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Denver, 5:52 AM
Sun Nov 15
21 posts in the last 24 hours
Tip us: tips@kotaku.com
Editor-In-Chief:
Brian Crecente
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Deputy Editor:
Stephen Totilo
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Senior Editor:
Michael McWhertor
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Senior Contributing Editor, Japan:
Brian Ashcraft
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Contributing Editor, East Coast:
Michael Fahey
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Contributing Editor, Oceania:
Luke Plunkett
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Contributing Editor, Weekends:
Owen Good
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Correspondent, San Francisco:
AJ Glasser
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Columnist:
Leigh Alexander
Columnist:
Tim Rogers
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
11/13/09
11/13/09
11/13/09
I second that! Very well done. You stayed calm and objective. You didn't defend the scene, but discussed how games are evolving, and even how the fact that this is not the norm in videogames. Well said.
I hope you get to do more interviews on controversial games in the future. You do a good job representing them in a more intellectual way, breaking the poor stereotype of aggressive, unlearned gamer. Kudos. :) #modernwarfare2
11/12/09
11/12/09
Great job! #modernwarfare2
11/12/09
11/12/09
*** Spoiler Alert ***
you're playing undercover as the terrorist in the airport was kind of fucked up. I didn't shoot any civilians, and only shot at the cops once I had to. I don't know, I think there's better ways to accomplish the same sort of thing without putting you behind the muzzle during a massacre.
*** End Spoiler ***
But I would never say they shouldn't or couldn't make whatever level they want. I just didn't really care for it. Yeah, I know it was optional, but there's no way I'm skipping levels in any game.
But then again, I downloaded Battlestations Pacific because it was the mid-week Steam deal, and in the very first level you're the Japanese attacking Pearl Harbor. I'd love to see some media indignation about B:P. I guess it's not a popular enough game to warrant the outrage (because, after all, it's about sensationalism and ratings, not objective investigation). #modernwarfare2
11/12/09
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11/13/09
Okay, but really though, I just realized that through Grand Theft Auto, we've been mowing down civilians for years.
Well, not as terrorists. But as gangsters. #modernwarfare2
11/13/09
In real life, you may have blown it and, thus, would not receive a tip on where and when this or that nuclear catastrophe would happen.
Just saying. #modernwarfare2
11/13/09
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I'm not naive. I know that horrible shit is done and the ends justify the means. But if you're suggesting a 9/11 hijacker, a madrid/india/bali bomber or any other incident of mass murder had active undercover participants, you're wrong. The level in MW2 is taken to a (il)logical extreme, just like Jack Bauer on 24. #modernwarfare2
11/14/09
11/12/09
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11/12/09
"To put it in perspective
Modern Warfare 2 made $310 million in one day.
Transformers 2 the highest grossing movie of the year so, only made $220 million in it's entire run and that had megan fox's ass people!" #modernwarfare2
11/12/09
Transformers 2 has made about 400 million dollars over its run in the US and nearly 850 million worldwide (which is what that $310 million day is referring to). And that's just box office receipts. Doesn't include DVD/Bluray sales.
Still, yay MW2. And go go Totilo. #modernwarfare2
11/12/09
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Wonder how this would've gone down at Fox News...
11/12/09
they do what they always do, ignore the person who knows what they're talking about and said the game lets you play as a terrorist. #modernwarfare2
11/12/09
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11/12/09
If they had their way on everything, we'd be playing bible games. #modernwarfare2
11/12/09
11/12/09
You'd rather be reading an interactive bible where your interaction is limited to... continue the dialogue, cause you can't edit the sacred texts, now can you?
Now that might be a game that Fox would approve of... but then I don't know, some might find it offensive to turn the holy book into entertainment. #modernwarfare2
11/12/09
Well done, Stephen. Next stop, Fox News Vs Totilo. #modernwarfare2
11/12/09
We are a club?
Can we get those cool Member's Only jackets?
In purple and that nasty yellow-green of course! #modernwarfare2
11/12/09
11/12/09
What? How dare a Non-Star get a jacket before the almighty Vecha!
Anyways...seriously...what is the book club? I'm lost....and I don't like leaving my rock that often...
Anyways...wish there was a panel discussion instead...though you did a great job Totilo! #modernwarfare2
11/12/09
I do think that certain types of emotions can be stirred more profoundly with games than with other types of media. Invincibility and power are some examples, but so is guilt and regret. Take this MW2 controversy. How many movies about espionage have there been? This is certainly not the first story about someone going under cover with evil people and dealing with the moral ambiguities therein. With passive forms of media, we may sympathize with a characters, but if they act in a way that we don't agree with, our opinion of them will simply change, not our opinion about ourselves. Games can make you choose and live with the consequences.
Demon's Souls, while not really about morality does a great job of making every tactical decision count. There are no take-backs. Imagine if a game with ambiguous moral decisions used a similar auto-save system as Demon's Souls. That would have the potential to be more emotionally effective than any movie, at least for me. #modernwarfare2
11/12/09
If only you could get an interview like that on Fox News. I remember their follow up interview with Geoff Keighley on Mass Effect wasn't so terrible ( despite the "sexbox?" headline).
11/12/09
Great job Stephen, it was nice to see an interview where it seem to be neutral, not extreme pro and extreme con.
Shame I won't be on tomorrow to discuss the Terrorist level in the game club - I have to work. Though I will say that I wasn't terribly offended by the level; I was more disturbed by the fact that I found it so easy to just begin shooting. It was a disturbing segment, no question but I just began to open fire without a second thought and when it was over I was a little ashamed of myself. I thought 'shouldn't this be harder for me?' - perhaps I'm just to desensitized to violence or maybe its the fact that its only a game, and well the act of even being that close to being a terrorist is disturbing it certainly won't make me evil so its not as bothersome to my conscious.
Actually, as I finish writing that, I think its the fact that Infinity Ward missed the mark a little - instead of being a terrorist I'm a person playing a terrorist. So basically there is almost a 'buffer' where my actions are being represented on screen not by someone evil but by someone acting for the 'greater good' - a person forced into the situation just like me. Perhaps I sympathized with the character I was playing, he probably wasn't happy to be there either: this wasn't his plan, they weren't his beliefs and it probably destroyed his conscious as well. Maybe the reason I didn't find the scene so offensive was because the character and I were on the same page when approaching the situation: instead of seeing the scene from a real terrorist's/villian's perspective (like Makarov's - which I think would've been more effective) I was seeing it from the perspective of a good person forced to complete some horrific actions and that made things a little easier to take - Does that make sense? I wasn't playing the terrorist, I was playing a person playing (pretending to be) a terrorist.
Sorry, went off topic - I just wanted to get my two cents out about the terrorist level. #modernwarfare2
11/12/09
Personally, I found the 'No Russian' level to be ultimately in bad taste. I think that boundaries should be pushed and these kinds of topics should be broached but when playing the mission, I just found that it pushed the issue into the face of the player rather than build up a situation that led to the player feeling a deeper connection with the civilians.
I think IW wanted to address the topic with good intent but I think they ultimately failed.
On a related note, the MSNBC review of the game was the most balanced I've seen. #modernwarfare2
11/12/09
What seems really interesting to me about the level as I've heard it described is the fact that the game allows a tension between what you're being told to do by the (terrorist) leader and what your conscience tells you to do. If (as I presume) the game lets you go through the level in the way you want, either shooting civilians or pretending to without penalizing you either way, that creates a more poignant morality situation than games that more directly pushes the game mechanics to let you optimize your moral choice. It's more like the option of whether to kill or not in Metal Gear than, say, Infamous or KOTOR.
It's one of the few situations where a person's behavior in a game is really allowed to reflect their personal conscience in a Milgram-level experiment.
Also I applaud IW's balls. #modernwarfare2
11/12/09
but not many mediums explore the angle of attacking civilians in a serious manner, at least since i read "After The First Death"
i feel they should have separated this issue into another game instead of interjecting into the flow #modernwarfare2
11/13/09
For example, having a a couple wishing goodbye to each other before one goes to board a plane or someone helping someone else with some bags, just something to allow people to connect on some level with what are essentially lambs to the slaughter. As it stands, it hits you with the massacre right off the bat and the end result is a bad taste in the mouth as civilians feel more like meatbags to catch the bullets of the terrorists. I
don't know how best to describe what I mean but it just didn't feel like it was done as best it could. #modernwarfare2