MW2 will "evoke terrorism atrocities" News

Bullshit. Its designed to generate interest in the game.

Infinity Ward's Modern Warfare 2 features a deep and gripping storyline in which players face off against a terrorist threat dedicated to bringing the world to the brink of collapse

Oh I love this. It's obvious terrorists' goals is to bring the world to collapse, of course it's impossible that they have some other, more intrinsic and complicated motivations that make terrorism such a huge and complex problem that really can't be solved by just shooting each and every one of them in the brain.

Living is easier in a simple world.

shocking headline in eurogamer shocker

it begins

@qoobah

maybe you fight against Cobra in the game?

GI JOOOEEEE!!! aka action force

Already kicking off in Australia due to them not having an 18 age cert on their games, although many of the comments from the people shrieking about it are predictably knee jerk and ludicrous.

"The consequences of terrorism are just abhorrent in our community and yet here we are with a product that's meant to be passed off as a leisure time activity, actually promoting what most world leaders speak out publicly against,"

wait wait wait..."actually promoting"? did she even watch the clip? wait, how silly of me - of course she didn't. She could have also listened to Activision talk about the "skip the level checkpoints" and the warning screen that'll pop up, but no - they're promoting terrorism and not being responsible and blaming the fact that the game exists at all as the reason "the children" will pick it up rather than the parents being terrible at parenting.

Imho the worst thing games have going for them is that they have the word "game" as their main description. these people will never, ever let it go (they're nothing more than mere "leisure time activity", right?) and will never, ever deem it acceptable to have content in those games with even a fraction of the horror, provocation or even plain old making your brain creak that you can get from every other form of "entertainment" or art or whatever else you want to call it, be it film, tv, books or music.

Good job Infinity Ward nerds, tell us all about yer experience with terrorism.

"Activision, quick to patch a wound, has explained that Modern Warfare 2 is "designed to evoke the atrocities of terrorism"

What about the atrocities of capitalism?

@ qoobah

It's a game......

Besides, bullets will solve it, Arnie says you are WRONG!

COD MW

No civilians in downtown Kabul,

cause they're all at the airport getting killed.

News at eleven

I think it's all very interesting, they're certainly pushing some boundaries. It's all gonna kick off HARD STYLE in the press come november :)

I can't wait to play that level, personally speaking

It's a game, get over it already.
The level is not needed and is an over the top way of grabbing publicity. I can understand the narrative reason, but there is no reason for anyone to actually play this level.
On the other hand, kudos to IW for trying something brave, even if it is typical American over-the-top-ness. Many games these days settle for PC-ness, this is obviously not one of them.

Before we all get on our high horse, replay the Cod4 campaign and recognize that it has some interesting and thought provoking moments.
Perhaps it wasn't all done intentionally but it did make you think about the horrors of war in a different way then just "shoot all the baddies".

I am African and so consider myself a neutral in this issue. Here is my two sense. I never cared about this game as I am more of a Battlefield person but I must say kudos to IW for having the guts to put this touchy issue their game! IW are trying to show both sides of wars! Its about time games not only showed Westerners points of view. Games are no longer for kids and M rated games shouldn't be just blood, gore and sexual imagery!

We have seen this before in tv series like 24 and countless films so why not a M rated game? Why is it okay to kill innocent civilians in GTA but MW2 getting so much flack even from some gamers?

When some black people said RE5 had racist imagery, the gaming community were outraged and vehemently defended (rightly so) CAPCOM!

Its all about the context!

Regardless of the outcome of this, ultimately the biggest lesson at hand is the hypocrisy of many Westerners especially the British and Americans. Its all fun and games when its killing black people, Asians, and other ethnic races as the good American or British hero but when the roles are turned around its tasteless!

Don't like it, don't play it!

"Infinity Ward's Modern Warfare 2 features a deep and gripping storyline"

bwhahahahaahahahahaahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahaha,
just like MW1 eh?

I didn't think EG could leave it at just one page-hit bonanza.
Expect this same story to be repackaged every day for the next 2 weeks.

Jesus, the last thing a Call of Duty game does is "promote" terrorism.

Call of Duty 4 had one of the best storylines in an FPS game (not too hard, admittedly, since most FPS games have no storyline at all)!

Infinity Ward took a giant leap in their last game of this series; trust them to handle this one well! They're not Epic Games (Gears of War) with ridiculous macho bullshit; they're well thought-out and, if you actually pay attention to the story of COD4 between the shooting, you'll see that it's handled with some care!

When some black people said RE5 had racist imagery, the gaming community were outraged and vehemently defended (rightly so) CAPCOM!

That's a really silly statement Master09. What kind of "racist imagery" RE5 had? It had black zombies? So what, it also featured a black hot hero girl. I never though black ppl would start to whine about virtual, non-existant prejudice like the gay comunity usually do.

Regarding this issue, kudos do IW, it's time to take the next step and start looking and experiencing games in other ways rather then only the "leetz"; and the "headshot"... hurrah. Only problem is that looking at previous CoD's I'm not particulary confident about the result.

some aspects of the mw storyline were stunning, it was a great experience. Although this does seem distasteful hopefully it is the start of games really taking on more of the challenging topics in society that films and books did decades ago.

As graphics become increasingly realistic, being asked to perform tasks like shooting innocent people makes me feel increasingly uneasy.

Terrorists commit atrocities in game about terrorists committing atrocities shocker!!!

Watchdog will make a meal out of this.


Popcorn?

Is anyone else just incredibly interested in seeing how this part of the game pans out? Whether I agree with the concept or not I just can't help myself from being slightly intrigued by it.

Will it move me to the point of disgust? will it envoke emotions I've never had in a game before? Is it morally right to play the scenario out at all?

Love or hate them Activision and IW are extrmemly clever!

Justified or not, I'm amazed that this got passed by the AUS government, what with there insistance on not providing a rating higher than MA15+.

It's not a thread Vermillion, it's the comments section of an article!

And why not comment?

Infinity Ward are one of the best developers in the world, they have every right to include what they want in their game and shouldn't be swayed by the fact that their game is so popular, thereby watering it down...

Activision and IW are going to have to be careful about this, as it can be seen as a sensitive issue to people who've survived terrorist attacks. Still, you're being warned about what's coming up, so its not like we're just suddenly dropped into the level.

Well it's nice that we have the option to skip.

I think I'm about to move myself into an older generation:

I think I preferred gaming when the mass media weren't involved, and when games weren't big business.

I think I preferred gaming when the mass media weren't involved, and when games weren't big business.

Amen brother.

"Its designed to generate interest in the game."

Yeah. Cos no-ones interested in MW2, are they?

As soon as I saw it, I thought 'cynical marketing ploy designed to get the tabloids in a frenzy and give Activision a metric fuckton of free publicity'.

But then I put it down to my own cynicism, because obviously Activision wouldn't do something like that.



Oh look, a flying pig.

Ask anyone that knows me and they will tell you that I am the biggest Activision cynic. To a point that while I plan to get MW2, I fully intend to buy it used so as not to give them my money. Why not just not buy it at all? Because CoD4 had an absolutely fantastic story. I barely touched the multiplayer, but the singleplayer campaign and what it did, the risks it took and scenes it showed (post-nuke, crawling out the helicopter to die) were powerful moves and ones that impressed me greatly. From another developer I could well believe this just to be a simple publicity stunt, but Infinity Ward are an intelligent bunch. If games are ever to be respected as a medium alongside books and films, then developers will need to take these risks and push boundaries, and not just be jeered and called exploitative jerks. Pull your head out your arse and give them due credit.

'Infinity Ward's Modern Warfare 2 features a deep and gripping storyline in which players face off against a terrorist threat dedicated to bringing the world to the brink of collapse

Oh I love this. It's obvious terrorists' goals is to bring the world to collapse, of course it's impossible that they have some other, more intrinsic and complicated motivations that make terrorism such a huge and complex problem that really can't be solved by just shooting each and every one of them in the brain.

Living is easier in a simple world. '

This. I am extremely sceptical of MW2's ability to really shock, given most of it will probably be this black and white world (although, maybe, some of your fellow soldiers might be a bit nasty! Good grief!!!). All fascetiousness aside, CoD4's story was terrible (seriously, it WAS, no matter how many amazing set pieces they stuffed in), but I'm interested to see how MW2 deals with this scene as part of the whole narrative.

You're being too indulgent when you say CoD 4 story was terrible, it wasn't, mainly because it had virtualy no story, it was simply a collection of barely related espisodes.

What was so terrible about COD4's storyline?

What FPS games have a better storyline? Bioshock? Far Cry 2? Anything else? (not fair to compare Deus Ex or Fallout 3 as they're FPS/RPG hybrids)...

MW's story was probably on a par with a Jerry Bruckheimer movie.

Better than most other games, but it wouldn't compare favourably to any quality books or films.

As long as that warning doesn't interrupt the flow of gameplay...

Maybe infinty ward are trying to expand their fan base into the religious extremist market... Give them something in the game they can relate to?

Do you know what fucks me off about this. You can have a movie with vivid rape scenes, people being blown to pieces, religious and racial slurs, drug abuse, 3D shark attacks etc etc etc etc BUT as soon as it appears in a "Video Game" everyone gets their nickers in a twist.

The easiest response to such folks would be to tell them politely to fuck off and as long as we're not promoting Pedo behaviour we can do what the fuck we want.

The same assholes got all hot about GTA IV promoting bad driving.

Dunno about you, but I'm bang up for killing some innocent civillians. Sounds fun.

The lame thing is that the terrorists are led by a generic Russian villain who has a generic goal of generic chaos. If they wanted to make it provoking and lay bare the atrocities of terrorism, why not create a scenario a little more current, like having it be about some sort of Al-Qaeda offshoot, or the new IRA, or ETA or something? I'm kind of bored by all these Russian terrorists. And why not let them have some more interesting goal than global chaos? Have them fight to get Americans out of their holy land, for instance, or have a group fight for secession from their state or whatever. This is such cheap storytelling: "He does all this because he wants GLOBAL WAR and that is how you can tell he is the bad guy."

Uh, there's lots of terrorists/freedom fighters in Chechnya, Dagestan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and the entire Russian Caucasus! In fact, it's one of the world's combat hot-spots. Much of Call of Duty 4 was based in this region.

The "bad guys" in Modern Warfare are Russian Ultranationalists, who are trying to bring the Russian state back to a more militant, USSR-style form of governing.

@Shinetop: On one hand, "global chaos" is generally the big draw for a story as it's the ultimate threat (Nuclear war and the end of the world), which is compelling enough for players, just like what many games and Tom Clancy novels have had for ages.

On the other, I agree that it's time for some new takes on the stories. Not all terrorists are simple, fundamentalist nutjobs, there's no doubt a lot more to it than "Raargh must crush America!", but I doubt any publisher would be warm to such concepts for a game with all of the money at stake. Look at the fallout over Six Days in Fallujah. The closest we might get is some vague allegory like in Red Faction: Guerilla. I'd love to see IW take a risk with a Modern Warfare game involving a Middle Eastern protaganist all the same.

"Yeah. Cos no-ones interested in MW2, are they? "

It doesnt matter how much interest you have in your product. There's the old adage of 'you can never have enough publicity'. Its as true today as when it was first coined, along with 'there's one born every minute'.

"why not create a scenario a little more current, like having it be about some sort of Al-Qaeda offshoot"

Nice thought, but I'm pretty sure that allowing the player to participate in mindless slaughter as a member of Al-Qaeda would stir up an even bigger shitstorm than the one about to hit on November 10th.

darleysam: I wouldn't say you've got your head up your own arse, but you've certainly got it buried in the sand if you think that this isn't a cynical marketing ploy engineered by Activision. What, you think IW have carte blanche to develop whatever they like without diktats coming down from their parent company, telling them to push things in a given direction? Especially when, given the content and context of said material, it's going to end up with MW2 splattered across every screen and newspaper, giving Activision said shitload of free publicity?

EDIT: And to whom it may concern: thanks for the markdown, I'm collecting negative points for Christmas. :)

Those stating that 'any publicity is good publicity' need only look at Manhunt 2's release to see how untrue that statement is.

MH2 had an enormous amount of publicity surrounding its violent, controversial nature. It was banned, then subsequently released, but it still tanked.

I'm not saying that the 'airport' level wasn't included to stur controversy - that's CLEARLY the point, whether mainstream media was a focus or not, but I don't think IW and Acti were prepared for quite so much of the core gaming community to rally against them.

Robert Bowling has his work cut out, that's for sure.

darleysam: I wouldn't say you've got your head up your own arse, but you've certainly got it buried in the sand if you think that this isn't a cynical marketing ploy engineered by Activision. What, you think IW have carte blanche to develop whatever they like without diktats coming down from their parent company, telling them to push things in a given direction? Especially when, given the content and context of said material, it's going to end up with MW2 splattered across every screen and newspaper, giving Activision said shitload of free publicity?

Let me see. You provide a playable scene that can polarize your market, you risk your game getting banned, no rating in a few countries. You alienate the US by providing scenes of Washington in flames, and you compound that by allowing the gaming public to kill civilians.

If this is a ploy to increase sells than Activision and IW have balls of steel because it sounds really risky to me. Most for profit games play it safe especially if the game sells over 10 million copies. The cynical people also need to view the big picture. Is it really outside of the norm that IW included this scene because they are trying to make MW2 hard hitting. IW can easily spruce up the graphics and make MW2 just like MW1 with tweaks and easily sell 12 million copies. Putting in material that could polar your fanbase and actually lose you sells doesn't sound like something a for profit developer would do.

"The IRA only target the military and avoid civilian casualties at all costs. they are patriots and freedom fighters after a united ireland."

You are having a fucking laugh, right? Ask the families of The Disappeared how the IRA's patriotism works. As the family of Robert McCartney. I knew you were a fucking tool donnie, but I didnt realise just how much.