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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.
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.
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.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
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.
The ______ Agenda
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.
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"Russian airport bombed. Looks so much like MW2"
That's exactly what he sent a few hours after it happened.
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...
Blaming video games for this type of violence is like blaming spoons for making Rosie O'Donnell fat.
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.
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!
for my high consumption of 'shrooms.