US Army bases still won't stock MOH

By Tom Bramwell Published 6 October, 2010

Taliban change has poor effect on target.

The US military has no plans to reverse its decision about stocking Medal of Honor on Army and Air Force bases around the world.

That's according to a spokesperson for the Army & Air Force Exchange Service, who told Kotaku it wouldn't be stocking the game "out of respect to those touched by the ongoing, real-life events presented as a game".

"While we regret any inconvenience this may cause, our position is consistent with the direction stated a month ago," the spokesperson said.

Medal of Honor's single-player campaign is set in the Shahikot Valley in Afghanistan and focuses on a mixture of US Army Rangers, elite Tier One Operators and Apache specialists at the start of the Afghanistan war against the Taliban.

But it is the game's multiplayer component that has found itself in the headlines because of the developers' decision to allow players to control the Taliban as one of its playable forces.

Following high-profile complaints from the likes of UK Defence Secretary Liam Fox, publisher Electronic Arts recently decided to rename the Taliban "Opposing Force" in multiplayer encounters.

However, the Taliban and the battle against them remains the focus of the single-player game, and the "Opposing Force" tweak is just a name change in menus - players still ostensibly control the Taliban in multiplayer.

EA studio Danger Close has denied that the game is "about the Taliban or Al-Qaeda" in the past, stressing that its narrative focus is on soldiers rather than politics.

"The story that we wanted to tell was about these guys in this initial fight, and the individuals that we hooked up with happened to be doing it there," the game's executive producer Greg Goodrich told Eurogamer last month.

"It's an historical fiction inspired by these guys in an historical event, like Saving Private Ryan... That's where they were."

Medal of Honor is out on 12th October and will be reviewed early next week.

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About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000. Follow him on Twitter.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (39) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • karooo #1 2 years ago

    Talk about overreacting :|

    I bet Kotick would be laughing like anything right now.

  • SClaw #2 2 years ago

    Erogamer? Is this some awesome sex gaming site I've never seen before?

    Typos aside... I'm not surprised by this but I am amused. I didn't find the beta much fun but I don't think I'm the target for this game. My main issue with it is the... eh... macho marketing they are doing. Rolling out all these weird looking "vets" and constantly dogging this line about it paying respect to those people.

  • ChthonicEcho #3 2 years ago

    Just imagine if the entire Taliban controversy was a planned marketing stunt. Just imagine it. Probably half the PR department would be fired, now.

    I must add it's pretty silly saying the narrative focuses on the soldiers and thus evades politics. Make a game about war, and in one way or another you will indirectly provide your personal political input. The thing with WWII games, that war is over and historians have decided on who happened and what happened. This war is ongoing, meaning you can't write fiction about it without making assumptions that will irk politically sensitive people.

    Yes, it's entertainment, but that's like making Tetris out of a terminal disease. Developers who wade in murky real life waters rely solely on familiarity (and thus the ability to relate) to move you, rather than the emotional impact of a carefully woven narrative. Case in point, Modern Warfare 2 and its panoramic view of obliterated Washington, Crysis 2 and the destruction of the Big Apple, etc.

    I'll take fiction over 'BASED ON REAL FACTS' any day of the week, especially if it's a video game.

  • Whitster #4 2 years ago

    What about British bases?

  • ShovelyJoe #5 2 years ago

    Surely the fact that the entire US army and airforce are refusing to stock your product tells you how respectful your product is for those actually at war. TWATS!!!! It is disgusting that they have used a ongoing war as a setting for this game. For instance, I imagine there will be many set pieces and cutscenes where AI characters fighting along side you are maimed and killed. How many of us will pause the game then to actually reflect on the fact that this IS actually happening and that many of the guys fighting over there, like us, realise that the end doesn't justify the means. How dare EA trivialise the lives of men and women who are living through a real conflict to provide some form of entertainment.

  • JoeGBallad #6 2 years ago

    Ugh, even just the mention of this new medal of honour game gives me a weird, conflicted sickening taste inmy mouth. I genuinely feel deeply uneasy about this game, the same way I felt uneasy about the airport level in modern warfare 2. I think the developers/publishers of these games are trying to have their cake and eat it. If they want me I'll be playing goldeneye on n64...

  • jebus #7 2 years ago

    Hardly the target demographic so I imagine that the publicity generated is much appreciated by EA. I imagine the EA press department is loving this.

    Which makes them much worse than I already thought they were, personally I'd rather they (the military) hadn't commented at all on this and not given EA the free publicity.

  • cen4pgb #8 2 years ago

    I as a serving member of the armed forces do not see how its disrepectful. Someone please tell me?

    Its a game about a current conflict, this is not a unique thing., infact its only relitively recently that they've begun to shy away from recent or ongoing conflict shebang, probably due to media overeactions like this one.

    Modern Warefares 2 infamous mission is several orders of magnitude than anything we've been told about in this game so far.

  • Spekingur #9 2 years ago

    Sheesh, who cares if it's an ongoing war or not? When the first MOH and the first COD were released you still had people alive who actively participated in WWII.
    Then we have had games about Vietnam. Shouldn't that have cause controversy even more?

    Heck, even those fantasy FPS games where the fight actually happens in the US and where the White House is left in shambles should be considered very disrespectful. But I guess it's alright since "it has already been done before".

    I'm also pretty sure that soldiers at these bases are going to be playing this new MOH even if the bases won't stock them.

  • Mkwone #10 2 years ago

    There are stores that sell videogames on army bases?

  • arcam #11 2 years ago

    Sheesh, who cares if it's an ongoing war or not?

    Lots of people obviously. It's what makes it distasteful in a way that Call of Duty 1 wasn't.

    Its a game about a current conflict, this is not a unique thing

    It's early morning, but I can't think of another game set in an ongoing conflict, except some fan-made mods such as Insurgency. Any examples?

  • bad09 #12 2 years ago

    "Surely the fact that the entire US army and airforce are refusing to stock your product tells you how respectful your product is for those actually at war."

    No it says a lot of about oversensitive americans who are over reacting and hate their real world bullying of countries they actually helped out in the cold war being portrayed. Taliban were once cuddly friends with America until they needed to secure resources for the next few decades.

  • metalangel #13 2 years ago

    Oh here we are and here we are and here we go
    All aboard and we're hitting the road
    Here we go
    Hoo-ahing all over the world!

  • LR100 #14 2 years ago

    So caving in and removing the Taliban name really helped then.

  • Shikasama #15 2 years ago

    Both sides of this argument annoys me.

    The overblown reaction of certain emdia outlets towards the game annoys me.

    The 'gamers' who vehemently deny or refuse to see how anyone could find it distasteful or too close to the bone annoy me.

    The second one annoys me far more than the first.

  • kangarootoo #16 2 years ago

    @Shikasama

    Spot on.

  • bad09 #17 2 years ago

    "The 'gamers' who vehemently deny or refuse to see how anyone could find it distasteful or too close to the bone annoy me."

    I don't think anyone denies some might find offence or find it upsetting. I would say the arguement is why call for banning or changes? Why not just..you know..not buy the product and get on with your life instead of going on Fox news claiming EA are insulting your family, which clearly is not the case.

  • kangarootoo #18 2 years ago

    @bad09

    Well that is the more desireable and moderate response.

    I too sigh internally whenever I read "its just a game", just as frequently as when I read a tabloid headline spouting about the evils of games. Both are deintellectualising the discussion. Neither is interested in reason.

    I'm personally no fan of censorship, but I have stated on these pages that I thought some things (the Taliban naming being one) were ill thought out and disingenous (the latter being the worse thing for me - stupidity is excusable, but pretending a game like this is about "honouring the troops" is simply a lie).

    To say that somebody shouldn't do something is not the same as saying they should be PREVENTED from doing it.
    Edited by kangarootoo at 06/10/10 @ 11:45

  • kangarootoo #19 2 years ago

    @Nick_Nukemz

    But not all games are the same, and not all films are the same. There are films that cover current conflicts in a studious manner, and there are others than make a gung ho adventure of it all (that those films are critised in many circles for that reason).

    It is no doubt possible to make sensitive and studious game about a current conflict, but we all know that CoD or MW are not those games. Both those games, well produced and fun to play as they are, are gung ho rollercoaster rides at heart. THAT is what makes it disingenuous in my eyes when they talk about "honouring" and "telling the story".
    Edited by kangarootoo at 06/10/10 @ 11:49

  • bad09 #20 2 years ago

    @kangarootoo

    Hmm I dunno I am 100% in the "it's just a video game" camp but then I feel the same about movies and books and gansta rap music.

    It's all entertaiment and you have the choice not to get involved. I find people who complain or get offended about ANY entertainment content rather idiotic, it is your choice don't like it leave it.

    Take this women I mentioned from fox news, she knew absolutely nothing about gaming so clearly wasn't going to buy the game anyway yet got TV time top complain about it just because her boy is over there. Madness.
    Edited by bad09 at 06/10/10 @ 12:25

  • hiddenranbir #21 2 years ago

    It's playing playing Black Hawk Dawn while the fight at Mogadishu is raging on.

  • arcam #22 2 years ago

    @noface

    It was you who said there were games about current conflicts. One year later doesn't count, and yes, I can see how that can make quite a bit of difference. There were not people dying in that very war at the same time you were sitting on your couch acting out those same events in a video game.

  • makeamazing #23 2 years ago

    We have to be very careful that we dont ban things for the sake of banning things. I mean what about the next GTA game, should we ban it because you can run people over or have a car crash, and people are dying every day from car crashes so it would be very insensitive.... i know that is a pretty rubbish example, but hopefully you get the point that what ever realistic-ish game you release you could possibly upset someone somewhere (LBP music is a prime example).

    I think you will find many people in the armed forces will probably be buying this game (and this type of game) because they can separate a computer game from real life... unlike the tabloids (dont get me started). I mean the American Military are not perfect, they even have a computer wargame where you shoot people which is being used as a marketing tool to get people to join up... I personally think that is worse.

  • Codger81 #24 2 years ago

    So who are the Terrorists in Counter Strike? The Gnome Liberation Front?

  • arcam #25 2 years ago

    only some dumbass white knighting politicians and press members trying to stir shit up

    Your problem is you can't see things from someone else's point of view. You think the only people who find this distasteful are pretending, just politicians trying to get votes or reporters trying to sell papers? I can assure you that's not the case.

    There is no point in taking a straight logical view at the argument. Obviously it doesn't make any practical difference if the war is ongoing or finished 100 years ago - this game isn't going to have any effect on that war, or on anything really. However this is an emotional argument, and the fact that the war is happening right now, with people being killed even as I type. Last night a roadside bombing killed 9 people, five of them children.

    I understand that you don't find it distasteful - we all have different sensibilities. But you should also be able to empathise with people who might find this too close to the bone without dismissing them as panic merchants or cynical vote-grabbers.

    Some people don't like the idea of this game, and for genuine reasons, and you need to be able to at least accept that is the case before you start making arguments against them.

  • kangarootoo #26 2 years ago

    @bad09

    Generally I agree, because generally it is purely a matter of taste. The point that noface is making about "one year later" (if taken to its conclusion) misses the point that one year later the issue becomes a matter of taste.

    When it comes to current conflicts, peoples' attitudes to those conflicts are affected by all sources of information AND disinformation. Just like Fox news is responsible for the attitudes of some, so are games that base their activities on current conflicts.

    To put it in the very simplest of terms, the stupidest of people get their knowledge of world politics from sources like CoD. People who struggle to understand reality because it is complicated, will settle for fiction because it is straightforward.



    And also on a side note, related to this discussion and to our reaction as gamers in general. Empathasing with the upset of others is simply humane. You don't have to agree with someone to wish they didn't feel upset or hurt. We gamers are far too quick to say "its just a game, get over it" when we are talking about the crushing misery of real war. If we had lost loved ones, we might feel differently, but as arcam says we gamers seem to make a speciality of not being able to "see things from someone else's point of view". We even seem proud of it.

  • Mono_X #27 2 years ago

    "There are stores that sell videogames on army bases? "

    My friend once saw a McDonalds set up in a US Army Base.

    Life for soldiers isn't always depicted accurately in Films or Games.
    [link url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ffjv9IIxE7I
    ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ffjv9IIxE7I
    [/link]

  • callum9999 #28 2 years ago

    ShovelyJoe - I take it you are aware that WW1 and 2 actually happened and aren't just fictional video games?

    If you can't distinguish between games and reality, you really shouldn't be playing games. And if Afghanistan upsets you, don't buy a game featuring it...

  • bad09 #29 2 years ago

    @kangarootoo

    Again I'm not so sure.

    Of course COD used to be about showing the realities of war in a thoughful respecful way (where people still played "the enemy" in multiplayer) but from Modern Warfare onwards? Nah, they are popcorn games. Besides I don't really see many moulding their real world view on a video game, even if it is based on current conflicts. People that do obviously have some kind of mental issue TBH.

    Also I don't think saying "get over it" is purely down to us being gamers, like I said I have that view across all entertaiment and even real world issues. But then I am a person who feels in the modern world far too many people take things too seriously and are too sensitive and quick to "Rabble! Rabble Rabble!" for no good reason.

    I mean take this Taliban nonsense. Would 99% of us gamers who will play the game, or the non gaming anger squad disgusted at EA even notice or care it was the Taliban if the Fox mum, our defence Secretary (I still can't get my head round that one!) and the media made not such a noise about it?

  • kongzi #30 2 years ago

    out of respect... blah blah blah.. .now that is sickening...

    Maybe out of respect for things like sovereignty, the suffering those people already had inflicted upon them, human rights and peace we should have stayed the F*** out of that country in the first place?
    Maybe the narrative should... JUST FOR ONCE.. focus on the politics? Out of respect for people's intelligence and democratic value's of openness and full disclosure? That's a game I'd like to play. The best way to respect our troops is to not send them to die in frivolous conflicts under false pretenses and then if that happens to discuss what happens/happened in all frankness and openness..
    now that would be respectful...

  • kangarootoo #31 2 years ago

    @bad09

    "Would 99% of us gamers who will play the game, or the non gaming anger squad disgusted at EA even notice or care it was the Taliban if the Fox mum, our defence Secretary"

    But I think the point that some are making is that whether we personally care is not the only concern.

    With the whole Taliban thing, I kind of wonder why gamers got so annoyed at the removal. Its add nothing whatsoever to the game to have the "opposing force" called "Taliban", not a thing. And yet many gamers acted like thei had been punched in the nuts.

    For the people that would genuinely find it upsetting - not the paper editors, but those that would genuinely be distraught if they came across the name in the game - it is a real issue, however few of them there are. For us gamers, it is a non-issue really. You talk about the non gamer anger squad, but we both know that the gamer equivalent squad is even more angry. Some of the most annoyed commentators I've seen have been gamers complaining on principle about a change that makes utterly no difference to their gaming experience.

    NOBODY gets more angry in this world it seems, than an irate teenage gamer feeling that somebody somewhere is messing with their beloved hobby. They don't care what you have experienced, what ill feelings a particular game might bring up, what effect a game might have on your wayward knife packing child, you'd just better not mess with their game. We see it everytime the "do games make kids violent" debate raises its head. We can discuss the effect, or non-effect (I personally don't think the effect is tangible) like adults if we want, but a certain part of the gaming populace really don't give a flying f*ck what the effect of gaming is. The very suggestion that gaming can in any way be negative sends them into a rage (ironically enough).

    I wonder if we didn't fight tooth and nail for every pointless gratuity in every game everywhere, whether the mainstream press would hassle gaming as much as they do. Talk about making a rod for our backs.
    Edited by kangarootoo at 06/10/10 @ 17:16

  • Spekingur #32 2 years ago

    I would have thought that the US government and/or US Army would be more against FPS games where the "opposing forces" are allowed to get the upperhand on US soil. Like in Modern Warfare 2 for example (which even showed some semi-incompetence of US defences).
    But that's okay, right? Because aliens did it first. Right?

  • bad09 #33 2 years ago

    @kangarootoo

    I see what you are saying, and indeed many games use make believe names for their enemy in modern settings, but I think the anger from gamers comes from the fact this is a modern setting of real war using real forces to fight the "good fight". Why should people demand change just because the enemy is playable in MP? If it was just the good old US of A kicking the ass of the evil towelheads no one would have uttered a word about it. You know it I know it.

    It's double standards and hypocritical, and EA have given in to these people. That's what angers people IMO.

  • kangarootoo #34 2 years ago

    @bad09

    "It's double standards and hypocritical"

    Perhaps the problem is that nobody in this is suffering a shortage of double standards and hypocrisy. EA pitch this game as a way to honour the troops, to tell their story, to do justice to the reality of the situation... but of course it is nothing of the sort. It is twitch shooting, health bars, gung ho tactics and set pieces (all of which is awesome fun, don't get me wrong).

    If the game truly held the moral high ground I might well fall in line and protest at the removal of key elements of realism. Because I might consider those elements, uncomfortable as they might make some feel, are votal if the story is be told sincerly. But the game is simply NOT realistic, in mechanic or tone. The story is NOT being told sincerely. And it is that which makes elements like naming one of the teams Taliban just seem like... gratuitous titliation.

  • bad09 #35 2 years ago

    @kangarootoo

    Well to be fair we haven't seen how the SP element is handled yet and COD was twitchy gung ho stuff to but still handled the reality of war very well but of couse Medal Of Honour has always been a more Hollywood affair (christ Spielberg was involved in the first if I remember correctly) so we'll only know when it's launched.

    Now you can argue that MP aspect is certainly not about such things but as with all war games you have an enemy. The Vietcong, Nazis, Russians space aliens someone always needs to be the bad guys in MP. If your enemey is the Taliban then of course that's who the opposing force is.

    Remember this whole argument is about people playing AS Taliban and shooting the good Team America, not the fact they are in the game in the first place. Like I said if Team America was just doing what they do in the game with no Taliban MP aspect to the game no one would care at all never mind getting EA to change anything. That's the problem many have with this change.

  • kongzi #36 2 years ago

    With the taliban in there it could at least pretend to give something of an objective view of the situation.. now it's just another vehicle for patriotism in all it's glorious american excess.

  • YourMessageHere #37 2 years ago

    The thing that I can't fathom is the difference between a current conflict and a past one. Isn't having playable Nazis in for example Day of Defeat just as bad? Arcam seems to think it's OK to completely abandon logic and sense of all descriptions and simply say that it's distasteful because they feel it is. You see, that's not how thinking is supposed to work. Emotion is not trumps, common sense is. If you feel something is distasteful, rather than spending your effort loudly making a fuss, you're supposed to examine why it is distasteful. If you are playing a war game of any realism at all, you are simulating shooting at people - righteous warfare at best, murder at worst. Morally, willful killing for fun is willful killing for fun, there is no more complication than that. Either you are comfortable with that, or you're not.

    The inherent lunacy of venerating one side of a wholly manufactured conflict while villifying the other has fallen completely by the wayside. The positions of the US Army (the world's largest body of paid killers, let's remember, and already well and truly caught deserting the moral high ground countless times) and of EA (a company that wants to make money from the public's desire to kill people for fun) are equally untenable. This shouldn't be an issue at all.

    Someone was wanting the name of a game that features contemporary conflicts. Kuma:war was one, IIRC they tried to sell it on the premise that the missions would be episodic and 'ripped from the headlines', as it were. And what, in practical terms, makes a freely available fan-made mod (like Insurgency) different from a commercial release? Or a real name for an enemy and a transparently clear analogue (like the Middle East Coalition in BF2)? Or using the name of an enemy who you're not actually fighting at this point (like North Korea, villains of at least 3 games I can think of off the top of my head)?

    What are the enemies in America's Army called?

  • vijay_UK #38 2 years ago

    Shouldn't the US military be doing out there, doing some good (and not killing people and stealing English fooball clubs) instead of playing games?

  • kangarootoo #39 2 years ago

    @YourMessageHere

    As has already been covered here, if the basis of a game is a current conflict, the issue is not just one of taste but of information. Kuma war is a great example that I remember well. They literally described their game as a way for people to get information about current world events, the same people that would then vote on the basis of their new "understanding".


    And I believe North Korea became the enemy of choice in many Tom Clancy games, after the people of Georgia staged a peaceful recolution and it was not longer suitable as "place that we don't know much about, save to say that baddies live there". I think the main reason North Korea qualifies that is that western games aren't sold there.