doesnt suprise me though that this subject was even brought up. the internet is used for 2 things. to complain, and porn!

k1llerdave

MonroeLollerskater

strathmeyer

taomaster99

Ragnarok

Mr. Mastodon Farm

The setting is quite modern: US+UK vs GENERIC MIDDLE EASTERN PPLS! I never noticed the game telling me it was a specific race of people I was fighting but it does a very good job of painting your enemies as simply bad people. They commit a military coup, kill a president of a nation (by default we feel presidents of any nation are good people and killing them is outrageous and an act of evil), and they also deal in nuclear materials. If you want to make it a moral issue then you can, but its not at all being offensive to any nation or group of people in its presentation.

The only way I could see someone taking issue is if they are in fact a terrorist and would take offense to people getting entertainment value from killing generic representations of his terrorist friends. The fact is COD is meant to be entertainment, it is supposed to be fun, but it derives that fun from the awful thing that is modern day warfare. It isn't really offering itself up as a moral compass. The bad guys of the game never develop actual human depth like begging for their life or hesitating to fire their gun, nor do you ever see the families they have somewhere or learn about how their parents died due to collateral damage from a western country which caused them to join this terrorist group. No, none of that. You are simply killing bad men in an attempt to stop a madman from using his nuclear weapons to fry everything and everyone on the United States' east coast.

Think of COD4 as the Casino Royale entry of the series. It is contemporary and everything is meant to feel more real, but you are still fighting the two dimensional bad guy who just wants to be evil because that's just how he rolls.

Grimm

Plsk1n

gstatty

questworld

American killing German soldiers = Okay
American killing Iraqi soldiers = Not okay

Gee, reminds me of that stupid RE5 "controversy"

American killing European zombies = Okay
American killing Africans zombies = Not okay

@waitinthecar:
Unfortunately that would be considered racist. For an example, look back on the stories regarding the portrayal of muslim terrorists on 24 (even after they'd done Russian, Hispanic, and even American terrorists in the seasons leading up to it)

TRT-X

WreckTheLaw

OiScout

Dr Terror

CyberSkull

Xephos

ndraft77

jollygoodlad

it's not set in Irad ?!?

did you just look at Sceenshots or Somthing ?

How did this even get Posted ?

Welldone !

JSYTak

ImmovableShark

In those days there was a genuine fear the Allies could lose in the classical sense and not the new form of losing that Vietnam and Iraq have acquainted us all with.

Straw_Dog

Where over here, you tend to get an apathetic "well, you can't tell which ones are the bad guys anymore anyway... *shrug*"

fuchikoma

So a tip to all the game designers out there; wait until the war's all over and people are a little less sensitive about it.

The Great Moof

What continues to amaze me is that this guy and countless others have failed to take a cursory review of the plot of the game and reach the conclusion that THE MARINES ACCOMPLISH NOTHING IN CoD4. They go in, they kill, they get killed, they kill some more - and at least an entire division gets wiped out in a nuclear blast (the plot's biggest fault is failing to make an issue of this event).

Meanwhile, the Brits are globetrotting!; they assassinate Al-Assad, chase Zakhaev's son, and you the player get to stick it Zakhaev in the end. You even get to *go into the past* do more important things as Price! The Brits accomplish EVERYTHING OF SUBSTANCE IN THE PLOT. The marines are bogged down in a quagmire that results in massives losses on both sides with no forseeable benefits to anyone....

Its really very refreshing I think. And hilarious because anyone who conodes the real war is evil.

Straw_Dog

Sure, it never felt to me that I'm actually killing middle easterners or russians, but just a bunch of AI's and characters - but as the man says, it's what it represents that poses as a problem.

Have you ever noticed how often people pick the Marines/SAS side on CoD4 multiplayer? When I yell "TEAMSTACKING" they'd respond "I don't want to be a terrorist". I think the moral issue is where players differentiate between the REAL middle easterners/russians and how the game portrayed them. It's not going to help ignorant fools who already label Iraqi's as "terrorists", and it's not going to matter to those who is critical of the truth anyways.

I guess my point is - would you like to play a game where you're an Iraqi shooting American insurgents on your holy land? For ONCE I'd like to see the Marines/SAS portrayed as the enemies and see how successful the CoD title can be.

Etheo

example: [blonde-fox.deviantart.com]

JamieA

Garro

People are reacting to this guys thoughts

In a way, that is actually my point - the way we are reacting. We always argue against someone who says that games can't be deep. But when someone plays a game and then expresses that it made them think deep and meaningful thoughts, such is the case being displayed here, we turn around and say "chill, it's just a game", and try to debunk their efforts at taking a game seriously.

StormTec

I did not intend to refer to abortion in my statement, but I see where the wording of my statement implies such...

I simply wanted to point out the contradiction in this guy's stance...i.e., killing virtual bad guys is "immoral" because it's relevent to a current conflict.

I'm not sure whether killing virtual bad guys is right or wrong, but I'm pretty sure it's irrelevant. What's more concerning to me is someone wanting to force feed their version of right and wrong to someone else.

eMeS

WreckTheLaw

Garro

A straight up comment from Infinity Ward, just saying what mindset they were all in when they made the game. It would be interesting, and it would definitely be the final word; we can't interpret something one way when the creators say that those interpretations don't exist in their product.

Miksho

Garro

Put a space between my s/n and you got my tag. Let's go hunting!

dunetiger reads kotaku, seems pleased

But like he said, it's just computer code,and as soon as you start confusing that with real life, then there's something seriously wrong with you.

I must say though that I hate to shoot grunts in Halo, they're way too cute.

Kamizzle

WreckTheLaw

InsidiousTuna

And I agree, in ways, Halo sucks.

Garro

No, I think people are up in arms about Halo simply sucking. ZING!

This'll be fun.

dunetiger reads kotaku, seems pleased

The US Marines aren't going around screaming "GOD BLESS AMERICA AND APPLE PIE!!!" and there aren't any allusions that this game has anything to do with anything that's current.

This videogames imitate life shit is getting out of hand. It's a game. Next people are going to be up in arms about shooting the Covenant on Halo because they are religous, fanatical aliens.

Damn, man sometimes you just have to take a step back and BREATHE.

FunKrusher

I can't argue what you personally took from a game, it's what I said in my previous argument. The developers didn't intend for the game to be anti-war, but you took it as such because war was presented as-is. If that's your vision of hell, so be it.

I can understand this if you opened up saying that everything written was your personal take on things, but you specifically wrote you "got a hunch" that the anti-war messages were intentional. Now you turn around and say too bad it's just my way of looking at it? It's a smooth transition but your ground is looking shaky to me.

I don't have a problem with your version of things, that's fine. If someone looks at Viva Pinata and says that it speaks to them as a profound statement on the circle of life for children, or the value of maintaining a living garden, or whatever, great. As long as they don't label it as an intentional, if they don't think it was.

Like I said, war was presented as is with cinematic flair, and if you're already decidedly anti-war then what else CAN you take from realism in a war game? You look at a gunship and say it's creepily horrible because of the impersonal nature of manning the guns. I, looked at it and said, "Hey, fucking sweet badass gunship set. Get some." It's not because I'm incapabale of analysis, I'm not stupid, and I don't think stories can be held up on action alone.

I never knew that there was an actual issue between intention vs interpretation. Even if there is a continual debate on the issue, CoD4 was no where NEAR as bad as a green bottle turned red coke can. I'm saying, and I truly believe, that they presented war in a 'real' way, cut and dry, no skew one way or the other. You opened up saying that this was intentionaly anti-war (even if it was one employee sneaking it in), not that this was just your interpretation.

Colors and shapes are facts, so if it's red and it resembles a coke bottle, there's not really an argument to be had (unless it kinda doesn't resembel the coke bottle). Anyway, we're talking about mindsets and meanings and given the nature of human thinking, you can present a fact and it will inspire, how many different things in how many different people? Inspiration is great, but an interpreation of a meaning or a intangible thought doesn't prove anything or corner reality in your favor.

I guess personally, I'll stick with separating the two while holding both as valid. If something has meaning but wasn't intentional, I keep it personal. It what was intentional had meaning, awesome. The thing is, in this case, they tried to present reality, which by nature is going to invoke different things, so all I'm saying is, don't start proclaiming this and that then turn around and say, "oh well that's just me."

Garro

Anyway, good discussion!

WreckTheLaw

To cap off my last post without editing, I forgot to mention the quotes in the game when you die. They go both ways and they're split evenly. There isn't a majority for either party, so how can you begin to argue gameplay reflects a certain meaning when clear cut specifically chosen quotes contradict it?

Garro

A core difference, one to reflect on here, between you and I is that we have different theories of authorial meaning and intention. A very common topic in philosophy of literature and the modern study of rhetoric and language is whether or not the author's intent determines the meaning. Two examples stand against this plainly.

The first is Dostoyevsky's The Idiot. L. James Hammond writes: The chief character in The Idiot is Prince Myshkin. "The main idea of the novel," said Dostoyevsky, "is to depict the positively good man," and Myshkin is that man. Myshkin is a Christ figure - honest, ingenuous, indifferent to wealth and to physical pleasure. Myshkin is a very attractive character indeed. Whether or not Dostoyevsky succeeded in 'depicting the positively good man,' he deserves credit for making the attempt. [www.ljhammond.com] However, Dostoyevsky himself would later claim to have failed at this, his sincere intent.

A second, less specific example is this: imagine a sculptor sets out to create the most wonderful thing - a perfect statue replica of a green Schweppes Ginger Ale bottle. He does his best, but when it finishes, it resembles a coke bottle, and is red. For one, he just wasn't as skilled as necessary, and another, he had only red clay. These things limit us in our creation.

As such, one can build the argument (and many have) that when we are creating things we are often working inside the confines of this reality we are in, and therefore our creations tend to reflect truths of our world, or at the very least truths that we believe. This is how most modern comparative literature and literary theory operates. It's how we can say "Well, Hamlet really 'gets at' the notion of being vengeful" or even "Man, Rick Ross really seems to know a thing or two about Hustlin'." More importantly we can say things like "Gojira really gets at the heart of the nature vs science argument," even if the author's may have intended it as a scathing argument against the US in WWII, or against Japan's westernization, or any of the other proposed "meanings" assigned to the early monster movie.

To be clear, even I as a "liberal civilian" do not see the "bad guys" in this game as anything less than that. In fact my intent in the original post was to emphasize that dealing with them was very Hollywood "evil bad guy" and not well fleshed out etc., but perhaps I too failed at my intended meaning. But in "Death From Above" the men you are killing are still human, and when guys around YOU the player are killed they are the same, except IW did the (very cool) thing of giving them all names, so you feel it even if Pvt. Jenkins who has no lines takes a dive.

The heart of it is, they have (intentionally or not) revealed how shitty war is. The end of Shock and Awe DOES highlight the amazing, frightful power of nuclear weapons. And "Death from Above" does put you in the seat of a very calm killer. I don't need to argue that they intended to show that war is hell, I only need to argue that what they've produced can stand alone in arguing that war is hell, and I believe that it does.

WreckTheLaw

UncleScrotar

Demaar

Black comedians (many of the more recent ones, at least), for example, have made their careers on making fun of both themselves and white people. It's funny, it works, but only one way. No way can a white guy turn the tables around because then it's a matter of supremacy.

Similarly, going with the RE5 example, RE has been a series where you've basically been killing white people and monsters with your few token men and women of color as background. No problems there. RE4 was killing mobbed-up crazy white cultists (pallette-wise). No problems there. RE5 is now set in Cuba or wherever and now you're killing people of color. Giant problem all of a sudden.

Then we've got CoD4. Killing Nazis for three games didn't seem like much of a problem, albeit their ideology and philosophy (insofar as their leaders were concerned) are well known, so it's acceptable. CoD4 puts us in the Middle East and Russia because, well, that's where modern conflicts are likely to take place. Nobody mentions that you're killing a bunch of Russians because, frankly, they're white people. Kill the insurgents, however, and it's now a problem, even though the game painstakingly makes it clear that the ideology and what have you is definitely against the definition of democratic freedom. The only other likely theaters of conflict would be China or North Korea (which was done by Mercenaries), but even then, I'm sure someone's going to balleyhoo about it becuase you're not killing white people.

In general, modern Western society is hypocritical and I like to call this kind of thinking Reverse Racism. I don't agree with it one bit and frankly, I find it all to be posing and flag-waving in the PC society that people have created for themselves. Race is not an issue for me, especially when it comes to matters of video game violence. This kind of writing and sensationalism irritates me because the PC-centric English-speaking world is full of people with heads neck-deep up their asses.

In a similar vein, you can take the religious standpoint (I know, it's taboo, so I'm sticking to facts). You can make fun of Jesus in entertainment all the live long day, but you MUST respect the god(s) of any other religion, especially one adopted by people of color (the Muhammad cartoon fiasco springs to mind). Why the double-standard?

The point is thus: either everything's okay, or nothing's okay. That's the only fair approach.

dunetiger reads kotaku, seems pleased

D-Lish

Seriously I'm sick of the whole racisism in games BS. I don't give a flying f what color my enemeies are and neither should you..

weasl

Tyrohne

robnubis

...'course I'm betting most of the kids will just go "dude, look at that guy's guts!" :/

fuchikoma

rojo

Plsk1n

Ralph says:

"..The one I vow my son will never take part in."

Is his son not allowed to make decisions for himself? What is more wrong and more immoral than taking away another person's right to choose?

eMeS

We applaud Wreckthelaw since hes one of the few people who actually takes quite a bit of time to make sure his comment is well written and thought out, which does deserve a positive remark.

Anyways water under the bridge and that was a well written comment.

Witzbold

dv8godd

And while a game is still just a game, we are slowly crossing a line I think where they are turning into so much more both for the good and the bad.

SS Ymer

Garro

dv8godd

There are no achievments in MP. Only challenges which are not achievments.

Witzbold

Arab terrorists have been presented in games for a long time, well before the 2nd Iraq war. Counter Strike anybody?

In games we shoot and kill lots of 'bad' people from all over the world. It's just a game and unless its something like Operation: Back to baghdad and specifically says kill iraqis then its just stupid to whine about it. It's also rather racist to assume a game set in the middle east MUST be about Iraq. We could be shooting eqyptians and nobody would care. Pfft.

EdwinJ85

The main viallans? They refer to themselves as the Horseman, which puts to rest all your cute quotations, as if the enemies in this game were innocent and just happened to be carrying rifles.

Furthermore, in both FAQ's, IW refers to the villains in this game as, "crazed would-be dictator's." There is no grey area here people, no one is trying to say that any enemy in this game should be given a second thought as to whether or not you should put a bullet in his head.

I'm glad people are looking into games deeply, so you're mistaken if you think I'm arguing that it's impossible to find meaning in games. What arguing is that, you're finding a meaning you WANT to see in a game that doesn't deliver it.

Bot the editor and WreckTheLaw have both stated that they're anti-war. I think that's skewing your views on how this game is handling war. It's just presenting it as is, no more no less. There isn't any over-arching themes of "war is bad" anywhere. War is already controversial, so making it real in a video game will provide the same conflict: some will think it's horrible and others won't.

I garuntee you most soldiers who've been through Iraq wouldn't bat an eyelash at this game, and they're the ones who would know whether or not there's been a twist one way or another in a media taking place in war.

This is the first military game that's taken place in 'modern' conflicts (as in anything that touches near fighting in Iraq), so I can see the confusion, but really, every point made so far has been well argued but isn't true at all.

Wreck, you cited the predident getting shot as a scene in which the movement is purposely claustrophobic to give an anti-war sentiment, making it more horrilbe than if you could see all around you. However, in many, MANY video games, when there is a cutscene taking place from the perspective of a character, you're vision is restricted. Halo, Half Life, Metal Gear Solid, etc etc. This time wasn't any different, it just happened to be a dramatic moment.

Showing a rapid insurgency where you men die, is again, common. Very, very, very, mind numbingly, common. No wartime beachhead assault worth it's salt wouldn't show a couple dramtic shots of a troopship (heliicopter, gunboat, dropship, whatever) getting taken out. Of course the media isn't going to show it's own boys getting lit up, it's stupid. What Amertican wants to see they're own getting killed? It's bad for morale, not just some consipriacy to cover up the truth of the conflict. Video games show your allies dieing all the time, just bcause it's part of this game doesn't mean anything special.

There can be far more deep and powerful anti-war messages in an FPS, or any action game, first of all because this game had none, and second of all the reasons you're giving are EXTREMELY personal. Guns of the Patriots has a largely overt anti-war messsage, and you can clearly see it through it's cutscenes alone.

That mission in the fields, hunted? That's pretty laid back. If it was meant to be fast paced or claustrophobic, there would have been a racy track or some other means of conveying the notion. However, the first half of the game is stealthy and slow. When you're found, it just acts like the rest of the game. There isn't a single difference between the fights in Hunted and the fights in any other mission. You engage, take down, and get out, not engage, run, engage, run etc. Playing as a gunship is antiwar to those who already view war with a sensitive heart. You're high in the sky, and all you see are little ants running around that you shoot to kill. It's gotta be one of the least personal ways to kill someone in a war short of dropping bombs. If that's creepy to anyone, that's a personal view, not how the stuido wanted you to look at it.

The things cited in the thought ought arguments in agreement with the reporter are either incorrect or personal feelings. If you're antiwar to begin with, and you see a film , book, or video game that is 'real' war, then what's to stop you from feeling the same way as you do when watching CNN? It's like if I took you on an over the shoulder recording of the daily activity of a marine, did I make an anti0war film? No, it's just what the marine did that day, take it as is. If the studio was trying to make an anti-war video game, the message would have been presented in clear tones.

Civilains, espeically liberal civilians, have a measure of sensitivity that soldiers don't. If a studio chooses to make a 'real' war game, it's just a real war game. INfinity WArd had NOT made any comments that support ANY arguments in favor of the reporter. You can speculate all youw ant but the truth will come from the studio itself. CoD 4 is NO different from ANY other military simulator out there, and just because it's partly set in the middle east doesn't mean it's anti0-war.

Garro

dv8godd

robochick

theprof00

Frey

I see his point about how it alludes to the Iraq War (I am in the Army), but it is a video game. I don't care if you think this is a wrong war or whatever, but at some point, you have to come to accept it as a part of history. And that is fair game. For a video game.

Although... I have yet to see a Vietnam War game. Other than Vietcong or whatever.

tvo

iainttha1

What? Yes. They do. They definitely do. What the hell do you think is the point of books? Of course there's a difference between escapist fantasy and allegory, and obviously the dividing line isn't always crystal clear. But many authors write books with a specific intention in mind, and they're often mad as hell while doing so. Their aim is to arouse that same righteous fury in their readers. This is a tradition that goes back to the beginning of the written word.

We should be so lucky as to have gamers and developers treat games with the reverence that readers and writers treat books.

Dudes_McGee

blacksamurai87

InsidiousTuna

WreckTheLaw

If you know the actual mindset of Islamo-fascists, they are just as bad if not worse than the SS, with the people being liberated under equal oppression as Europe under Hitler, for longer periods of time. Ever heard of honor-killings? What about the cruelty of the Taliban? They make water-boarding look like a gentle bath for an infant. Whether we fought them in Iraq or Afghanistan, they are all the same gang with the same goals, enemies, targets, and mindsets. I'm tired of all the dishonesty about the Middle East. Much of our country is just playing more of the same game that led to 9-11.

This guy needs to grow some balls, as a large part of our country does. The very same soldiers he claims to have the right to morally represent in his game-playing have just as much conviction about the rightness of their cause today as any Captain Winters did on D-Day.

As General Norman Schwarzkopf said, "Any soldier worth his salt is anti-war. But there are still some things worth fighting for."

I wonder how many American citizens and buildings would have to fall for this guy to "get it" and realize that we are actually at war with radical Islam in all forms, and not just a scant few.

Mohican

dv8godd

Carroceiro

Excellent stuff!

Witzbold

Ralph,

I just read your January 8th article, "A virtual history lesson or just a shoot-'em-up?" and was moved to write you a quick (hopefully) email on the subject matter you've touched here. My name is Austin Walker, I'm a 22 year old self avowed hardcore gamer. In 2003 I co-founded Hofstra University Gamers, and currently live with two former members of that club in northern New Jersey, where video games are an integral part of our daily routine (even if our jobs limit the amount of time we get to play.) I'm liberal enough to choose "very liberal" on my Facebook profile, and maybe it was all those Philosophy classes I took in college, but I'm with you on this whole Iraq War thing - it is unjust, unethical, unfair to people on both sides of the conflict, and needs to stop. So, those things said, I feel like I've established myself as familiar with the topics at hand here.

The week before New Year's I found a few days off and my roommate's copy of Call of Duty 4 (CoD4.) I played through it at a breakneck pace, beating it in two game sessions. The guys at Infinity Ward (the developer of the game) had something here - the game was cinematic, something that the Tom Clancy Series (Rainbow Six, and GRAW) often eschewed in favor of "realism." The opening couple levels ('F.N.G.' and 'Crew Expendable' - a training mission and an assault on a quickly sinking ship, carrying nuclear weapons) of CoD4 were equivalent to a summer action blockbuster (starring Colin Farell as Soap?)

However, with the actual opening credit scene ('Coup'), I got the hunch that Infinity Ward - or at least someone there - might have decided to use this game as more than just a virtual history lesson or a shoot 'em up. Much like critically acclaimed (and a personal favorite of the year) Bioshock, CoD4 had begun to use the medium's unique strengths and methods to deliver an experience not duplicatable on film, the stage, or in anything but the most detailed "choose your own adventure" novel. The player is given control of an ousted ruler of the nameless Middle Eastern country that CoD4 takes place in during the last few minutes of his life. You are unable to look a full 360 degrees around, limiting your field of vision (and your sense of safety) as you are jammed in the back of a car and hauled off to your public execution. You are unable to move, try as you might, as two of the game's leading antagonists end your life. There is something very powerful here, something beyond war propaganda. These scenes act as an argument against war, or at least displaying how terrifying such a thing really is. And it isn't the last time that CoD4 handles these issues.

Later in the game you take control of a U.S. Marine, searching for the man who executed the country's former leader and attempting to take back the country's capital from the newly installed 'insurgents." Much of this is reminiscent of films like Black Hawk Down in their narrative and their realism. The missions 'The Bog' and 'Shock and Awe' (borrowing its name from the military tactic of rapid dominance that was used at the beginning of Iraqi Freedom and in other conflicts), are again standard war film fare for the most part. But under a critical eye it's clear that what we are being shown is the exact sort of situation that our own military brass (and certain political figures) would never want us to see: Our men out gunned, out numbered, under supplied, and unable to receive additional support because we simply didn't account for this sort of war. 'The Bog' is one of the game's earliest stumbling points for most players - it simply isn't very easy to defend a tank from all sides in an open, overgrown courtyard with tons of cover (and none of it for you.) 'The Bog' acts as a strong metaphor for this war we're in.

Metaphors aside, the end of 'Shock and Awe' is about as powerful as anti-war a message you can get in an FPS. After a long battle, you manage to rescue a downed pilot from a wrecked helicopter, and carry her onto yours. As you begin to fly away, the city behind you explodes the way we've only seen in documentaries and the aforementioned Hollywood blockbuster. A nuclear bomb detonates, and over the next three or so minutes, you (again) live out the last few moments of a man's life. Your helicopter crashes, and you crawl out, then limp and stumble about as buildings literally crumble away in the aftereffect of the bomb. The screen goes white, and a character that I as a player barely cared about was suddenly martyred for the cause of ending nuclear proliferation. No one who is a reasoning being who played this section of the game could've come away with "nuclear weapons are great." Maybe they came away with "I want revenge on the bad guys," but what I believe that Infinity Ward wanted here was simple: "this - doing this to anyone, anywhere, ever - is not a good thing."

There is a final moment that I wish to acknowledge, and it is the same one that you do so (albeit for perhaps the opposite reason.) "There's even a part of the game reminiscent of the infamous "luckiest truck driver in Baghdad" news conferences. You're in a bomber looking down with night-vision goggles at helpless victims scrambling on the ground below - an X-button push away from oblivion," you write. And you're right - this is what happens in the mission 'Death from Above', but I feel you may have left out some very important things about the context of this mission, and perhaps even misunderstood what the point of it was.

The mission prior to 'Death from Above' is called 'Hunted.' In it you, as "Soap", are trapped behind enemy lines. Again, this is one of the most difficult missions in the game, as moving just a little slow or arrive just a little late will cause a stir, sending up alarms and causing a full compliment of enemy troops on you. Eventually that happens anyway. The level is as down and dirty a video game can be. It is stressful, it is tense. This is what Infinity Ward must think of ground, infantry warfare - this is the best they could boil the fear, the intensity, the frustration of being in a place you have no desire to be, into a 30 minute or so section of a video game. And you get to the end of the level, a small village, and finally you get your air support.

And then you play as the air support. It is cold, it is clean, it is somehow non-organic. You shoot down at little white blobs of men and trucks and houses. You're told early on to shoot anything that isn't flashing - the good guys have beacons that make them flash - and anything that isn't the village's Church, where your targets are streaming out of. To anyone watching it is nearly indistinguishable from that "luckiest truck driver in Baghdad" video, and others like it. Running the game side by side with similar footage yields frightening results. As you shoot down - using a caliber of ammunition far larger than necessary - the voices in your ear (the pilot, spotter, and other military personnel) call out your shots calmly. "There's a runner…. There he goes. Bam, you got him." "There's three of them over there. Adjust 34 degrees. Take 'em out." "Wow, you were within two feet of that one. Good shot." These are the voices of men who might be shooting paper targets, not ending human lives. As the level ends one of them laughs: "This is gonna make for one hell of a highlight reel!"

If you thought for a second that this was an endorsement of military action, then I don't know what to say. Maybe it was because you were only watching not playing. Maybe if you were playing you would've felt the uneasiness, the guilt, of shooting these polygons and textures on your screen. There is something eerie about what happens here. Something antithetical to much of the game's cinematic, "bad ass" feel - this is subtle and quiet and jarring in a way scene's in Schindler's List are, or the sometimes sparse, disconnected chapters of The Grapes of Wrath are. Except, again, Infinity Ward is playing on the medium. You pull the trigger; you have to if you want to beat the game. And even though you would know this, I'd bet you'd regret firing, and be put off kilter by the tone and words of those in the gunship with you. This is an indictment of what Hannah Arendt called the banality of evil in its fullest, in a way that only a video game could provide. You become (just as you did in Bioshock) the man who keeps the trains running on time.

This game is rated M for Mature due to its "blood and gore, intense violence, and strong language." Let me submit to you that it is rated M for Mature in the same way that last year's Scorcese masterpiece The Departed was rated R for Restricted. There's plenty of technical reasons why it was rated that (mostly for the same reasons that CoD4 was rated Mature, but also for sexual content), but even if you remove those things, even if you lower the intensity and frequency of the cursing and the violence and the nudity down to a PG-13 level, The Departed is a movie for mature people. As a consumer and a critic I'm willing to accept that Call of Duty 4 is a game for mature people in the same way. That without the context of the world we live in, CoD4 is "just a shoot 'em up." But with maturity comes the ability to place CoD4 in our world, just as we can place The Departed (or for that matter Hamlet, which The Departed shares many of its core themes with) in it.

I'm not sure if your son and his cousin's had the worldview necessary to "get it." Hell, I'm not sure a lot of the game's community "got it." In fact, I'm not even certain that some of the game's developers got it - after all, the game after 'Death from Above' returns to its cinematic glory, and never really touches on these issues again (despite being a masterpiece of single player FPS action.) My advice to you Ralph is to pick up the controller yourself, play through it. I think you'll "get it" the same way I did.

WreckTheLaw

"It's not okay to kill these types of people but it's totally okay to kill these other types of people."

If he is so righteous, he shouldn't be letting his kid play M rated games in the first place and just outright disallow violence altogether in his household.

But of course, violence is acceptable against one group, but it's not okay when it is against another enemy just because they're skin is differently colored, at least in his mind.

JAcK0R

Isaac VanDuyn

solidousSNK

I see. So its not violence if Nazis are being killed. RIGHT. Its not violence if you've trained your subject to dehumanize their enemy. Sure the Nazi army was one of the closest things we've had to being pure evil, but that army was made up of human beings. Its still violence, and war is still about MURDER. When a Nazi was shot it was murder. Justifiable homicide or whatever.

The simple fact is we're talking about one person intentionally killing another person. That's not just violence, its intentional homicide; its murder. Again, justifiable under the circumstances, but not something to be taken lightly. If anything, maybe this guy should consider teaching his son about the difference between justifiable violence and the wars he is so vehemently opposed to.

PlaidNinja

Luke

Great, I really feel terrible about myself now that video games are as real to me as the obviously are to this guy. I won't even get into the GTA series.

zibby

Also, in the game, the main terrorist character Al-Asad has [MAYBE SPOILERS?] A nuke. [/END SPOILERS?]

Does this guy who wrote the article think that if a terrorist had one of these weapons, the US (or any nation) should just sit back and relax?

Poffy

Have decades of James Bond movies taught you nothing?

Mact

You are playing as jackson i believe in the middle east, a US Marine? that or army i honestly can't remember but i believe he is a marine.

Anyway no I don't feel bad when i play a game because after all it is a game. Do authors of books feel bad when they write something where someone in a (modern) war fights? No, do the readers feel "bad"? no.

And its not "disrespect" to the soldiers that are there now, have been there, have been KIA or any other soldier ever, I still respect them the same as i always have for doing what they choose to do and I thank them for their choice and I am grateful. But I don't feel morally wrong when i start up CoD4 or any other modern game.

Zaos

L_K_M

Whether it's CoD, Starcraft, X-Men comic book, Lord of the rings or whatever... if your son understands that this is only fiction, there'll be no problems in the future.

Now here's a thing to really think of: WWII was worse than the current war on Iraq. People were more gullible at the time, and the war propaganda ruled the media.
Germans were demonized (as seem even on Disney banned cartoons and such). And that's why the guy thinks it's easier to kill nazis than insurgents/terrorists.

But the thing is: They are all human beings. If this wasn't fiction, it would be morally bad to kill either... the difference between then is just the view we have of them because of the media.

It's much like "killing" indians (native americans) some twenty years ago.

Bokusatsu_Tenshi

Deus Ex Machina

JangoFett353

dotdigsgames

And I don't know how willfully obtuse you have to be to think Call of Duty 4 has no parallels to current world events just because they gave a fake name to the Middle Eastern country. It's like saying that Animal Farm wasn't an anti-Communist allegory because there weren't any talking pigs in the Soviet Union.

Dudes_McGee

invictus

cametall

brent_w

No. Hell no, in fact.

What a stupid moral standard to have, anyway. The fact is that all German soldiers in WWII were not Nazis and this guy has no problem killing them, but yet has a problem killing insurgents who may or may not be Iraqi because he disagrees with the current war. He might want to rethink that stand.

"The victor will never be asked if he told the truth."
--Adolf Hitler

ビッグ ボス

Still, it does make you think a bit. If you are shooting something like you instead of aliens/real scum of the earth Nazis/zombies, it is easier somehow than shooting little girls.

Chilly Hollow

teh_sideburns

cheeseboybeans

Sqwerell

Hey! I know, let's play North American Invasion. I want to be the plague-blanket-giver!

(Don't get me wrong, I like me some violent games, but don't try and justify one mass killing over another.)

rezlow

You can say a game is a game and it's all fun and good, and in a lot of ways I agree with that sentiment, but when you have some buddies over there who are having to deal with that stuff in a very real world manner... and not all of them have made it home... well, the game has a tendency to become very distasteful.

KevinSetzer

That nature of war is such that a soldier must kill, and to the dead man's family, the soldier is a monster. We somehow manage to gloss over this simple fact. We dehumanize our opponents, or just don't politely talk about the fact that every slain enemy soldier was a son or daughter. And sometimes, innocents and civilians just find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.
People do bad things in wartime, regardless of what side they're fighting for. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. Just because the soldiers in question have a US flag on their shoulder doesn't mean they're always going to be shining paragons of democracy every day of his life.

I don't know about you guys, but I've known some Americans who were real bastards. I wouldn't a guy like that and his heavily armed pals to kick open my door, or kill my religious or civic leaders, even if I do think those leaders are douchebags.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we should run around screaming "Babykiller!" every time we see a man in uniform. But neither should we turn a blind eye to the tragedy and horror of war, in the name of some kind of blind patriotism.

I would be willing to wager that most who serve in the military are men and women of good character. But not all of them can be, because at the end of the day, the human race is made of saints and sinners both. Unlike civilians, however, soldiers have the added duty to do the dirty deed... to kill others in order to safeguard the lives of the countrymen. And under that burden, even the best of men can falter.

So, in other words, do I have a problem with COD4 depicting a more modern conflict? Not at all. If this game hits a little too close to home, makes you uncomfortable, good. It should. We should all be aware that even now, as we sit at home and enjoy our comforts, men fight and die on foreign shores.

There are many roads that lead to war. But in my mind, the only one that leads to peace is paved with understanding. In understanding why our enemy fights, perhaps a peace can be reached.

In this most recent conflict, the combatants fight for myriad reasons. Some (a few) fight because they think it is the will of their God. Others fight in the name of their dead, for their slain countrymen. Some fight out of a sense of duty to their country, and some fight to defend their families from harm.

You probably figure I'm talking about the insurgents in that last paragraph. But I'm not. Think about it.

And no, I'm not some anti-war hippy. Wars happen for a reason. Some better than others. In my book, this one counts as one of the "others". But the worst aspect of the War Against Terror (or whatever we've branded it), is our willingness to turn a blind eye to it.

Some say we shouldn't fight wars at all. Others say dissent is unpatriotic.

I say, fight a war if you have to. But don't turn a blind eye to the price.

Insomnia Bob

Raynre

They were killing each other."

I was speechless after I read that quote, hell I still am.

Father of the Year buys his son a M rated game (CoD 1-3 were rated T) only to bitch about it. CoD 4 makes no attempt to hide the mature themes vs. the WWII Call of Duty games and isn't a game for kids. I bet this is the same sort of father that teaches his kids about the Vietnam war by showing them Apocalypse Now. After showing it to his kids he writes Mr. Coppola a letter about the mature theme in the movie because it just wasn't about those nasty Commies that he wanted to show his children.

iamspoo

Iraq, though, that's a different story. You see these scenes on the news every day. You can't help but associate the characters in these games with the real people you've actually seen die in this war.

Shooting iraqi insurgents is probably not more or less wrong than shooting Nazis. But the perception is very different.

L_K_M

Nonsense. That's like saying the appeal of the WWII-themed Call of Duty games was simply to use old-fashioned weaponry. It is clear that the setting, the conflict, and the heroism in WWII is a key part of the appeal of the series.

Of course war isn't pretty - it involves killing people. However at least WWII was one that HAD to be fought. The morality of it was pretty fucking clear cut. That simply isn't the case with the deeply unpleasant "fictional" middle eastern conflict featured in Call of Duty 4 and as such it feel decidedly like a Tom Clancy wet dream, and American right-wing propaganda.

kiigan

Many atrocities are carried out during wars on all sides. I've never had any illusion that it's any other way. It's why i feel that it's hypocritical for people to feel bad for playing or for condemning the simulation (or as they put it, the exploitation) of recent events but not for more distant events. Just because we weren't involved in something doesn't make it any better.

One time my friends at university had a heroes and villains party. Me and a friend went as german officers... when i told my mum that i'd done so she said that it was disrespectful to those who had suffered in the war. How is it less disrespectful to go as a roman soldier then? Or a member of the inquisition?

Maybe someone can give me an answer that i can accept as being a valid argument.

Duoae

He has the best face-melt at the end of Radiers too.

splines

Besides, it's not so much that these new guys are Middle-Eastern, but that the motherfuckers are trying to kill me. Isn't that sort of the point?

splines

sj4iy

sh0tgunn0strils

Fighting the Nazis and the heroic struggle of the Allies in WWII is a morally unambiguous conflict we can all get behind. The fictional conflict in COD4 seems a bit more ill-advised though. The cartoonish attempts early in the game on the part of Infinity Ward to establish the fictional character Al Asad as an evil man just don't convince - the fiction just feels like a thinly veiled excuse for the middle-eastern setting: "This guy is really evil, so you off you go to kill some Arabs".

Ultimately this game is clearly an attempt at scrumping for some of those lovely Tom Clancy dollars that Ubisoft has been enjoying, and thus it embraces all the bad taste, embarrassing far-right political naivity, pantomime caricatures and offensive stereotypes that such games entail. Fine, we know what to expect from that. It's disappointing though, that Infinity Ward should feel compelled as creators to try and put a heroic slant on a war that is neither heroic nor necessary, and it is disappointing that Infinity Ward didn't deem it necessary to create a slightly more intelligent treatment of the conflict, taking into account the international (and mature) nature of the Call of Duty series' audience.

kiigan

cdammers

Infradead

But when you think about it, it really is a horrible thing to say "Killing Nazis is Fine, but Killing Other People!?". I'm not a Nazi sympathizer or anything, but War is a horrible thing. People are forced to fight against their will, forced to kill people just because the higher ups tell them to. Sure, Nazi ideology is pure evil, but they didn't have an evil entrance exam into the nazis to make sure you were pure evil before you got down to some killing. There were good people and bad people on both sides, and they died on both sides. It's a bit mean to demonize everyone forced into a uniform.

I saw my flatmate play CoDIV. I thought he was killing Russian Terrorists...

Darien_Shields

repoman123

Witzbold

Western public seems it acceptable when youre killing off germans, russians, arabs, mexicans or any non jewish/christians.

But when the shoe is on the other foot, the western nations comes up with terms like hate/racist games, Terrorist tool etc etc.

People scream boom headshots or great kills when youre shooting "bad evil brown guy", but when you try blowing JFK brains out, that becomes bad taste?

Nothing is true, everything is permitted - AC

The only reason I bought the game was a refreshing change that youre someone other then white christian super soldier. Although his descendant being a non middle eastern Christian really didnt make sense.

devilhunterx

now "GAMES HUUURT"

we need a revolution of rational thinking in this country....and quickly.

Cell9song

There was no evidence that Iraq had any chemical or biological weapons at the start of the second Gulf War, any suggestion to the contrary was merely Saddam's posturing to make his neighbours fear him. Hans Blix, the UN weapons inspector was a few weeks from completing a full inspection of Iraqi weapons and his initial findings were that Saddam had no chemical weapons left. Bush deliberately sent the troops in before the weapons inspectors could finish because it was very likely nothing was going to be found and their pretence for the war would be destroyed. The war was started over a lie, whether the real goal was to push up oil prices or to prop up Bush's sagging popularity I don't know, but it is an unjust war.

photoboy

I can't remember the name of the game, but there was a Middle-East themed shooter that was being advertised on TV sometime during the WMD confusion right before and during the beginning of the Iraq invasion. Goal of the game: take out the Iraq military and kill Saddam. One of the images in the commercial was a video-game figure of Saddam Hussein, viewed through a sniper scope with crosshairs on his head. To me, it came off like video-game propaganda, like early recruiting for the armed forces. I still feel uneasy thinking about it.

Highlander Wolf

Two guys were sleeping in that boat... Defensless? You were getting shot at. They weren't, "terrorists," they were terrorists. I didn't know that a cargo ship holding a nuke, with writing in Arabic, with men holding ak-47's were defensless, unafiliated, non-combatants. Call me retarded...

How does this game rub 'there are no winners' in your face when you stop America from getting nukes dropped on it? That's like, a victory in my crazy book. I mean the marine dies, but that was dramatic. You stop clearly evil men from achieving evil goals, that's cut and dry as, Nazi's...

Infinity Ward, said in their interviews that they pretty much presented war