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Battlefield 3 Banned In Iran
dotarray writes "Iranian gamers hoping to get their hands on Battlefield 3 will be sorely disappointed, as the country has officially banned EA's latest shooter. Why? The game features an American war force launching an assault on Iranian capital city Tehran."
Pretty sure a shooter involving taking down the Trade Centre would be banned in the USA.
Given the current USA/NATO warmongering mutters re Iran they probably view it as an attempt to get people used to the idea of the USA invading Iran.
Americans already consider _real_ war to be a game.
Maybe the Americans you hang out with, chief. There are plenty who have seen it first-hand who think otherwise.
I want to know if EA/DICE paid money to the Iranian government.
All weapons appearing in the game (sp and mp) are licensed, meaning the owners got paid for permission to use the guns likeness. The KH2002 is a bullpup assault rifle designed and produced by the (government run ) Iranian defense industry which appears in the game as a usable weapon. Who did EA/DICE pay to license this gun? Is this in violation of any embargo, considering there is a complete ban on any weapons exports (presumably including designs) from Iran?
I'm still holding out for a game about Italian-American plumbers from a Japanese perspective.
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
You know, when I played World at War, and I'm playing the final Russian missions where you're attacking Berlin and storming the Reichstag and all that, all I could think about was that, in real life, those German soldiers defending Berlin were mostly 14-16 year old boys and 40-60 year old men. Not only were they completely untrained, but they were using horribly made weapons (worse even than many of the later war year manufactured Japanese weapons). The Volkssturm weapons showed just how desperate the situation was: for example the Volkssturmgewehr VG.1-5 (http://world.guns.ru/rifle/autoloading-rifles/de/vg1-5-e.html) and the Volkssturmkarabiner VK.98(http://world.guns.ru/rifle/autoloading-rifles/de/vk9-e.html).
Off topic, I know, but with a little knowledge of history, these games have a lot more impact and a lot more emotion in them. If people knew a little bit more about history, we would have games such as what you and I want, where we get to play as the Germans. However, it has become PC to dehumanize the Germans and the Wehrmacht particularly, and downplay the fact that many Germans and most of the military weren't fighting for Hitler, or an Aryan nation without Jews, they were fighting for what pretty much every soldier fights for: their family, their country, and their comrades.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
However, it has become PC to dehumanize the Germans and the Wehrmacht particularly, and downplay the fact that many Germans and most of the military weren't fighting for Hitler, or an Aryan nation without Jews, they were fighting for what pretty much every soldier fights for: their family, their country, and their comrades.
This is intentional. If people understand that the Germans were just like us, they would understand that we are subject to the same forces that the Germans were. With that awareness, we might look around us and see what is happening. If we learn that they control us by manipulating our allegiances to family, country, and comrades, then we're less likely to be affected by such manipulation in the future.
It's an uncomfortable truth we have to accept if we're going to stop atrocities. Most people, in the right circumstances are fascists. Consider the Milgram experiment, 65% of people will obey an order to kill a man on the flimsiest of pretexts because of their deference to authority. Or the Stanford prison experiment, where people who took roles of authority became cruel simply by taking that role. We have to be aware of these tendencies in ourselves, and reject them. Do not accept or obey any more authority than is absolutely necessary.
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