11.11.2009

Modern Wareware 2 making children terrorists?


I just read an article on Kotaku that tells about Fox talking about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 which was just released yesterday for multi-platforms. One of the things that they bring up is the scene in the game where you play as a CIA operative disguised as a terrorist to essentially try to infiltrate the terrorists, but you also take civilian lives. What people on Fox were trying to say was that since you get to play as a terrorist in the game, if children can somehow get a hold of the game like through their parents, it will harbor them into becoming terrorists. I don't believe this, and this made me think of something that we recently talked about in one of my journalism classes.

The point of Activision putting this mission into the game is to show all sides of the war, to show that war is ugly and that these things do happen. Maybe I'm just very liberal, but I feel that this is necessary. One thing I don't like that the US does is sugarcoats its news. They don't show all the fighting and people dying when it is clearly happening. Recently in my one class we watched a movie called "Control Room" about the Arabic-language news network, Al Jazeera. One of the things America hated that they did was show footage of dead American soldiers in Iraq. America disagreed with this saying it was inhumane of them to show this. One thing they also did though was show dead Iraqi civilians as well. They were just trying to be fair and balanced and not sugarcoat the news. They were trying to show their people how real the war is. This is what MW2 is also trying to do. They are not trying to make kids into terrorists, first of all you need to be an adult to purchase it, and also it gives you the option to skip playing the scene, warning how violent and disturbing it is.

In my opinion, this is a good thing that they put this scene in the game for adults. They are trying to show all the aspects of war, even the nasty parts. These situations are real, Activision just didn't want to sugarcoat anything by giving a real representation of all the aspects of war, including those people don't like to see (and never see in America).

(Photo courtesy of NSF from Wikimedia Commons)

11.01.2009

Sunday Sunday Sunday

I really wanted to maintain this blog, but I've found that being a student and trying to run a blog is so hard. I have so much to do all the time that I always forget to post to my blog and I always say I'm going to post more.

but... I've started to get back to gaming again. I haven't had much time so I did next to no gaming for the past several months to the point where I don't know if I could call myself a gamer. This weekend changed that. I spent literally the whole weekend playing Section 8, Guitar Hero 5 and Beatles Rock Band and it really helped me get back into the gaming spirit.

I know I probably sound lame spending my Halloween playing Guitar Hero with a Little Caesar's pizza, taco flavored doritos and some mountain dew isn't an entirely bad thing considering I've partied the past 4 years.

I'll try to have a blog of more substance and real purpose soon, but I have just one question, why does trying to play PES2009 online with my friend in Tokyo have to be so complicated over the PSN. If it were Xbox Live it would be so simple.... something to ponder.. perhaps...