct

[Feinu]

At the very least, it's tied with the whole MS Flight Sim and 9/11 "controversy"

Not even close. Comparing the realism between flight sim games and MW2 is ludicrous - with some additional hardware you could start approximating the experience of flying a plane. Hardly compares to holding down 'W', waving your mouse around and clicking bullets into unarmed civilians.

Additionally, there is no bomb in the "No Russian" mission of MW2, while it's entirely possible to fly jets into the World Trade Center in pre-9/11 flight sims. I once did it with a Cessna in Flight Simulator 95, which resulted in "This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down" moments after the crash.

Re:Must surely be correct

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a strong contender for "lowest point in the history of journalism about video games". At the very least, it's tied with the whole MS Flight Sim and 9/11 "controversy".

What about FOX's Mass Effect Se'XBox coverage?

Re:Must surely be correct

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't doubt that the free advertising had an important role in the decision, but the developers have stated that during the development of COD:MW2 the scene caused very strong feelings in those who played it. I think that this is what made Infinity Ward settle with the scene, and I agree with them. I think it's good and important that we can tell a story without worrying that some ahole make it a reality. If not, when my plan of world domination using a Weather Device it's finished and you all bow under my steel fist, you can blame the movies.

Re:Must surely be correct

[silanea]

What is the alternative? Not to shock people? Hell, literature would be a rather poor subject if authors had followed that reasoning. Yes, the airport scene is crass. Yes, I can understand that it is controversial to many people. Still it is a work of fiction. Nothing more. Fiction serves to entertain, and there was a time it also was intended to educate. And I do see MW2 in this tradition. It has the player face probably the biggest dilemma of them all: Does the end justify the means?

We see exactly this question asked right now across European media - though admittedly in a much less dire context, thank goodness - with the investigation into British PC Mark Kennedy's conduct. How far may the "good" go to fight the "bad"? May they break laws? If yes, which ones? May they violate ethical or moral conventions? MW2 may have chosen the most drastic scenario imaginable - killing those that you are supposed to protect - but the underlying issue is the same. Here in Germany just a while ago a law was snubbed by the supreme court that would have permitted the armed forces to shoot down hijacked passenger planes if they were being used as weapons akin to 9/11. So I really do not see why the game causes such a shit storm. Reality is far, far more grim.

Re:Must surely be correct

[rainmouse]

What is the alternative? Not to shock people? Hell, literature would be a rather poor subject if authors had followed that reasoning.

Perhaps you misunderstand what I meant and besides, there are many effective ways of shocking people without resorting to a tiresome marketing technique that ultimately damages the very industry you work in. I personally see characters in games as no more than game pieces, not dissimilar to chess pieces and attach to them roughly the same level of emotion; but to the uninitiated they see games apparently simulating slaughter and torture, turning their children into a murdering wave of emotionless sociopaths.

Activision may claim to be pushing the boundaries and fighting the good fight against censorship but really they are just in it for the immediate dollar signs and perhaps quite rightly so. The problem is that if they push the boundaries too hard and too fast you get a backlash causing things like:- http://www.gamestooge.com/2009/06/05/germany-bans-violent-games-completely/

Game developers still currently enjoy relative freedom in their creations and I for one would like to see it stay that way. In an ideal world developers would have complete freedom to create whatever content they want and cover it with appropriate warning stickers to compensate, but until that day events like the airport shooting scene ultimately give the morality crusaders ammunition and news headline real estate to put ever increasing pressure on politicians and take away that freedom.

Re:Must surely be correct

[Anonymous Coward]

You use words to tell a story, not a user-machine clicky interface.

Re:Must surely be correct

[Anonymous Coward]

I've played video games for most of my life, and as far as I'm concerned, the only way to load a gun is by pressing R. So unless I can run around an airport with my keyboard, I'm pretty sure there won't be any shootings...

Re:Must surely be correct

[hazah]

Maybe you do, but the rest of the human race has and is also using rhythms, music, pictures, and words to tell stories. In fact, anything that makes it from one mind to another is fair game. In the broader sense, it's just communication. The rock you're under must be small.

Re:Must surely be correct

[hazah]

but to the uninitiated they see games apparently simulating slaughter and torture, turning their children into a murdering wave of emotionless sociopaths.

Ok... but they are wrong on all of those counts as far as I can tell. Should we really cater to people who are so horribly misinformed about reality? Should we change our own? Or, maybe, just maybe, we should stop listening to the nonsense.

Re:Must surely be correct

[hazah]

You're sacrificing your index by using 'R'. How will you ever strafe right at the same time?! :)

Re:Must surely be correct

[mister_playboy]

You're sacrificing your index by using 'R'. How will you ever strafe right at the same time?! :)

I press R with my ring finger... I'm a Dvorák typist, you insensitive clod.

Re:Must surely be correct

[delinear]

Moreover, if MW2 is a realistic simulation of your airport security model, you probably need to begin by looking at your security model rather than MW2. They're seriously underestimating terrorists if they think they're incapable of working out that large_crowd_of_people == good_target, though.

Re:Must surely be correct

[sheehaje]

Damn right they are correct. Worse than MW2 is Frogger!

Re:Must surely be correct

[thisnamestoolong]

I agree. Attacking an airport is clearly such a unique idea that nobody would have ever been able to conceive of it had they not seen it in a video game first.

Re:Must surely be correct

[Anonymous Coward]

Or CNN's Palin's crosshairs adds causing the Tuscon shooting coverage?

Re:Must surely be correct

[MachineShedFred]

This asshole blowing himself up in an airport which happens to be in Moscow has as much to do with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare as the 9/11 hijackers flying into the WTC and the Pentagon had to do with the Tom Clancy novel where some asshole flies a jumbo into the Capitol Building during a joint session of Congress.

There's no causality here.

Re:Must surely be correct

[lxs]

Which coincidentally is more or less the position of Russia's president.

Re:Must surely be correct

[Anonymous Coward]

... Or in Algiers in 1993 [wikipedia.org]

Re:Must surely be correct

[Coren22]

which resulted in "This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down" moments after the crash.

That is actually rather funny. You did something illegal and the computer blamed it on the software :)

Re:Must surely be correct

[Coren22]

From that section of the article:

Jack Thompson said about the controversy, "The guy who shot his mouth off about it had no idea what the Hell he was talking about. This contrived controversy is absolutely ridiculous."

Holy crap, Jack Thompson defending video games? Is the world coming to an end? Oo, I think I just saw a pig fly by.

Re:Must surely be correct

[Dhalka226]

The morality crusaders will find ammunition whether you give it to them or not. If somebody shoots some people at school, it's because he played Doom. If a guy detonates a bomb in an airport, it's because they played a scene in MW2 where five guys went shooting people in an airport. By that example alone you can see the kind of tenuous logic these people are willing to employ. So fuck 'em. It might be worth trying to tip-toe around people who are actually being reasonable, but it's not at all worth it trying to tip-toe around people who will literally twist any event to support their agenda. Better at that point to take whatever creative license one thinks his game might benefit from since he's going to catch flak either way.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I also find it somewhat amusing the parts that people leave out about MW2. Like, for instance, nobody is forcing the player to shoot anybody. (In fact, the first time you start MW2 it asks you if you even want to play the scene AT ALL, but that's not what I'm talking about.) Or the fact that it is not nearly the most horrible thing that happens in that game. One might be able to defend--on some equally dubious grounds--Russia invading the United States because they found a terrorist shot in the head (hrm, but there were no policemen around who could have shot him?) who turned out to be an American, and all the subsequent civilian deaths that you absolutely know must have followed. But nuclear weapons were used. Because we don't actually see the skin melting off the innocent civilians' bodies, they make that out to be better.

Re:Must surely be correct

[meustrus]

This was my immediate reaction. Gosh, if terrorists can get useful planning and training information from a video game, why can't the Russian government? Assuming for a moment that there were even passing similarities with reality (which there weren't), the Russians should have been able to look at the game and analyze where their security practices were failing to prevent such an attack. If anyone were actually taking the "No Russian" scenario seriously, it would have been treated like a zero-day vulnerability to critical software and fixed ASAP.

The key difference between this story and most stories about violent games causing problems is that while most stories suggest that the violence in the games caused aggressive behavior, this story claims that the aggressive behavior was already there and the game was used as training material (unless someone wants to suggest that video games turn people into terrorists). This argument is much more ludicrous than the normal one. I suppose the terrorists also train with James Bond movies to figure out how to sneak into places? Why not burn all copies of Sun Tzu's Art of War just to make sure the terrorists can't train with it?

Re:Must surely be correct

[Anonymous Coward]

Activists target more fur than leather because it's safer to piss off rich women than bikers

Re:Must surely be correct

[Anonymous Coward]

Extremism is brought to you by desperation. The latter is either a reality or is indoctrinated*. I don't understand why people in charge (of policy, police, etc.) fail so hard to understand these basic principles.

How do you fix that is another problem and is specific to each area of the globe. For example, take the examples of Tamil Tigers** or suicide bombers in the Israeli-Palestinian problem. In both cases not only the cause is known (ie. reason people are desperate and have nothing to lose), but solution is available. What is stopping the solution is politicians.

* special case is of course mental illness, but that should account for extremely small number of actual extremists.
** I know that the government there thinks they have solved the problem by killing the rebels. But if underlying issues are still there, you will get another insurgency sooner rather than later.

Re:Must surely be correct

[silanea]

I personally see characters in games as no more than game pieces, not dissimilar to chess pieces and attach to them roughly the same level of emotion; but to the uninitiated they see games apparently simulating slaughter and torture, turning their children into a murdering wave of emotionless sociopaths.

Bottom line: Stupid people are stupid. That has nothing to do with the airport scene. Those people do not react to "amoral" things, they create amorality so they can bitch about how it ruins the world. Leave out the airport scene and you still have all those morons demanding the banishment of any kind of violent video game, along with anything that depicts or refers to sexuality, mocks religions, is anti-patriotic...

The problem is that if they push the boundaries too hard and too fast you get a backlash causing things like:- http://www.gamestooge.com/2009/06/05/germany-bans-violent-games-completely/

See above. Here in Germany the right-wing pseudo-christian conservative bloc has been waging a war on anything remotely offensive to their voters - and anything that can be publicly propped up as a scapegoat for social problems and political failure. This has nothing to do with how violent games actually are. The debate goes back all the way to the first GTA installment. After every school shooting a well-known choir of politicians, "experts" and self-proclaimed moral authorities (we use the term "Berufsentrüstete") sings the good old let's-ban-x song. When the first Tamagotchis came out some morons wanted to have them banned because they might have miseducated children about how to treat a pet. The very same people now rail against video games and pornography. They live in a blissful state of complete cognitive dissonance, and that is not going to change anytime soon. You cannot reason with these people, because they do not want to apply reason. Their stupidity serves them as a powerful tool. Ergo you cannot get them to compromise. We already have one of the strictest age-based rating systems in the world. German releases of violent games are usually massively crippled - no blood, people replaced by robots, enemies surrender instead of dying etc. And those punks still want to ban violence completely. We very nearly had paint-ball and similar games banned for adults. At the same time there is very little in restrictions for competitive shooters even though virtually every kid involved in such school killings was trained in such clubs and in most cases received access to weapons through this sport.

[...] events like the airport shooting scene ultimately give the morality crusaders ammunition and news headline real estate to put ever increasing pressure on politicians and take away that freedom.

So what is your plan? Defending freedom of speech by restricting speech? I do not see this working out.

Re:Must surely be correct

[silanea]

One thing I forgot: Those idiots are worried that terrorists

• might use MS Flight Simulator to train for 9/11 style plane hijackings,
• might use Google Maps and Streetview to scout out locations for attacks,
• might photograph train stations etc. to actually plan their mischief

and so on. Again, this has nothing to do with how violent or dangerous or realistic something actually is.

Re:Must surely be correct

[gknoy]

You're either sarcastic, or you clearly haven't played the games I have.

Sometimes it's a linear story, where I have little choice (such as the nuke event in the first Modern Warfare, COD4), but there are many games that convey an emotional perspective, and certainly tell a story. I'm sure nearly all of us have watched Saving Private Ryan. Now imagine [spoilers] that you've been playing the role of a marine in Iraq, trying to stop the detonation of a warhead. You're running away from ground zero of a probable nuke, when a friendly gets shot down. If you leave that pilot there, they'll die. You (and your transport of troops) are racing to the edge of a safe zone for the blast, and if you go back you probably won't make it. You can guess what happens. It's very visceral, as a player, because you have been treating this avatar as "you" for quite some time, and you very keenly feel the desire for safety... and yet, here you are, tasked with doing heroic stuff. These are the kinds of things that those characters would believably do -- after all, medal of honor recipients have done similarly foolhardy things.

I'm not sure how you could dispute that as telling a story.

Re:Must surely be correct

[gknoy]

The nuke launch in MW2 was done to do an EMP burst in space, disabling the attackers' electronics and communications structure. It was done by a rogue faction (and is in fact part of why your player and his allies are labeled as terrorists for the remainder of the game), and did not target population centers. The deaths that resulted were from other things breaking due to the EMP, rather than radiation or nuclear explosions. You'd need to watch the "in-space" mission again to see this more clearly, but it clearly detonates *over* the eastern seaboard, not on the ground.

Re:Must surely be correct

[gknoy]

....ddddrdddd....

Agreed, it's awkward ... but usually you're moving erratically to avoid fire, or sprinting for cover anyways in those games, it seems. :)

Re:Must surely be correct

[shutdown -p now]

I'm curious; so what solution is available for Israeli-Palestinian problem?

Re:Must surely be correct

[RockDoctor]

I'm curious; so what solution is available for Israeli-Palestinian problem?

Build a wall (to low orbit) around the area and man it with disinterested guards (Hindus, Buddhists, meso-American Indian animists, atheists, whoever as long as they're not followers of any of the Judaeo-Christian-Muslim monotheist sects) with orders to shoot anyone coming out AND anyone looking in.

Let them sort it out amongst themselves for a half-dozen generations (on the outside).

Demolish the wall and greet the inhabitants as "Wallites" and start to learn their language.

If we'd started on this in 1950, we'd be half-way through the cure by now.

Re:Must surely be correct

[afxgrin]

Hey, they might even read a Tom Clancy novel for inspiration.

Re:Must surely be correct

[silanea]

Good point, I completely forgot.

People who are afraid of something will see it everywhere because fear, like any strong emotion, displaces reason. In a literature class the lecturer casually, just in passing, referred to the death eaters in "Harry Potter" as a form of terrorism. What the hell?! Sure, when one looks at them closely some of the superficial criteria fit - they strike suddenly out of hiding, kill and quickly vanish again - but not in a million years would it have occurred to me to call them terrorists.

This incredibly overblown fear of those evil terrorists has for the last years been taking forms and levels that leave me dumbstruck.

This has been obvious for quite a while

[Maxo-Texas]

Any security barrier creates a clot of people which becomes a target.

You can protect the planes for the most part, but people are tougher.

Re:This has been obvious for quite a while

[Anonymous Coward]

choke points are the preferred target areas.....it doesn't take an Einstein to figure that out.

Re:This has been obvious for quite a while

[Anonymous Coward]

As if attacking people where they congregate is some sort of novel idea. Anybody with 2 brain cells could think of that - you don't need a game. Just an excuse to attack games.

Highly connected.

[cgenman]

For the record, in Modern Warfare 2, the terrorists are a group of people who gun down people in the middle of an airport with automatic guns. In real life, this guy blew himself up outside the terminal.

Obviously, very similar.

Re:Highly connected.

[alvinrod]

It's really sad that this is the best scapegoat they could drag out; but, because the majority of the population hasn't played the game, it'll fly.

Re:Highly connected.

[54mc]

Yea, and in the game, the terrorists didn't speak Russian!

Re:Highly connected.

[stms]

For the record, in Modern Warfare 2, the terrorists are a group of people who gun down people in the middle of an airport with automatic guns. In real life, this guy blew himself up outside the terminal.

Obviously, very similar.

Not only that but it's gross that a Russian Journalist would compare any act of terrorism in Russia to the what happened in MW2. The terrorist in MW2 were actually Russians trying to start a war with the U.S.

Re:Highly connected.

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously they made the level too difficult, so the terrorists decided not to try this in RL and went for something simpler instead.

If only Activision had had the sense to make it only possible to complete the level by giving out free hugs, this tragedy could have been averted!

Re:Highly connected.

[Anonymous Coward]

For the remaining Russian media, that's more similarity than they're usually allowed to print.

Re:Highly connected.

[Anonymous Coward]

And, as they point out, the scene was not even in the version sold in Russia.

Re:Highly connected.

[TheMidget]

It's really sad that this is the best scapegoat they could drag out; but, because the majority of the population hasn't played the game, it'll fly.

You mean, goatse can fly? I though that was monkeys?

Re:Highly connected.

[gknoy]

The terrorist in MW2 were actually Russians trying to start a war with the U.S.

More accurately, they were Russians working with the villains (US general gone crazy) to frame the blame on the US by making it look like it was a US operation. Tricksy hobbitses indeed.

What we all already know...

[sysusr]

Games have never been the problem. The number of shootings, bombings etc in a country doesn't grow proportionally to the number of people exposed to violent video games. They grow based on the culture of the country in which they occur in. The US has a particularly high number (overall and per capita), but countries with similar living conditions have almost none.

Russia has always had a problem with terrorists and various ethnic groups. Anyone blaming a game for something like this is desperately grasping for straws and hits.

Blame Everybody!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it always "video games", or "guns", or "lack of gun control", or "he was beaten as a kid", or some other crap. I got news for these "scientists" - none of these things *cause* the action. The cause has more to do with governments doing stuff people don't like, and doing enough of it that some minority of people need to show their displeasure in the extreme. Or people just snapping for whatever reason. How many times does it have to be re-learned that correlation does not equal causation. Bad things like this happen because there are warped minds (compared to the average mind) out there. It is so much easier to blame someone or something only peripherally related than it is to actually "fix" the root causes. This is security theater in a different dress.

Re:Blame Everybody!

[RogueyWon]

I was with you for your first sentence. You're absolutely right, people do have an unfortunate tendancy to come up with excuses for the perpetrator in these cases. Unfortunately, you then go on to ruin it by coming out with another excuse - "the Government made me".

I think I've come to the conclusion that some people are just evil, murderous fuckwits and will sieze upon any opportunity to cause death and destruction. Free will and all that.

To quote the text message receved from a friend...

[dohzer]

"Russian airport bombed. Looks so much like MW2"

That's exactly what he sent a few hours after it happened.

failure of imagination

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hey we have no imagination but the people that do, clearly must be responsible for everything bad we did not imagine !!!"

just like MW2

[dnaumov]

So:

The attack wasn't really a suicide bomber, it was 5 gunmen?
One of the gunmen was actually an american?
The atack was carried out to the music of Hans Zimmer?

Just like MW2, alright...

Re:just like MW2

[noidentity]

The atack was carried out to the music of Hans Zimmer?

You know, you've got me thinking about him. He's done the music for dozens of movies that involve violence. I think Mr. Zimmer should take some of the blame for terrorism.

Re:just like MW2

[will_die]

We get rid of him and Basil Poledouris and most of violent movie music will be taken care of.

Blame the video games

[sltd]

Blaming video games for this type of violence is like blaming spoons for making Rosie O'Donnell fat.

Re:Blame the video games

[Canazza]

I see what you did there... Rosie O'Donnell didn't even USE a spoon. Just went in with her face.

Re:Blame the video games

[TheMidget]

Spoons don't make whales fat, food does.

Re:Blame the video games

[Riceballsan]

Amusing though in this article for once the person dosn't sound like he's blaming the video game for the terrorists being psycotic killers.

"I think those who have been radicalized already – that is supposed in this case jihadists, Al-Qaeda or other kind – they look at the games and say these games will serve them to train.'"

This here is actually legitimate statement. I would call anyone who accused doom of turning the columbine kids into murderers idiots, They would have shot up and killed as many as they could with or without the game, no game is going to turn a nonviolent person violent. But a game could allow for a psycotic killer to practice and come up with a more efficiant route or better strategy then what he would have come up with on pen and paper. Now honestly I don't see a point to sensoring every environment that looks like a real one isn't a sane solution, terrorists would just make mods with actual maps of their intended location.

So in other words . . .

[OverlordQ]

. . . they're admitting incompetence? If the game truly influenced this action, then shouldn't they have taken precautions?

Since they didn't, isn't it their fault then?

Pitiable attempt at finger pointing

[proteanguy]

Yea...that is exactly what this is...a very pitiable attempt to find someone to blame... I mean how on earth can a video game be held responsible for being the inspiration to extremists...Extremists do what they do an the sole blame lies with themselves...

Training sim?

[Seumas]

They mention that it's used both as inspiration and as a training sim for terrorists. How does that work? I mean, the No Russian level is very linear and controlled. It's all on rails. Further, you don't have to kill people to beat the level. You can opt not to fire your gun at all.

Re:Training sim?

[RogueyWon]

If I was engaged in fighting a war, or a counter-insurgency operation, then I know one thing. There is nothing I would love more than for my enemy to be using the Call of Duty games as training sims. Just think of all the fantastic lessons they could learn from them:

- Don't worry about taking a few bullets. As long as you can duck behind cover, you'll be perfectly fine in 5 seconds or so.

- Charging through an artillery barrage, mine-field or other incredibly dangerous intensely dangerous situation is absolutely fine, provided you can work out the precise sequence of steps that the developers wanted you to take. There'll be convenient cover every 10 paces or so.

- Enemy soldiers will employ a combination of two cunning tactics. Some of them will run straight towards you, firing sporadically. Others will hide behind a piece of cover, which they will stick their heads above at predictable 3 second intervals. Don't worry too much about numbers; you should be able to take down a dozen or so at a time.

- If all else fails, hole up on a hill against overwhelming waves of enemies. It might get sticky for a while, but after 5 minutes or so, stirring music will play and reinforcements will arrive to save you.

Re:Training sim?

[hyperlexic]

plant your claymore mine on the stairs leading up. doesn't matter which upstairs, just find some stairs.

Lapse

[symes]

I seem to remember a quote from a Russian official something along the lines that one of the reasons for the attack, or at least something that facilitated it, was lapses in security at the airport. Add in the grievances in Chechnya and similar conflict zones and, well, there's your "reason". How MW2 figures in all this, except for some oblique tenuous simlarities, is beyond me. MW2 responsible for attacks at Russian airport? That is bonkers. If people have issues over violent games then they should be honest and say that, not make tenuous connections with pretty disturbing real world events.

Youtube.

[bronney]

For those that missed the bombing in Moscow, you can catch it here to enjoy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NMnnMRWJ-0

Re:Youtube.

[Anonymous Coward]

Enjoy?

Re:Youtube.

[Anonymous Coward]

Enjoy is hardly the word that I would have used, but thanks for the link.

Cause

[Anonymous Coward]

The game would be the one responsible in the event that everyone who played it had an uncontrollable urge to acquire heavy machine guns and attack the nearest airport. This is clearly not the case.

Blame sex

[Anonymous Coward]

It might generate terrorists.

Not the first time and it will not be the last ...

[jobst]

For goodness sake, the word "copy cat" would not even exist ..... everywhere you look its happening!
Just because its a game and the game is about violence its bad. WTF?
Humans are copy machines, it is a well known fact (evolution works that way).

Obligatory.

[Seumas]

In Soviet Russia, Modern Warfare 2 links Russian media with Moscow bombing!

Google Street View: The Game

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm shocked no one has utilized Google Street View in such a way as to form a game environment out of it.

Red alert!

[archont]

Grab yer guns and prepare for red dawn! The Russians are coming! Ramirez, take out that aircraft carrier with your grenade!

Shut up

[aaaaaaargh!]

In my humble opinion, people working on projects called "Future Terrorism Project" at research institutes with names like "the Foundation for Defense of Democracies" should just shut up. I mean, really, shut up!

"Walid Phares" isn't he a character in some game?

[Provocateur]

An NPC, someone who stands in line at airports, complaining loudly about how expensive it is these days to fly anywhere out of Moscow?

Charles Whitman

[Akratist]

Charles Whitman, in 1966, shot and killed 16 people on the University of Texas at Austin campus. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman) Again, in 1966. I can only speculate -- did people back then blame pinball machines for the violence? Or did they just realize that when someone takes it in their mind to kill someone, they're going to go kill them, and they don't need a video game as their model?

Re:Charles Whitman

[conares]

I'm guessing they blamed TV.

And I blame mario...

[hipp5]

for my high consumption of 'shrooms.

right

[boxxa]

ive been playing violent video games for years. i not once have considered my self suddenly skilled at anything other than witty comebacks at 12 year olds for all the "training" i've done in games.

Oh please media...

[JustAnotherIdiot]

When is the media going to stop blaming video games for every single little thing that goes wrong in our world? Look, I hate MW2 and other FPS games filled with stupid 5 year olds and cheating autistic kids as much as the next guy, but this is just freaking stupid.

Tom Clancy - 911

[Anonymous Coward]

And, when the planes hit the twin towers, I had just finished reading a Tom Clancy novel where a 747 crashed into a special session of Congress... let's ban Tom, too.

Re:To quote the text message receved from a friend

[nigelo]

"Russian airport bombed. Looks so much like MW2"

Hm, he could have said "Russian airport bombed. Looks so much like WW2", which could lead to the banning of all kinds of popular video games.

We all better hope...

[XJHardware]

That nobody watches old movies and sees Black Sunday (1977).

MW2 (single-player) trains you

[Anonymous Coward]

to shoot at pop-up targets while travelling down linear corridors. It trains you, in fact, that airports and other locations are nothing more than one long purely linear corridor.

It trains you to never look behind you. It trains you to never worry about being outflanked, or doing any flanking yourself.

It trains you that 'enemies' will continually pour in from the same spawn points unless you advance beyond them while under heavy fire.

It is practically an 'anti-reality simulator.'

The newspapers are always right!

[Drakkenmensch]

Because nobody in the history of terrorism had ever thought of bringing a bomb to an airpo- oh wait.

http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/access/603120512.html?dids=603120512:603120512&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:AI&type=historic&date=May+20%2C+1974&author=&pub=Los+Angeles+Times&desc=London+Airport+Bomb+Hurts+2%2C+Panics+Tourists&pqatl=google

GoArmy.com?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it's all Activision's fault, because the US military would never do something so stupid as to release a realistic virtual reality military training game for free to the entire world....

http://www.goarmy.com/downloads/games.html

backasswardsness

[moogaloonie]

I think it's obvious that real world violence is the primary cause of violent media. These violent acts shouldn't be allowed to happen in a world where impressionable young writers and producers might be influenced to produce violent fiction.

I must be old...

[JDRipper]

Every time I see MW2 mentioned in a video game article I think of Mech Warrior 2.

Re:I must be old...

[phreakincool]

Same thing here. When I ask the squirts at Gamestop if they have any AC titles, they think I'm talking about Assassin's Creed. Armored Corps FTW!