Leaked Modern Warfare 2 Footage Causes Outrage 543
eldavojohn writes "Game Politics makes note of criticism over leaked footage from the upcoming Modern Warfare 2 release. (Spoiler warning.) Footage shows the player engaged in killing civilians with terrorists (relevant video begins at about 1:50, second source in case of DMCA). Several game sites are asking if this is taking things too far. Probably just advertising at work, but the footage is indeed controversial — the question remains whether or not it is out of context."
WOW (Score:5, Insightful)
someone is managing the launch of this game really well....
anonymous (Score:5, Insightful)
and this is different from running rampant in grand theft auto killing innocent citizens .... how ... ?
Bah! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just a ploy by Infinity Ward to make everyone forget about the dedicated server fiasco!
Good name (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like naming it "Modern Warfare" was spot-on.
Re:Good name (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds like modern warfare (Score:5, Insightful)
Terrorists mix in amongst civilians and some say even use them as shields, and a military response never has pinpoint accuracy despite the best technology.
This is happening all over the world in modern warfare.
The weirdly sanitized worlds of war games causes me more outrage. If real war is hell, why cant games have elements of that?
OK, new policy. (Score:5, Insightful)
So? (Score:4, Insightful)
I heard there's a game where you can carjack people and then run them over with their own car, leaving blood streaks on the road. You can then pull your car up to a prostitute, pay for her services, then get out of the car and cave her skull in with a baseball bat and take your money back.
Kinda makes the getting shot with a gun seem a little nicer by comparison.
Probably intentional. (Score:2, Insightful)
And the more controversial the product, the more that the people want to see what's up with it. Bam! Sales!
And that's the American Way.
Re:Heads Up and Activision Statement (Score:5, Insightful)
Life is controversial, people do horrible things to each other, and sometimes part of games and movies is depicting those horrible things.
To me this just says that games are finally reaching a level where they're willing to make a statement and are willing to make the audience uncomfortable to do it, they aren't treating significant subjects with kid gloves anymore. Movies have been making the audience uncomfortable about horrific things for a long time, a lot of the time by tricking them into enjoying it on some level (combining nudity and violence for example...), in this instance a game is doing the same by combining completing the game with slaughtering civilians. That in and of itself isn't anything new but there's a pretty big difference between being explicitly told by the game to open fire on a crowd of innocent people and finish off the wounded afterwards in a serious situation and GTA/Saints row style blood comedy.
Re:anonymous (Score:3, Insightful)
Probably because gta was not attempting to mimic an actual event and there's a level of cartoonishness within the character designs and there actions that makes it more easily for an average viewer to separate it as a game.
Just a video game... (Score:2, Insightful)
The critics need to hear (Score:5, Insightful)
the words of Robert E. Lee:
Meh Lame-oh (Score:1, Insightful)
Modern Warfare (Score:5, Insightful)
Post-Modern Warfare
Modern Warfare
Romantic Age Warfare
Victorian Era Warfare
Industrial Revolution Era Warfare
Age of Enlightenment Warfare
Age of Discovery Warfare
Ottoman Empire Warfare
Middle Ages Warfare
Dark Age Warfare
Roman Empire Warfare
Ancient Greece Warfare
New Kingdom Warfare
Old Kingdom Warfare
Mesopotamian Warfare
Obviously this sort of thing is a modern problem due to our culture of violence. It's only recently that our soldiers and the people they were fighting resorted to detestable acts in the furtherance of their causes.
Re:anonymous (Score:5, Insightful)
People want the sugar coated war they see on TV. Very few people would support the war if they knew what it actually meant.
Nothing new here... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes the player character isn't the hero. Get over it.
Well (Score:5, Insightful)
Freedom Fighters? (Score:3, Insightful)
Context people, context (Score:3, Insightful)
Before jumping to conclusions I'd like to see the context for this scene. Infinity Ward have done a bang-up job with the franchise so far so I'll cut them some slack by not taking things out of context thank you very much.
Re:Modern Warfare (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, we all know that the Romans and Greeks never slaughtered all the residents of a rebellious city upon taking it, and raped and enslaved the women who remained. No, nothing like that happened in ancient times at all. Combat was noble, and only men with weapons in their hands were killed, nobly and civilly.
Re:Good name (Score:2, Insightful)
You don't get out much, do you? Seriously, hit up Michell Malkin or Big Hollywood or dozens of other conservative sites to see how prissy American conservatives get when John Wayne doesn't always win the day.
Re:The critics need to hear (Score:1, Insightful)
It is well that Warcraft is so terrible - lest we should grow too fond of it.
Or perhaps not even the bad guy (Score:5, Insightful)
Just someone who is willing to do what is necessary, even if it is distasteful.
In the real world you DO run in to situations where the idea of "greater good" has to be considered. You do something that taken in isolation might be purely bad, but looked at from a larger context was necessary to prevent an even greater evil. It isn't always a simple choice, and sometimes there isn't a right choice, just maybe a less wrong one.
Nothing wrong with a game wanting to have the player in that situation. That is, in fact, the sort of thing that special forces or CIA officers may face.
If that kind of thing doesn't appeal to you for entertainment, nothign wrong with that, don't play the game. But I can't see why people would get mad.
Content Warning... (Score:5, Insightful)
Call of Duty is arguably my favorite series of games (at least the installments made by Infinity Ward), and part of what made Modern Warfare so powerful was the unflinching portrayal of war. A portrayal where even the good guys do bad things from time to time and the consequences of actions are brutally rendered. Would the game have been nearly as powerful if you'd had the option to skip the sequence where you crawl out of a downed helicopter and died of radiation poisoning from a nuclear explosion because it was "potentially disturbing"?
Slaughtering the innocent? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:OK, new policy. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Probably intentional. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:anonymous (Score:3, Insightful)
and this is different from running rampant in grand theft auto killing innocent citizens .... how ... ?
Maybe because in GTA its evil evil criminals, because those who protest were too concerned about hidden sex games to complain about GTA. If you RTFA, you'll notice the scene is clearly remniscent of an actual event, and you play one of the killers. Kind of insensitive to the victims. I suppose some real life killings might resemble things players CAN do in GTA, but GTA is pretty exagerated (I've never heard about a carjacker hijacking a helicopter and using the blades to mow down everyone in times square, then spawn a tank and blow up cops). Moreover, -you- choose to do the killings of innocent people there, wheras in this game, it's part of the plot.
Some are going to see it as glorifying a real life massacre, fewer are going to see GTA as doing the same thing.
Furthermore, when exactly did everyone agree killing innocent civilians in GTA was completely a-ok? I've got no problem with it, but this isn't exactly clear hypocrisy, plenty of the people reacting to this also react to GTA.
AC-130 mission (Score:2, Insightful)
No killing to be seen here (Score:1, Insightful)
These are animated polygons. There are no soldiers, there are no civilians, there is no killing, no one has been harmed. If you think otherwise, you need psychiatric help. It isn't real. I don't care if you get to decapitate children and make soup bowls out of their skulls with which to drink the blood of vivisected virgins. It doesn't matter. I repeat, it isn't real. Until we create an AI that becomes self-aware, these polygonal representations have no rights and our treatment of them is irrelevant.
Slap a rating on it and treat it like you would any other piece of media.
I'm always amazed at how evil and brutal human beings are to each other and yet we sit around and get outraged over things that aren't real, while generally sitting on our collective asses when it comes to doing the same in the real world. People need to just STFU when it comes to fiction. Get upset about real life and do something about it.
Re:anonymous (Score:3, Insightful)
Besides, COD6 is approaching photo-realism while GTA is clearly very cartoony.
So, the number of pixels on your screen and the precision in which the colors are calculated determines if a game is ok or not ok?
Re:Modern Warfare (Score:4, Insightful)
Without reading the GPs posting history, I suspect there's a good probability he's using irony in the dictionary sense of the word.
Virtual civilians (Score:3, Insightful)
I am not trolling, but you might want to add "Virtual" civilians to your sentences. Yes, even though I am vegan I cannot resist shooting the bunny in Arma 2 when it is hopping around on the battlefield.......
Shooting virtual things is not the same.....
Re:Probably intentional. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think at least some of the people that want realism are referring to the physics mainly. In any case, I don't particularly enjoy games because of how much they resemble reality. Same for movies. I know the difference between a real war and a game, and I'm glad there IS a difference.
Re:anonymous (Score:5, Insightful)
Because a gangsters are the bad guys. People are alright with to accept bad people doing bad things (some people may refer to it as conditioning, but I like to avoid labels that have connotations). When soldiers - good guys - do bad things it bothers normal people because its outside their comfort zone. Soldiers and other members of the armed forces are heroes in the eyes of many - up there with firefighters if not higher - so the outrage scales similarly.
Personally, I have a deep respect for the armed forces and the sacrifices they make for civilians each and every day. However, it seems that the anecdotal soldiers don't ask questions and politicians don't answer questions has made the world a less safer place.
Re:Probably intentional. (Score:3, Insightful)
As the scene progresses, you see whoever is controlling the player shoot civilians that are writhing on the ground in pain. I don't think that anybody starts shooting back at the player until the end of the scene
I have to admit that this seems MUCH more uncomfortable to me than simple observation... say if you were in the role of a civilian who's witnessing this. Putting the player in the terrorists' shoes at the beginning of the game and basically forcing them to commit these acts before they can get to the "real" game is... intense. I'm sure that there are plenty of people who aren't bothered by this (because it's a game, duh), but I am not one of them. However, this seems like an interesting setup for the game, and it does show that the game may be trying to... you know, influence people. The closer a game gets to stirring up emotions, even if it is fear or horror, the closer we're getting to seeing games as art.
Of course, whether or not this is real is another question. No doubt it LOOKS like the real game, but the quality of the video/sound was bad enough that it could be some sort of mod somebody made for the original COD4. If it is real, Infinity Ward is definitely going to take some intense heat.
Re:anonymous (Score:3, Insightful)
PTSD and depression? Video games are sledom that engrossing, and I doubt ever will be.
The emotional impact just will never really be the same as a real battle. You can get used to being shot at, or explosions going off around you. Its a whole different ball game when those shots and explostions actually take out people you know, and any one of them could be you. A virtual character dies, its a virtual character. Its not someone you spent months seeing around, working with, etc.
Simply knowing that "death" means restarting the level, or at worst, the game, blunts anything more than the most momentary of emotional impacts. However, in a real war, when someone dies, its game over. You may know that going in, but once you have seen it a few times, I have to imagine that it brings the reality home pretty hard.
Think of something smaller... something painful like grabbing a hot pot handle. Knowing it might be hot is one thing. Grabbing it and being burned however, it makes a connection with that knowledge that will have you a lot more hesistant to grab pot handles without checking, far more than just being reminded that they can burn you.
The video game simply can't provide the same physical and emotional feedback as real war, and I think you will find those are what cause PTSD and depression far more than the situation itself. A video game can put you in a very realistic seeming environment, but its not an environment that can actually hurt you.
-Steve
Re:anonymous (Score:4, Insightful)
Really wish they'd release an updated version of Carmageddon. Loved the physics of it. And the splatter was cool, too.
Re:The critics need to hear (Score:4, Insightful)
My question is this: why DO people enjoy games simulating things that ought to be horrific to us?
Because play, at all levels, is based on training for the future. Puppies play fight, chase, hunt, and hump because those are all things they need to be able to do as adults. Humans are the same way. We play at running a house, at being parents, at hunting/escaping, and yes, we play at warfare. Even organized sports, for the most part, boil down to ritualized tribal warfare or atleast competition.
What people don't realize is that playing violent video games today is no different from playing cowboys and indians 20 years ago. It's done to satisfy the same instincts and desires, which is to prepare the brain for situations that are rare, but dangerous.
Re:Probably intentional. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Probably intentional. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think your puppy example is a good one (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason being that dogs and cats, despite being much mentally simpler animals, still can clearly separate play fighting and real fighting. My cat still likes to play fight, despite being old. He'll play chase the laser dot, and chew on my arm and so on. However, he doesn't hurt me, he doesn't try to cause actual damage. He's playing, and it is a clear separation.
Same deal with humans. We can play at things that we don't want to actually do. You can play a war game without becoming a violent killer. You are capable of telling the difference between real and play.
Re:anonymous (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, war sucks. But sometimes it is very necessary to defend ones life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, no matter what nation they live in.
[sigh] Everyone understands that, except for the most extreme pacifists. What many people don't seem to understand is that just because a particular war is sometimes necessary, it does not follow that every war is always necessary. Specifically, it's been quite a long time since the US or any of the great powers has fought a necessary war, and yet somehow we keep finding wars to fight.
As a medic in Desert Storm, I was quite annoyed that the "video game war" they showed on CNN bore no apparent relation to the bloody mess I saw. If more realistic, modern video games make people think about what war actually looks like on the sharp end, well, good. Unfortunately, as your post makes plain, there will always be people who don't get the message.
Re:Probably intentional. (Score:4, Insightful)
So your thesis is that everything fictional is acceptable, not only from a legal perspective but also such that it may not be criticised or the subject of moral or ethical censure?
I don't think you understand free speech. Free speech doesn't mean "free from all consequences", it means "free from legal consequences". If you say something which disgusts me, it is not inconsistent with "free" speech for me to express my disgust and encourage others to do the same (in fact, it is consistent with my corresponding right to free speech).
People saying that this footage disgusts them is not only legitimate, it's healthy and (IMHO) reassuring.
Furthermore, you seem to suggest that the player has no level of investment or involvement in the events that occur inside modern games, which is patently wrong.
Re:Probably intentional. (Score:5, Insightful)
what do we do if large numbers of people do buy the game and grow up thinking this type of thing is 'just how the world works'?
People aren't a blank slate waiting for the media to tell them how reality works. Thousands of years of evolution have left the vast majority of us with an innate moral sense that largely precludes killing except in very unusual circumstances. The few psychopaths who decide that killing is OK because they saw it in a video game have things wrong with them that simply keeping them away from video games won't fix.
Re:anonymous (Score:3, Insightful)
Many people who understand war support going to war for some causes, defense of your freedom being a very good one. But whatever the current motive for the war in Afghanistan is, very few people would consider it an adequate motive for war if they know what war is actually like.
Re:Probably intentional. (Score:1, Insightful)
You mean like America's Army?
Re:Probably intentional. (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, what the fuck? Are you telling me, than you've never read, enjoyed, or engaged in ANY kind of fictional endeavor, game, novel, comic book the involved a crime, or something tasteless or horrible? Are you telling me that by playing monopoly, I will become more likely to want to financially destroy people? Are you saying that because I read Frankenstein I will want to 'play God' as it were?
No, that's not what I said so I won't respond to this point.
People playing video games KNOW they are playing video games. They voluntarily purchase the game, or they voluntarily take up the controller at their friends house. They have not been conned, or duped. They are not under any kind of direct emotional manipulation to fool them otherwise.
Where did I say anyone was FORCING anyone else to play anything? I was merely observing that to condemn something like this brings out the knee-jerk "free" speech brigade, of which you appear to be a flag bearer, who demand speech which is not only free from legal consequences but free from criticism or condemnation. I KNOW that they KNOW they are playing video games. In a few years time, I will still find it disturbing if a human being can sit there with a virtual but totally convincing image of another human being who is at their mercy and choose to kill that virtual human. That is my opinion, and I don't think that my expression of it or others' distaste at the notion of this part of this game in any sense impinges on anyone's freedom of speech.
If you are so cognitively and emotionally weak that you cannot separate from reality behavior in a fictional setting, the content of that setting is far from the problem.
If people didn't engage emotionally with the actions they carry out in games, why would they contain elements plainly designed to provoke an emotional response? Put differently, if there is such a separation, why not have the player kill anonymous non-civilians in this game, or aliens, or robots? Because people emotionally respond to realism, and terrorists killing civilians in an airport is pretty realistic and believable. Would you be concerned about a kid that constantly drew pictures of themself hurting others? Or an adult who spent their whole time watching the most sadistic and violent porn possible? Apparently not, because they 'know it's not real'. Note once again that 'concerned' does not equal 'should be legally banned'.
Furthermore, if you think video games somehow apply to the crowded theater caveat of free speech, you are without a doubt, a complete fucking moron.
I don't know what the fuck you're fucking talking about, so apparently I am indeed a fucking moron. I do gather that you are assuming that everyone on this site in American, which would probably put you in the same category. Hail, fellow fucking moron.
Re:Probably intentional. (Score:3, Insightful)
what do we do if large numbers of people do buy the game and grow up thinking this type of thing is 'just how the world works'?
People aren't a blank slate waiting for the media to tell them how reality works. Thousands of years of evolution have left the vast majority of us with an innate moral sense that largely precludes killing except in very unusual circumstances. The few psychopaths who decide that killing is OK because they saw it in a video game have things wrong with them that simply keeping them away from video games won't fix.
I know people aren't a blank slate, and I don't believe that anyone is going to go and kill anyone else because of a computer game. But what does concern me is that if things like this are a part of our culture, then people become desensitised to it in real life. For example, I can imagine that there might be less concern or opposition to military actions overseas which involved the killing of civilians if various aspects of our popular culture conveyed this activity as a cultural norm. No one game or movie or TV show or talk radio host will be responsible for that, but I think it is appropriate, and healthy, that when a game or similar does portray this it is noted that such activities are reprehensible.
As for 'thousands of years of evolution', that's a long bow. I'm fairly confident that if we ran out of food tomorrow you'd find our good ol' killing instincts are as strong as they ever were.
PS Thanks for quoting me in such a way as to make me look like an hysterical "think of the children" type rather than someone asking a hypothetical question.
Re:WOW (Score:5, Insightful)
I loaded 84,000 pounds of high explosives on F-111's during Desert Storm. Does that make me a killer? Yes.
Does playing Mech Warrior make me want to kill people? NO.
Get some perspective.
Re:Probably intentional. (Score:2, Insightful)