U.S. Spec Ops Veteran: Modern Warfare 3 Commercial a "New Low"

[Frylock72]

Writing in The Atlantic, Grady says that, "If this were September 10, 2001, maybe it wouldn't be quite so bad... after ten years of constant war, of thousands of amputees and flag-draped coffins, of hundreds of grief-stricken communities, did nobody involved in this commercial raise a hand and say, "You know, this is probably a little crass. Maybe we could just show footage from the game.""

I want to know why the guy thinks that the war in Afghanistan is the only war that makes it a no-no to call this commercial out. As if all the other wars that have happened so far are completely irrelevant to what he's talking about. Granted, recent wars are more fresh in memory than others. I think he's just being overly sensitive.

I'm not sure I agree with Grady in this scenario since the commercial seems to emphasize the growth of skill in the game--not the 'glory of war'.

That's not a thin argument at all, that's exactly what the commercial is saying, because that's exactly what happens in games like CoD and BF. You suck at first, die a lot, then get better and better at it until you go from 'noob' to 'vet'.

D.B. Grady is just taking this too seriously, and underestimating how America commercializes war.

 

[AkaDad]

This is coming from someone who knowingly signed up to participate in an occupation of a foreign land while believing he's defending our country.

His opinions and others like him should be ignored.

 

[Professor James]

Ugh. It's not depicting real-life events, it's depicting made-up events that are made-up in the made-up portion (multiplayer) of an already made-up videogame.

Those aren't game characters and that isn't gameplay. Those two things are the basis of the man's arguement. This commercial promotes the idea that if you can play CoD, you can be a warfighter.

Not all trailers have to be gameplay or teasers. This is basically a live action trailer that is no better or worse than the skyrim live action trailer or the halo reach live action trailer. This trailer is just basically depicting the multiplayer aspect of MW3. Sure, them being in uniforms and fighting in new york isn't the greatest place to be showing the commercial even though new york appears in singleplayer and multiplayer and sure, there's a soldier in all of us was OK for the black ops commercial but a little worse here but it is still a farcry from promoting being a soldier. And who the hell thinks that CoD= Real life Warfare?

 

[ThunderCavalier]

I dunno. Watching the commercial just shows that the entire thing's more tongue-in-cheek humor than it is 'glorification of war'.

Perhaps to a soldier's perspective, it's different, but I don't exactly see how it can be very 'offensive' to many people. Maybe he's right, and it would have probably been best to use more in-game footage, but this was more of a humorous take on CoD and its community and I think the advertisers and marketers knew that making this commercial.

I sympathize with his position, but I don't exactly support it.

 

[SiskoBlue]

Hmmm. Bit late to be worrying about tivialising war. I think the commercial carries no offense at all. It's pretty clear it's talking about a game, and people playing a game. It doesn't even suggest to me that Sam Worthington would make a good soldier in real life, just a good CoD player.

It does trivialise war as entertainment but it's a long way down a list of offenders going back hundreds of years. Stories about war heroes have always glorified war. Children play cops and robbers, cowboys and [native americans]. Are people going to start saying children playing these games is an offense to real cops who risk their lives chasing criminals? Should we sit them down and explain how most native americans were massacred by disease and brutual land acquisition.

I'm very sorry that soldiers are killed and wounded. I'm even more sorry civillians, trying to live their lives are killed and wounded in every war-torn country. A computer game about pretending to be a soldier barely touches the side of the offensive well when compared to media coverage of real war in general.

I'm supposed to believe this soldier can handle the real horrors of war but be apologetic about an ad for a game that to any sensible person, child or adult, is clearly a game and no one would ever really think is depicting a real solider's experience.

Can't help but feel this is just another attempt at attention by association, the oldest marketing trick in the books. How can I get people to freely advertise my cause? I know, lambast the latest cultural fad to get free press coverage. And yet it still seems to work.

 

[Anti Nudist Cupcake]

[blockquote]The commercial's fun-tastic atmosphere is right for the general experiences you tend to find when playing Modern Warfare 3 online, but EA's complete failure to recognize in the advertising for the game that hundreds of thousands of people actually do this kind of stuff on a daily basis and suffer for it is a valid criticism. [/blockquote]

Surely you mean Activision.

OT: I find it interesting that no Vietnam or Cold War veterans complaining when Black Ops pulled the same "There's a soldier in all of us." ad campaign. I'd imagine something like that would piss off quite a lot of soldiers. I wonder why that wasn't brought up too.

But I agree with the statement that they're making. A lot of marketing for war games such as Call of Duty or Battlefield bring the impression that war's fun, and that's not the depiction that they should bring out. That's a problem you expect to run into when you market your game the same way you would an action film. And besides, it's Call of Duty, and at this point, the series is about as artistically bankrupt as a vending machine.

I don't see the point, of course they are going to make the trailer look fun, they HAVE to make the game look fun if they want to sell it. Their previous trailers with actual in game footage didn't exactly show us anything new, they were bland like a generic fps game would be.

Although I can see why this war guy is upset...

Still, I know war shouldn't be taken lightly. But this is a trailer promoting a game and in this instance the quote from a guy who said "war is fun, when it's not real" applies quite well.

 

[Voltano]

I'm not sure I agree with Grady in this scenario since the commercial seems to emphasize the growth of skill in the game--not the 'glory of war'.

That's not a thin argument at all, that's exactly what the commercial is saying, because that's exactly what happens in games like CoD and BF. You suck at first, die a lot, then get better and better at it until you go from 'noob' to 'vet'.

D.B. Grady is just taking this too seriously, and underestimating how America commercializes war.

I agree that Grady may be taking this too seriously, but its hard to argue that the commercial emphasizes skill-growth in the game when its using real actors and requires knowledge of players to figure out what the commercial is making a parody of. If a person hasn't played or have any knowledge of these video games, they may just see this commercial as a way of advertising war is awesome way of 'becoming a man.'

But as others pointed out, American cinema (I'm looking at you, Michael Bay) tends to glorify war with no negative repercussions. I'm suspecting this is one of those "Oh, video games are bad because of ." scenarios, like how the Army denied EA from selling their shooter game last year on military bases since it would allow you to play Taliban terrorists in the multi-player.

 

[The Maddest March Hare]

I was fine with his argument bar the little line "if this were September 10th 2001". No. Fuck you. 9/11 was not the first atrocity to happen, it was not the first war to happen and it was by far not the worst. If this commercial had happened on the 10th, it would still have been glorifying war to an extreme, and it would still have been ignoring the horrendous injuries sustained by millions over the millennia. Everything else he says is reasonable but that line annoys the hell out of me by suggesting that all the people who have fought and died before him are somehow less special. Vietnam? 2 World Wars? Falklands, Gulf war, Tibet, Korea...

Either this commercial is insensitive to war veterans the world over and time immemorial, end of, or it is just a stupid commercial to appeal to the bedroom, action-loving, soldier wannabes. There can be no time for it to be ok or not.

 

[crotalidian]

While I can sympathise with his sentiment the unfortunate thing is that it is going to be completely ignored. My girlfriend (a one time N64 gamer) even said straight up the commercial made her want to play the game.

I think the line can be drawn and some people will say they are just showing how fun the game can be even if you dont play shooters much or if you are a die hard. The people on the other side will still have a valid point but I am firmly in the first camp. I dont Play MW games (or any modern shooters really) but I like the commercial, this isn't an Americas army or 6 days in Fallujah that's trying to be a realistic depiction of war in the middle east. This is a game where you have a weightless gunfight in a falling aircraft...So the commercial plays to that style

 

[1337mokro]

To all those veterans that protest these kinda unrealistic portrayals of actual warfare. Maybe it wouldn't be like this if you didn't also protest it whenever a war game tries to BE REALISTIC!

Taliban in Medal of Honour : Protest
Six days in Faluja (probably misspelled that) : Protest

If you fucking protest both sides then how are you expecting progress. If both sides are wrong then why are you asking for a realistic depiction of warfare when the slightest mention of an actual conflict makes you knee jerk into action?

You know what is a Game Over in Six Days? Shooting a civilian. You know what isn't allowed in Six Days? Random merciless slaughter and knife throw killing people across the map.

There is but one word to describe this kind of protesting : Retarded

 

[RanD00M]

"If this were September 10, 2001, maybe it wouldn't be quite so bad... after ten years of constant war, of thousands of amputees and flag-draped coffins, of hundreds of grief-stricken communities, did nobody involved in this commercial raise a hand and say, "You know, this is probably a little crass. Maybe we could just show footage from the game.""

This guy sounds like a whiny, little *****. Does it completely go over his head that this is a commercial for a game set on a fictional war, where you fight a fictional war in a really fictional way. I would understand it if this were an ad for a realistic war game such as ARMA or something like that, but this is an ad for a game to does not try to be realistic and focuses more on trying to be entertaining to the lowest common denominator.

 

[Wolfwind]

I'd agree with him, but I'd say that the fact that anyone would take this ludicrous commercial as some sort of actual representation of real war and not just the on-line experience of the game as a bigger problem. It would be like taking Saints Row as a true representation of gang life, True Crime as a representation of police work, or Soul Caliber as a representation of experiencing weapon based martial arts. Around the 0:52 mark in the video, where they're floating around in zero-gravity and shooting people, even the densest person should stop taking the commercial seriously as a representation of anything but a "Micheal Bay" type game. If anybody is watching this commercial the way Grady thinks they are, as some actual portrayal of war, then I fear for our future.

I can agree with the issues taken regarding the "Soldier in all of us" tag-line though. I mean, as far as the game goes, they just want everyone to play. However, it does belittle the fact that few people actually have what it takes to go out and deal with the hardships of being a soldier in the real world. As someone else mentioned earlier though, this commercial is targeted for the wanna-be's and the never-will-be's.

 

[Zero Serenity]

Hey, at least this is better than FAGS (Friends Against Grenade Spam) and still far better than Viseral's Marketing Department (See Adverts for Dante's Inferno and Dead Space 2).

 

[Musiclly enhanced]

Sorry but NO.
Im no call of duty fan, in fact I hate the games BUT the one thing Modern Warfare isn?t trying to be is a war sim. If ARMA or america's army did something like this i'd be disgusted, but Modern Warfare isn?t trying to show or recreate what real soldiers go through. It only uses the war like esthetic to give it?s self some personality and identity.

i think its got such a wide audience that it could be seen as influencing kids that what war is like, because of the ad campaign and tagline "theres a soldier in all of us" can be interpreted is the wrong way. being that millions of people play this game and the majority of people that are easily infuenced are idiots.

 

[TownTattle]

I thought the COD franchise hit a new low when they trivialised the death of a child as a cheap shock tactic. An offence that was made worse by having it be an American child, despite the fact that the setting is London.

 

[RandV80]

A group of people from all races, genders, and professions playing what is ever-so-clearly a game of pretend soldier, the game we all played as a kid at some point. The realism of the guns and effects is downplayed by the people holding and using them. No one is being killed because, as I said, this is mostly pretend. The area is undefined and could honestly be anywhere, so any national or political representation is completely absent. There is only one conclusion that can be reached: this is a game. A game that anybody can play. This is really one of the best commercials for a game I've ever seen.

This is kind of how I view them, which makes me think they got the slogan wrong. They wouldn't do this for marketing purposes but the truth is it isn't really "There's a soldier in all of us", but rather it's "There's a child in all of us". That's what's really going on in this commercials, but it would probably get a good portion of the MW fanbase players panties in a bunch to suggest it.

I don't have much of an opinion on the commercials themselves and haven't seen the one in question, but all I can think of when I see them is that these can't sit well with the anti-video game violence crowd.

 

[Michael Sulzbach]

I saw this ad as an insult to its gaming community instead of an insult to our country and soldiers. If you have ever played the game online in a multiplayer atmosphere you would see the behavior as depicted by the "noob" almost exclusively. No teamwork, no tactics, and almost always using the wrong weapon for the job, ie using rocket launchers to swat a fly. Chances are all the noobs who saw the ad probably never got the connection.

I also imagine it would be a lot easier to have actors act out all the behaviors they were making fun of rather than combing all the beta footage for specific examples and they definitely could not use footage from past games because they are supposed to advertise the new game. Plus its always been that the inclusion of popular celebrities help boost sales no matter the product. Especially if the target audience recognizes the celebrities and identify with them.

 

[XMark]

I get his point, and that's a good discussion to have. But another good discussion could be about commercials for the armed forces. They portray it more as a stepping stone to your future career, but then we hear so much about soldiers struggling to find jobs once they are back. And then there's the fact that you might actually have to go out and fight in a war. Wasn't there a commercial that made it out like being in the army is just as awesome as playing a war video game?

As a contrast, I remember a couple of years back the Canadian military ran a series of recruitment commercials on TV which were quite different from what you'd normally expect from a recruitment commercial. Grainy, dirty, and dark footage of chaotic scenarios and military personnel assisting in rescue missions and stuff like that. I suppose they were still trying to sell the more interesting parts of the job but it was surprising to me how honest they were about what the situations a soldier faces can look like.

Anyway, as for this MW3 commercial, I know it's trying to present multiplayer FPS combat more than a real combat scenario, but still, I always got a bad taste in my mouth from that commercial because it's very easy to interpret it as saying "wheeee war is fun!".

 

[THEoriginalBRIEN]

Well when he says they should have used game footage instead, that is essentially what they're doing here. They're game scenarios with Worthington and Hill standing in for in-game footage because for some reason Activision and EA thinks that appeals to us.

I agree with Grady, but he is essentially talking about "depiction of war in popular culture" because this has been going on for years. If he's just starting to notice it with MW3 he hasn't been paying attention.

The Black Ops commercials from last year, movies like Tropic Thunder, and hell, most of the FPSs of there right now trivialize war. But it's fun and we like it and it's not going to stop unless more vets like Grady speak up and get heard.