BBC reporter 'saddened' but not 'shocked' by MW2

acedoh - 35 days 17 hours ago

this has shown the industry has grown up and is not afraid to bow down to the pressure of the uninformed. Those who think games are only played by kids. There are many adults who use games as a source of entertainment and this is what the public wants. Games like this sell in the tens of millions for several reasons. One of those is the realism.

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StanLee - 35 days 16 hours ago

In context, the level works perfectly.

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Noctis Aftermath - 35 days 16 hours ago

Sounds like the same crap the media were spewing when GTA came out.
Don't worry people, the QQ bus is always a short trip.

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RonDeMuerte - 35 days 15 hours ago

They should have put some children in that mission...since they're going for "realism"..../sarcas m...

To all of those defending Infinity Ward for adding this mission.....you're retards.....plain and simple....

It's one thing to read about it, or watch it at the movies and on TV....but it's another thing to actually sit down and pull the trigger.....video games are way more interactive...and what I saw is something that could actually happen anywhere...it's not farfetched....I played through the mission and it felt f@ckin weird....and I've seen plenty of violent and f@cked up sh!t in movies that don't even make me flinch...

I've been reading some of your comments and I guess it'd be OK with some of you if they made a game about Columbine...or the World Trade Center...in which you assume the role of the shooters or terrorists, and you have to complete the mission..

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thewhoopimen - 35 days 15 hours ago

Yes, lets throw in some nazi jew gassing too while we're at it. Is that chamber filled? oh yeah, pull the switch by hitting 'b'. And watch the jews screaming and pounding at the doors in terror. Why not press 'x' repeatedly to laugh maniacally at the dying faces of innocent people? Does that sound retarded enough for you guys who still don't get the picture?

IW's decision was asinine. It doesn't take a fart of an IQ to figure out what a terrorist bomber or shooter would do in an airport. It's called 'imagination' and doesn't require 'immersiveness'. Why does a player need to be a terrorist pulling the trigger to get the picture?

@nai nai- if you think kids can differentiate between reality and immersive experiences like gaming, then you my friend need to go read some books on psychology. After all, doesn't this scenario seem to play out like a columbine shooting?

You don't think kids would start shooting up heroin if they saw master chief doing it? Then you are clueless.
http://www.youtube.com/watc...

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Elwenil - 35 days 15 hours ago

While I personally believe no one is truly "innocent" and bad things happen to good people I think the depiction of a premeditated terrorist act against civilians was a bit much. I agree with the gentleman that it was used as a shock tactic and that the whole level was unnecessary. The very fact that you are given to option to skip it proves that the story didn't need it or maybe IW figured there were so many planet sized holes in the story that one more wouldn't make much difference. The whole choice to skip the level was BS anyway since IW knows that everyone will want to see it just to see what the fuss is all about but it gives IW an "out" since they gave you the choice. I bet less than 1 in 10k opted out of playing the level because even the nicest person will slow down to see a bloody car wreck on the side of the road. People want to see this sort of thing since it fills some sort of "need" or curiosity. So color me unsurprised as well both to the existence of the level and to IW's "marketing".

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NaiNaiNai - 35 days 15 hours ago

If your offended by this game, This "fake".....let me say that again. FAKE terrorist attack, you my friend need to be in a mental hospital, because somethings wrong with your mind to be worrying about a game that much.

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Poopface the 2nd - 35 days 13 hours ago

I can see people b@tching about it but its does less harm to the rep of video games than rape games IMO.

At least if certain people over here in the US saw the rape game it would be all on fox news and crap and women would freak out(show a rape game on oprah and kids everywhere will weep as their parents unknowingly throw away their wii in fear that little timmy will grow up to be a pedo rapist).

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Noctis Aftermath - 35 days 13 hours ago

Complain more, it's giving me some good laughs watching people b1tch and moan about a video game.

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matnum - 35 days 9 hours ago

@thewhoopimen
why is it people like you feel that this is an issue with the dev's, it is not their responsibility if a child gets hold of this game its the parents, in the UK at least the game comes with an 18 certificate, this means that the child should have n means of getting this, yet the dev's still get blamed. If your child is caught looking at porn you don't blame the website, you blame the child for getting their hands on the material or the parent who left it out.

overall the second and government board in charge of allocating ratings or allowing of games into the market do so it is no longer the dev's responsibility as it has gone through proper channels that deem it fit.
so people don't blame IW for "offensive material"

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thewhoopimen - 35 days 2 hours ago

Matnum great points and certainly deserving an intelligent response back. I would like to point first and foremost that I agree with with you that responsibility lies to a large extent to the individual or family in managing what content should be allowed for. However, I disagree that companies should be allowed free reign to distribute controversial material.

Where do I even begin on this? Well responding to your example, about porn sites vs games. How about the basic knowledge that a porn site is designed for adults and video games are designed for kids? Poor example, but I understand what you are getting at.

As a community (with a big emphasis on community), it is my belief that Infinity Ward's should hold responsibility to its community as it does to its shareholders. The slope has gotten so slippery these days with so many companies/media pushing the envelope, we are having a greater difficulty than ever defining right from wrong. To go back to your example of porn vs. violence. Porn or Sex is a natural biological function of a being human. Massacring a crowd of innocent bystanders whom you have no vendetta against is highly dysfunctional. The fact that you view these as equal (because it is portrayed as such in the game medium) is already a sign of conditioning.

I would like to trust that Infinity Ward/Activision has enough sense to know the vast majority of their clients are teens. It is the same market they conduct to get feedback on their titles. Look at the xbox 360 demographic (largest # of mw2 buyers right?) The average age of the 360 consumer/gamer is 12-17. Don't you think Infinty should know better than to touch a theme that would shock even the average adult? What I am trying to opin, is that responsibility doesn't just lie in any individual or group so much as a community. We need to trust the seller to do the right thing (or provide what is advertised) as much as we need to think ahead as the buyer. IW's marketing of MW2 in this light, is deceptive. There is no footage of a massacre in ANY of their commercials. They circumvent a VERY controversial issue by using a generic columbine setting to do a columbine shooting AND through the game medium (would this work with a jew massacre? hell no!). Are they trying to communicate a message or teach a moral lesson? (Unquestionably NO. Please you don't need to commit a massacre to know what it is. Made clear by the optional skip of the level). It is purely a money motivated move. Yes. (Not for mw2. Mw3 ok?)

Is this type of footage potentially psychologically damaging to a viewer? Yes, especially to an unknowing teen consumer. How does a parent police such a title when the ads don't even show anything about this? There are plenty of footage from WW2 depicting people being executed, mutilated, hanged and injected with poisonous compounds to die. Why aren't those shown to kids by schools? Could a parent police a history class everyday to protect their children?

This is hardly an answer to your question, but what you are asking to debate requires a far more extensive discussion and elocution than I have time for or better yet, present thorough sources on. Especially on a gamezone commentary.

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matnum - 34 days 22 hours ago

I like the points you made, especially on the patents management i see where your coming from. Have a bubble, more people are needed like you on n4g.
I guess it comes down to me not seeing this as that damaging but i understand why you would. However In your comment on Jew's the reason this would not be tolerated is because you would be singling out a community witch is unacceptable, and is vastly different to bystanders.
As you seem to have some sort of physiological angle on all this my i ask what the harm is in becoming conditioned to such scenarios.

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AAACE5 - 34 days 22 hours ago

When the game asked me if a certain scene would offend me, I thought it would have been some kind of racial term thrown in or something like that. I was not prepared for the airport scene at all! I couldn't even find it in my heart to shoot the people, I wanted to shoot the terrorist. OK, i'm lying, when it started, I did take a couple shots and then it felt wrong.

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thewhoopimen - 33 days 15 hours ago

Hi matnum,

sorry for the late response. How does conditioning impact the psyche of an individual? Let's use sex as an example then. If the media were to portray footage of sibling or paternal/maternal incest on TV on a regular basis, do you think the younger generation would accept it as the norm? Is there something potentially psychologically damaging about it? My guess is might not know, but the fact that you can't tell is exactly the problem with erosion of values. When values are eroded, people lose their ability to tell right from wrong. If you can tell, then you still have some intact, but your younger brother or sister next to you might not.

-- Going back to your rebuttal on the jews. Are russians not an ethnic entity unto themselves?

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doctorstrange - 35 days 22 hours ago

When will people realise that gaming is just a platform in which anything can be released? Just like movies, books and TV. The actions of one game does not affect the quality of other games, just like the last Indiana Jones movie does not mean that all other movies are sh!t.

Anyway, the scene wasn't that bad, you didn't have to shoot anyone and there was no gore, although I do agree that it was put in there to shock people.

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MrJackOfAllTrades - 35 days 17 hours ago

games and movies aren't the same so people should stop using movies as a way to say games can get away with anything. movies are for our entertainment meaning they could be scary, action, sad, or porn etc games are for fun and walking into an airport and killing civilians isn't fun to a normal person. also in games your doing the action that you see and in movies your just watching so stop trying to convince yourself games and movies are the same. everyone who thinks he is wrong about the industry not growing up is proof that it hasn't because you wine like babies if someone says something you don't like. ask yourself this would you want to play as hitler in a jew killing sim? or how about a game were you play as a terrorist on 9/11 don't those games sound fun. games should have restrictions to some extent because not everything can be made fun.

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mastiffchild - 35 days 16 hours ago

My take on it is a little different. The way they've done it DOES leave a bad taste in my mouth.

That they have a section where you're undercover and have proper dilemmas is fair enough but did they NEED to do it ho they have? Does it add to the game that much when it's part you can skip if you desire? No. My worry is that they did this solely for the stir it would cause and not totally for the overall quality of the game-and, t the outside especially, it does make us look an irreverant bunch willing to do anything for lulz. There are far more thoughtful ways of them portraying the moral pains of an undercover agent without something as crass as this turned out, isn't there?

Yes, it's hard hitting but would have been so much nmore thought provoking had they taken a different route-it really seems gratuitous and the fact it isn't even needed to finish the game makes it more so.

So, while I'm not up in arms over this(inlike much of what's surrounded this game) I do think they courted controversy here and it doesn't seem very grown up of them. Then again we're talking about folk who thought making a video with the "hilarious" F.A.G.S acronym was a good idea so what should we expect taste wise from IW? It makes games and gamers an easy target, however, and that's the saddest thing about a part of the game that isn't even needed.Didn't they feel they were getting enough attention?

WE KNOW what terrorists do and a short narrative about an undercover agent could have alluded to WAY more than the level does. Ham fisted at best, controversy whoring at worst.

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Godmars290 - 35 days 16 hours ago

Just because any game can be made and released doesn't mean that it should be. Much less that there wont be a strong negative reaction to it.

Or do you want yo see a pedophile/snuff game on the 360/PS3/Wii?

I admit I haven't been covering this thing, didn't see any point, but now that I finally have I really have to wonder in what context did the devs see that justifies the character having to walk into a public area and start gunning down innocent people. Yes it develops into a gunfight w/police, but that doesn't change the fact how things started.

I really can't see how anyone can defend this much less what everyone from the devs to publishers, and especially the ESRB, were smoking when they let that pass. If anything this will probably be the ESRB's end.

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thewhoopimen - 35 days 15 hours ago

Oh you think it takes a 'real' man to appreciate 'realism'?

why not make a FPS game about prison butt rape then, where you can repeatedly hit 'y' to get some in the ass? Hit it one hundred times in 30 seconds and get a MS Achievment trophy! Why not add some fun customizations by taking your f**king picture via MS webcam and upload it on the prison bit*hes face? Better yet, wait for Natal, then you can hump it in 'realtime!' After all, real men can handle reality.

Are you still not getting the bigger picture about the fundamental differences between games and movies?

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Shadow Flare - 35 days 13 hours ago

I just watched the airport video and I gotta say, I thought it was disgusting. I knew little about why that part of the game was controversial, and I just found it disgusting. My first thought was ' I can't believe they've made a game like this '. You know, its one thing playing a soldier at war shooting the enemy. Its so different when you're killing innocent people. I don't care if it is just a game, they're entertaining you by making you a terrorist killing innocent people. Whats next, a 9/11 game? A colombine game? I wonder if anyone playing that airport level enjoyed it. I bet alot of people at first would find it disturbing but after the 3rd time playing it they enjoy it. And thats not a good thing for a kid to be playing, and yes, they will be playing this. Whatever, im not buying it

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SmokeyMcBear - 35 days 17 hours ago

no dude... you have to either play the game.. or view the footage on youtube.. .its actually pretty damn gruesome.. people screaming... people pleading for their lives... hands on their heads surrendering then getting mowed down... people helping other people to safety only to get shot.. bodies.. blood.. everywhere.

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The Meerkat - 35 days 16 hours ago

The very end of the level is the best.
I won't spoil it.

But every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

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DaTruth - 35 days 13 hours ago

I would be like; "Here, let me help you!" *uses as human shield*

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MrJackOfAllTrades - 35 days 16 hours ago

well if you played the game you would know it isn't mandatory therefore not needed and like i said in my other post movies and games aren't the same.

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Ninjamonkey - 35 days 15 hours ago

Thats the problem.

With movies you just watch whats happening, but in vodeo games you are the person doing the killing, the acts of terrorism.

At the end of the day is the terrorist level worse than playing as a normal soilder? For most people her eon N4G yes since were not backing terrorists, were backing the UN.

But is th level over the line? well thats subjective. For some people this level may cross the line. If thats the case though then dont play the game becuase it would seem that the majourity of people think otherwise.

But yes you need to take into acount that a vdeo game is not like a movie. For those that doubt this just wait till heavy reain is released.

If you have the same great scripting in games like films, the fact that you actually play as the character should only heighten every emotion portrayed.

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mindedone - 35 days 15 hours ago

are out of context from the similarities that are being mentioned. In this context, movies are similar to games just as they are similar to Africans as they are similar to Europeans. Point being, when someone says, "it disproved his belief that the video games industry had 'grown up a little bit,'" he are basing his belief on the erroneous fact the entire expectations of a media as diverse as gaming or film can ride on one instantiation of said media, just as it would be wrong to believe one European or one African can be indicative of their respective diverse continents. Frankly, many times all two games can have in common are the fact that they are considered games.

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DaTruth - 35 days 13 hours ago

Point proven!

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Unicron - 35 days 15 hours ago

I think the biggest issue that society needs to overcome is that the majority still believes that games are just for kids, similar to how many believe animation is just for kids. It's a hard habit to break.

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Ninjamonkey - 35 days 15 hours ago

It wont be long until games are just as accpeted as movies.

The average gamer age in the US is 35 which is about right since they would have been the people first exposed to proper games in early life.

As time goes on the kids of today, most of which play video games, will grow up to replace the polititians of today and when that happenes games will be seen as just another entertianment form.

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MrJackOfAllTrades - 35 days 15 hours ago

playing a game for fun and watching a movie because you enjoy it aren't the same. yes people watch movies because they enjoy them but they don't always make you happy my sisters keeper was a good movie not because people had fun watching it but because it was emotional and made them feel something games are all about fun and having a good time would you buy a game that isn't fun? movies appeal to people on more levels then games do yes they're both enjoyed but for different reasons. also i just want to add i'm not against games i just don't think they are equal to movies when talking about stuff like violence and sex.

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DaTruth - 35 days 13 hours ago

This part of the game was for emotionality, the rest of the game is the fun! Blurring the lines between film and video games is practically the theme of this year!

Why can't video games have emotionality???

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