UK Defense Secretary Calls For Retailers To Ban Upcoming Medal Of Honor Game
from the free-advertising-in-the-uk dept
You would think that UK Defense Secretary, Liam Fox, would have more important things to concern himself with than an upcoming video game release, but apparently he's calling for retailers not to sell the upcoming release in EA's Medal of Honor video game series. His complaint is that, in multiplayer mode, some players can play the role of Taliban soldiers. The game seeks to recreate the ongoing war in Afghanistan in a realistic manner. It's difficult to see how you could create a realistic game that doesn't include Taliban soldiers. It's not as if kids are going to play this game and suddenly think that it makes sense to join the Taliban...Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: liam fox, medal of honor, uk
Companies: ea
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So, the message is...
Ficticiously killing imaginary people = bad.
Thanks Liam!
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Re: So, the message is...
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Re: So, the message is...
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Political Grandstanding at it's finest.
In the US they're up in arms to try and appear sympathetic. In the UK they just had the election in May so they have to make a show of being different than the old guys.
Nobody cared about MW2 when it came out and you play as Russians and who I am assuming to be the Taliban since you are a terrorist from Afghanistan.
After the release date, as long as EA doesn't back down this entire thing will blow over until some douchebag lawyer tries to bring it in to defense of an asshole that shoots a serviceman/woman.
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Re: Political Grandstanding at it's finest.
Nobody cared about MW2 when it came out
Yes they did.
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Re: Re: Political Grandstanding at it's finest.
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This won't go very far
But then again
"The government said Dr Fox was expressing a "personal view"."
So I suspect this won't go far.
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For most things they've done, I'd agree, but this is just the same old crap again. This sort of thing happens for every major release that gets noticed by the mainstream (as per Manhunt 2, Modern Warfare 2, GTA4, etc. before it) and almost never becomes anything other than grandstanding.
It will blow over, just as every manufactured controversy over movies, TV, "video nasties", etc. eventually did. I'm sure EA will be glad of the free publicity in the meantime.
"Nobody cared about MW2 when it came out"
Heh, didn't read the UK tabloids, did you?
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Suspect PaulT is right that it will blow over in a few weeks.
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Re:
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I use to do that same thing
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Grandstanding is only possible because a great number of people believe in it, this may or may not be a failure of a large group of people that enable that type of behavior.
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It's sometimes a politician's job to say stupid things
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Re: It's sometimes a politician's job to say stupid things
Does no one, seriously, have any issues with making a game of an actual current conflict.
When kids are playing cowboys and indians they aren't relating the game to actual people.
When we play games with Nazis or Soviets as the enemy, well they aren't actually around anymore, there isn't a real conflict now.
This is a real thing, really happening, to hell with the fact that you can play the opposing side is it not wrong to be making a game out of this in the first place.
Is it not at the very least distasteful, disrespectful of people's lives and tacky in the extreme.
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Re: Re: It's sometimes a politician's job to say stupid things
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Wargame
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Re: Wargame
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With news media's coverage of the conflict as being war porn at best with ever more gory images appearing on TV screens at earlier times of the day, with all the above points is it really a wonder why there would be a demand for such a game that a company would want to satiate.
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Mass Effect 1
oh wait
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Shoe on the other foot
"At the hands of the British, children have lost fathers and wives have lost husbands," he said.
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