Activision Defends Oliver North in Black Ops 2

Ragsnstitches

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KeyMaster45 said:
j-e-f-f-e-r-s said:
Grats dude, you've established that we all understand that he is a very bad man. I also imagine this fact was established way back in the 80's when it all happened. It happened, the country got pissed at how the government handled it and we moved on. Getting so angry about it 30 years plus down the line does nothing productive for anyone.
Without even trying to not avoid repeating myself, What has putting his ass in front of a camera to advertise a game got to do with being productive? Clearly, due to the controversy, it ISN'T BEING PRODUCTIVE. It's a harmful association... People don't just forget these things.

Just because you can nonchalantly dismiss treason and assisted war crimes, doesn't mean the rest of us compassionate and empathetic folk have to or even want to.

Just don't shove his ugly ass in our faces. Use him to advise how you wipe for all I care, I don't want to see that cretin.
 

NinjaDeathSlap

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Their explanation makes sense for using him as a consultant... but not so much as a figurehead for their ad campaign. That was misguided at the very least.

But I agree with Mr. Chalk in the sense that pretty much everyone with experience in this field that Activision could have asked in most likely has their hands just as dirty, if not more so, than Oliver North. They were just never caught. Guys, the whole point about 'deniable ops' is that if it was all above board, then they wouldn't need to be 'deniable' would they?

Also that last part is... intriguing.
 

Ayjona

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Andy Chalk said:
but his real crime was simply that he got caught.
I thought his real crime was involvement in "selling weapons to Iran in exchange for the release of American hostages and then funneling the money to the Contra rebels in Nicaragua" :D
 

KeyMaster45

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Ragsnstitches said:
Without even trying to not avoid repeating myself, What has putting his ass in front of a camera to advertise a game got to do with being productive? Clearly, due to the controversy, it ISN'T BEING PRODUCTIVE. It's a harmful association... People don't just forget these things.

Just because you can nonchalantly dismiss treason and assisted war crimes, doesn't mean the rest of us compassionate and empathetic folk have to or even want to.

Just don't shove his ugly ass in our faces. Use him to advise how you wipe for all I care, I don't want to see that cretin.
j-e-f-f-e-r-s said:
He's not advertising the game he's a consultant, and his picture is only on the article here because most of us will go "Oliver who? Oh, I guess he's that old guy in the picture". You guys are getting mad because Activision sat down and thought to themselves who might know the most about secret under-handed shady government stuff and this guy was their choice. Despite being a scumbag they felt that since he wasn't in prison his knowledge should at least be put to work doing something positive.

Though I still don't really care what this guy did, so to make up for that I'm going to give the two of you something special.

 

Richardplex

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To add to the sentiment many others have posted, Oliver North was completely unneeded for the ad campaign. P. W. Singer showed he was fully capable of doing it himself, as well as being an expert in modern military tactics.
 

Ragsnstitches

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KeyMaster45 said:
Ragsnstitches said:
Without even trying to not avoid repeating myself, What has putting his ass in front of a camera to advertise a game got to do with being productive? Clearly, due to the controversy, it ISN'T BEING PRODUCTIVE. It's a harmful association... People don't just forget these things.

Just because you can nonchalantly dismiss treason and assisted war crimes, doesn't mean the rest of us compassionate and empathetic folk have to or even want to.

Just don't shove his ugly ass in our faces. Use him to advise how you wipe for all I care, I don't want to see that cretin.
j-e-f-f-e-r-s said:
He's not advertising the game he's a consultant, and his picture is only on the article here because most of us will go "Oliver who? Oh, I guess he's that old guy in the picture". You guys are getting mad because Activision sat down and thought to themselves who might know the most about secret under-handed shady government stuff and this guy was their choice. Despite being a scumbag they felt that since he wasn't in prison his knowledge should at least be put to work doing something positive.

Though I still don't really care what this guy did, so to make up for that I'm going to give the two of you something special.

Oh... delicious:


That's an Ad.

And to quote another very bad advertisement ploy:

"Suck it down"


EDIT: Also going to quote this cause it's just fucking retarded

"I don't want to worry about a guy who wants to hijack a plane, I want to worry about the guy who hijacks ALL the planes"

-Oliver North, Black Ops 2 teaser trailer.
 

Andy Chalk

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j-e-f-f-e-r-s said:
And this is the issue. All that this issue shows is that you can commit the most terrible war crimes, and shit all over international agreements, and American corporations will reward you by making you a consultant on their news channels, and hiring you to advise their videogames. It makes a complete mockery of the idea that the people in charge of the military can be brought to justice, just like anyone else.
That's kind of my point - not that North was "right" or redeemed or anything, but that this isn't uncommon. Bad men are rewarded for bad deeds all the time. And bad men do bad things for what they perceive to be good reasons all the time. Justice is not blind. Eliot Spitzer leaps to mind; his crimes were nowhere near the magnitude of North's, but he was a hypocritical piece of shit of the worst kind, and it landed him a hot gig on CNN.

Justice is not blind.

I maintain that if we don't have a problem with Activision making videogames based on the real-life events of the "black ops world" of that era, then it's hypocritical to take offense when guys like North are involved in the process.

Oh, and as far as the 6 Days in Fallujah thing goes, it's based solely on the word of the dev, so take it for what it's worth:

http://www.gamepolitics.com/2009/04/14/insurgents-contributing-quotsix-days-fallujahquot-says-developer [http://www.gamepolitics.com/2009/04/14/insurgents-contributing-quotsix-days-fallujahquot-says-developer]
 

SecondPrize

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I bet activision respect his input because of the time he sold the explosives that killed 220 of his fellow marines in Beirut.
hmmm, probably some other reason.
 

Yureina

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Wow.... the amount of hostility towards this is far from what I expected. But then again, I did a University Research project on the Iran-Contra Affair, and I ended up with quite a different perspective on Oliver North and his actions than what has been voiced here. Yes, what he did was illegal, but calling him a war criminal? That's going too far. North was a patriot who ended up being involved in dirty affairs at the behest of his political masters. Those people got in serious trouble for what they did, and rightly so. North might have gotten immunity, but he was also the man who was, in effect, the chief witness of the entire affair. His testimony helped bag the people responsible for that scandal.

Suffice to say, North is a controversial figure. As for Activision using him, let em. Iran-Contra was over a quarter century ago. Let this man live his life for goodness sakes.
 

Therumancer

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Pretty close to my statements that turned into an insult fest towards me when I commented on Bob's rant. Albiet I think it's also important to note that "Black" Ops. are called that for a reason. Law is pretty much an illusion, countries that survive do whatever it takes to stay on top, those that don't wind up eventually be taken down. It sucks, but that's the way it is. Allowing yourself to be taken down due to rules or some agreement that involves you giving everything to someone else because of a loophole, or them not following the rules where you insist on doing so, is just plain stupid. Black Ops. exists by it's nature in the reality of people pretending laws matter, but in actuality the cold reality is that the most brutal bastards dominate, and everyone else gets exploited. You try and be nice, you get exploited by the bastards. Speak softly and carry a big stick, the Spec. Ops. community is the stck we hold behind our back, people know it's there, but we don't acknowlege that we whack people with it. Of course modern liberalism and detachment from reality has caused problems, leading to all the garbage we're seeing over Oliver North.

I will say that I can understand the point to an extent. With the left wing dominating the media, it does seem like most people hate everything Oli North stands for. That's not the truth, it's just a matter of who gets the platform. In general you don't hear anything nice about Fox news, unless it comes from Fox News, or another conservative platform. Polarization means that of course the left wing platforms, which are more numerous shout down the left wing, and with more of them they tend to mostly drown it out. The real numbers tend to come out around election times, where things are resolved by a few scant percentage points. Both sides would like to claim they have a majority, the left wing claims vocally that they have a clear majority, where the right wing on merits of controlling less media and having less platforms maintains claims of a "silent majority". In the end we pretty much have parity, with that tiny percentage which gives a lead (which can manifest as a bigger control in the actual goverment than it should have in absolute terms, due to our system being pretty much 'all or nothing' in many regards) waffling back and forth. Bush wins by a hair, Obama comesin and wins by a hair (reported at the best as 7% but some critics of the media have said it could have been as low as .5% as the other extreme, ignoring wingnuts who claim doubt digit differances in either direction, like the whole right wing "Obama stole the country by cheating" crowd which is just as crazy as the left wing guys who claimed it of Bush).

To get to the point before people pig pile on me and start screaming how ignorant I am and all that jazx, but bottom line is that while the media is the wrong arena to actually argue the point, Oliver north is polarizing. A clear majority of gamers don't oppose the guy or even really hate Fox News, or any of that other garbage, it's just that those who are vocal on specialized message boards and such do. Gaming isn't really a hobbby dominated by one side or the other at the user level, and Oli is a good spokesman to a lot of people given the subject. Activision seems to know that, but also knows it needs damage control in the left wing dominated media.

I will say that I think game DEVELOPMENT is dominated by the left wing though, I don't think I've ever seen a decent AAA game made that actually promoted a more right wing morality and philsophy. Or at least not one from the US. I've seen criticisms of games being that, for not being quite left wing enough, but none that I considered to actually be on the right wing. For all of the comments about "American Military Porn" pretty much every game of the sort has elements that I think derail it from actually being right wing. The whole "nuke death" scene in modern warfare, and even the infamous "No Russian" mission , not to mention the little girl dying in a bomb, all sort contribute to games about the military and warfare actually conveying very strong anti right wing, anti-militant messages. While sometimes it falls flat half of these games nowadays seem to be intended to get you to think about what your actually doing (or have done up until that point) as opposed to a straightforward "America is good, we are destroying the bad guys, and the military is how we get the job done". While rarely discussed the left wing gets that, and it's how it's believers justify to themselves playing these games doubtlessly. Someone like Oliver North gives more of a "this is for the greater good, and how it's done" vibe to a game, as his biggest real "crime" was being caught, and nearly everyone involved in that was vindicated to an extent through pardons and the like, and that small differance in tone is enough to cause left wing outrage. I mean how dare the US promote it's personal interests through violence, and in any way act like it might be justified at least internally?
 

Andy Chalk

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Nov 12, 2002
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j-e-f-f-e-r-s said:
I refuse to buy this game, simply because the thought of my money in any way being used by Activision to support the man responsible for the Iran-Contra affair makes my blood boil. That't not hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is when a country claims to follow international law, only to fail to adequately bring those who break it to justice.
I get what you're saying, but at the risk of sounding flippant (which is not at all my intent), I find myself unable to get too angry over it when things like this already exist:

http://www.amazon.com/Blackwater-microsoft-xbox-360/dp/B005EZ5GUU/ref=sr_1_1?s=videogames&ie=UTF8&qid=1337977411&sr=1-1 [http://www.amazon.com/Blackwater-microsoft-xbox-360/dp/B005EZ5GUU/ref=sr_1_1?s=videogames&ie=UTF8&qid=1337977411&sr=1-1]
 

Therumancer

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Nov 28, 2007
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j-e-f-f-e-r-s said:

Seriously though?

"Law is pretty much an illusion"

"With the left wing dominating the media"

"I will say that I think game DEVELOPMENT is dominated by the left wing though, I don't think I've ever seen a decent AAA game made that actually promoted a more right wing morality and philsophy"

This is all comedy gold, man. I mean, game developers being dominated by the left wing? You do know that the games industry is one of the last industries to not have any form of Union, right?

Apart from that, your post is pretty much the usual right-wing mix of hyperbole and fantasy. Entertaining to read, but it scares the shit out of me that guys like you are currently running the world.
You know what scares me. That people like you are incapable of even considering the other side at all, and immediatly jump to insults and attacks on anyone you happen to disagree with politically, while feeling it's entirely justified. You seem to entirely miss the irony in accusing someone of ridiculous extremism, while at the same time dismissing everything they say out of hand because of a belief you are un-questioningly right, and being insulting about it to boot. Then of course people wonder why the country is such a polarized mess.

Now, let me save you the time, the usual move at this point on these forums to such a blanket statement is to make some absrdist comment about being justified due to the other side making arguements akin to Obama riding unicorns and zapping people with eye lasers (or whatever tickles your fancy), which actually just continues to make the point of you being as bad, or even worse, than the people you claim to oppose.

The very defense of criticizing my statements being based on the same kind of ignorance, as things like "there is no left wing media bias" is justified by the defense that the media is telling the truth, so it's not biased. Anyone who disagrees with these things is inherantly wrong, and not even worth considering.

That's really scary, and I hope one day you see it.
 

Worgen

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Whatever, just wash your hands.
Why the hell do they even need consultants? I mean they pretty much just pull crap out of their asses and add explosions for the cod games.