Danger Close: Medal of Honor Complainers "Don't Understand Games"

[Soylent Dave]

If developers are going to make a game about an ongoing conflict, then they should have the decency to treat it with some respect.

By which I mean, not treating the Coalition Forces as 'Good Guys' and the Taliban as 'Bad Guys' and trivialising the conflict. Not getting your PR spokepeople to say "Hey, it's just a game".

Yes, it is a game. It's also a game that features events and locales based on a real war that is really happening to real people right now.

Some of those real people are gamers - every single soldier I know owns an Xbox 360 (and often a PS3 as well). I bet a significant proportion of the ones I don't know own either a 360 or PS3, and play FPS games.

Plenty of the people who might play your game will have had someone close to them killed in a situation that looks quite a bit like your game, by people who are labelled 'the bad guys' in your game. That could be a comrade. It could be a brother, a father or a son.

So yes, when you make a game about current events, especially when those current events are an ongoing war, have the goddamn common decency to treat the events and the people involved with a bit of respect.

We shouldn't be surprised that people don't consider videogames to be a serious medium when we have companies and games like this representing us to the mainstream.

In an interesting twist that comes back to the argument that the game is "disrespectful" to soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, HMV [http://www.incgamers.com/News/25524/chris-ryan-uk-medal-of-honor-signing] pre-order bonus and which will get a general release after the game launches, will be signing copies of the game at HMV London on October 15, the U.K. release date.

Chris Ryan is mostly famous for being the guy who wrote a book wherein everyone else in his SAS platoon was rubbish - including the guy who DIED - and he was brilliant (bearing in mind Chris ran away and left the rest of his patrol to get captured and tortured, and there are several bits of his book which don't agree with the report he made at the time - like all the bits where he single-handedly kills people (he didn't report encountering any enemy troops at all on during his escape)).

He doesn't appear to be a man who seems to know a lot about 'respect'.

He is not regarded in particularly high esteem by other members and ex-members of his regiment. For some reason.

 

[Bretty]

People that were effected by this conflict asked EA to make a change, which they did.

I think people in the games industry, or connected to it, seem to forget that they are part of a wider community. In this community there are people with many opinions and many of these are contrary to each other.

Is it a suprise that people not in the games industry had no idea about MoHs history with the Taliban through beta? I think it is hilarious that you people think that the world had an eye on the MoH beta before this... like they cared until they heard something that they whole heartedly disagreed with.

I am glad EA changed this, some interested (by interested I mean having a reason to be upset with this design choice) parties were upset about it. Some adolescent gamers got upset because they feel like they are being 'repressed!' Where in fact you are not, these games offer you a small (not very realistic) glimpse into a real world situation. A world where people's lives are very really affected by the world that they are in. The fact that you people think you have any say in what is represented is only because they have allowed it, on this occasion they pulled the reigns a little.

Still upset by this? I suggest you put down the cheetos and the dew, walk outside and take a deep breath of fresh air. People that know more than you, and me, are doing what they do. Let them do it and all will be well.

Still upset? Then I am sorry to say you are a drama queen/forum troll or just have nothing better to do in your life then complain.

 

[VanBasten]

There's been a lot of noise from people on both sides of the Medal of Honor argument but the one group that hasn't had much to say thus far is Danger Close [http://www.dangerclosegames.com/], the studio that actually made the thing.

I was under the impression that the Taliban -> OpFor change will be enforced in multiplayer only, and Danger Close didn't do the multiplayer part of game, DICE did. So basically this is still a third party comment.

 

[Soylent Dave]

I didn't read The One that Got Away, but I have read Andy McNab's Bravo Two Zero.

Later I speed-read a book about another ex-SAS who visited B20s AO, and he tracked what he could after x amount of years the teams movements, even finding a discarded Minimi. This last book basically debunked both Chris Ryans and Andy McNabs book.

I don't think either of them are much loved by the regiment anymore.

No, they've both cashed in on the reputation of the regiment a bit too much.

Although McNab did come back with dysentery and half his teeth smashed in, so if he's bullshitted a bit in his story he's at least paid for it. More importantly, he didn't decide to slag off Vince (the trooper who died of hypothermia, who Ryan says died because he was a 'bad soldier' - considering Vince was selected for the SAS in the first place, that's a pretty unlikely claim, but even if he was a bit crap, you don't write that when his family are definitely going to read the book and you were one of the last people to see him alive) - that's the part that Ryan needed to be kicked square in the bollocks for.

But yeah, I tend to take Andy McNab's endorsements with a pinch of salt as well.

 

[KezzieZ]

The only problem I have is that this issue came up in the first place. Of course there would be people making a big deal about it and EA probably could've avoided the whole thing if they thought of the inevitable arguments and criticisms of it and just didn't use the name Taliban in the first place. People have video games under close scrutiny, especially with the news of that Supreme Court hearing.

You know, the only thing that really bothered me about the name change is that it gave Jack Thompson a reason to show off what a tremendously outspoken immature jerk he is since he immediately jumped on taking credit for a simple name change. I can't find myself personally caring one way or another if the "Opposing Forces" are called that since I don't even play MoH.

 

[theblackmonk90]

This is not a valid point at all. The older generation that do not understand would not buy games in the first place. They cannot boycott a product they would not have bought in the first place. This seems to boil down to a very simple double standard in that its ok for American soldiers to literally anyone at anytime inside a game but no vice versa. We now have hundreds of games where US soldiers kill a variety of troops from Nazis to Zombies to Zombie Nazis and thats all ok. But simply naming your opponent in a game is not allowed?

Also if it really was an issue of it being a current conflict then why is no one taking issue with the fact the US troops are shown killing afghans? Are Afghans not worthy of the same respect as US soldiers?

They should have called a pooh a pooh and called them the Taliban.

 

[Jorias]

I can completely understand why Danger Close isn't participating in this controversy, they developed the game to put their kids through college, not to win any arguments about what is art and what is not art......
So no it doesn't really surprise me at all, i think this is one of the rare occasions when Producers should step in and handle the politics...the only problem is, that these producers are more prone to caving than dev's, because of the fact that they only care about the business model of the game and not the artistic viewpoint of it.