Posted on 08/24/2010 7:38:42 PM PDT by Pan_Yan
By allowing players to assume the role of Taliban fighters killing U.S. troops, Redwood City-based Electronic Arts may have crossed the line with its latest first-person shooter game, a line that Mountain View resident Karen Meredith says was drawn with the blood of soldiers like her only son.
"I don't see how shooting soldiers based on real Americans is entertainment while people are dying every day for this country,'' said Meredith, whose son, Army Lt. Ken Ballard, was killed in Iraq in 2004. "How can they say it's OK for someone to play the Taliban? You'll have people sitting at home, drinking beer, shooting at American soldiers, maybe missing, then starting over. Well, Ken didn't have a chance to start over.''
With the Oct. 12 release of "Medal of Honor" already generating blog buzz and pre-order waiting lists, EA is banking on the game's powerful narrative, realistic effects and multiplayer features to help the company regain some of the niche heft it once enjoyed.
With an Afghanistan backdrop and the option to play good guy or bad, gamers like Fernando Angeles can't wait to get their hands on the game. "It's fun killing people,'' said the itchy-fingered 13-year-old standing outside a San Jose GameStop store. "I get to roam around and feel like soldiers feel. I've played the bad guys before, but this will be even better because it's based on the real thing. You don't want to hurt other Americans, but you've got to win the game.
"Besides,'' the teenager said, "it's just a game. You're not really hurting anyone.''
Ballard's mother would disagree.
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
Stop playing video games and go read a book.
It can be cathartic to engage an enemy that can sometimes be elusive - and blow the snot out of him.
Semper Fidelis
We get it. It's brain-dead stupid obvious, like all computer gaming. And in this case, for this subject, at this time, in this country, it's wrong.
Do YOU get it, idiot?
Degenerate. I f I say anything else I’ll get banned.
Ok maybe, but personally I think that families of hero warriors should be considered.
Did you know that at the beginning of WWII only about 20% of the soldiers could bring themselves to shoot at another human being? Did you know that they had to desensitize them by having them shoot at human outlines and practice bayoneting on dummies? Did you know that using desensitization techniques like that they raised the rate to 95% by Vietnam?
Now, how much less desensitized to REAL killing are today’s youth after “killing” each other on super realistic video games? How many of them have never been hunting or been to a working farm and actually killed an animal and understand what it means?
Some even had bows and rubber tipped arrows, and feathered headdresses!!!
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
As an avid BF2 player, my Kalashnikov killed plenty of Marines. There is an American flag in front of my house, I keep myself geopolitically aware and I have been a Libertarian Conservative since 1999. It’s just a game people.
As an active duty member of the military, let me agree with you. The Call of Duty series games and Medal of Honor games are highly popular with the troops. Of course, Modern Warfare 1 and 2 both have troops versus terrorists in multiplayer as well, and MW 1 has been out for over 5 years.
All of the people on this thread, talking about how “offensive” this is to the troops, are ignorant. I can guarantee you that three fourths of the troops below E-6 have either Modern Warfare 1 or 2. In the multiplayer game, playing as a terrorist simply allows you to distinguish between friendly and enemy soldiers. I guess that troops versus Hippies or Redcoats weren’t as popular in testing.
It’s no different than Call of Duty: World at War. In multiplayer, it randomly assigns you to play as the Americans, Japanese, Soviets, or Nazi Germans in multiplayer depending on the map (it’s always US vs Japan or Germany vs Russia). Guess that makes me a Communist/Nazi/Imperial Japanese warmonger, according to everyone’s logic here.
I don’t own any of these video games. I’m too old for that crap. When I do shoot guns, I shoot the REAL ones I own with REAL ammunition at the range. But some of the reactions on this website are ridiculous and obviously uninformed. Don’t give the DUers something else to make fun of us about.
I played everything from strategic simulations with thousands of cardboard counters to the crude computer simulations of that day.
Not much has changed.
Real gamers play TF2
Because where else can you play an explosively-inclined one-eyed alcoholic black Scotsman?
Flip Wilson’s 1967 album, “Cowboys and Colored People”, was nominated for a Grammy. Wonder how it would go over these days?
In EA’s Bad Company 2 multiplayer, Russian team vs American team. This is a non issue.
Aye...where else indeed, Laddie?
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