(Yes, it’s been a while since I updated. My monitor exploded)

Dr Liam Fox MP, our current Secretary of Defence, has called for the new Medal of Honor game to be banned by retailers. This isn’t an unusual step for politicos of a conservative stripe – although admittedly not as common in the UK as in the US – and it is nice that he’s just asking retailers to ban it themselves, rather than trying to pass it as law.

Although that might have more to do with the British constitution¹ than anything else.

That aside, we’re all more than a bit used to people who don’t play videogames jumping up and down and shouting about how they’re tearing apart the moral fibre of our country (whichever country that happens to be).

This time though, I can’t help feeling that the conservatives have more than a bit of a point. The new Medal of Honor game is set during the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. The single-player game will feature allied coalition soldiers (by which we can read ‘American’) fighting in areas like Helmand, against the Taliban. A bit like they’re still doing now.

The multiplayer game, which is what has stirred Dr Fox (the MP, not the DJ) up, puts players on one of two teams – as is becoming typical of multiplayer games these days. Only this time the teams are ‘the Coalition’ and ‘the Taliban’ – meaning gamers will be playing as Taliban insurgents (or soldiers, if you like) and trying to kill Coalition soldiers. And vice versa.

A bit like they’re still doing now.

I’m not going to go off on one about how it’s a horrible idea to let people play as ‘the bad guys’. For one thing, labelling the Taliban insurgents as ‘bad guys’ is overly simplistic and isn’t really going to help resolve the situation in Afghanistan – just like calling the IRA ‘the bad guys’ didn’t (and doesn’t) help with the Troubles in Northern Ireland. It’s a complicated issue, and painting one side Good and one side Bad just trivialises the whole conflict.

I’m not going to do any of that, but EA’s Public Relations spokesperson did : “We give gamers the opportunity to play both sides. Most of us have been doing this since we were seven: someone plays the cop, someone must be robber.

“In Medal of Honour multiplayer, someone’s got to be the Taliban.”

I don’t think it’s particularly tasteful to allow people in this country (or the US) to play as our current enemy. Not when quite a few gamers will have lost family members in the fighting – or been involved in the fighting themselves. But that isn’t my problem with the game.

No, it’s that the developer has decided to shamelessly trivialise an ongoing conflict – one in which people are still dying – by making it into a game of Cops & Robbers. It’s not a fucking game of cops & robbers – it’s a war in which people (on both sides) are getting killed. Right now.

Computer games definitely have their place when it comes to describing war, just like other media. And there’s definitely a history of using war as a backdrop for entertainment (there are more than a few games about World War 2, not to mention all the films). But developers have an obligation to show some fucking respect to the people who are fighting and dying in the battles they’re turning into entertainment (and profits) by treating the subject matter seriously. Real wars aren’t about good guys versus bad guys, so sticking real life labels onto your shallow cops & robbers bullshit doesn’t work.

If your product is so banal that your own marketing staff excuse it as ‘just a game’, then I don’t think it’s something I’d want to play anyway. But you need to bear in mind that it stopped being just a game as soon as you set it in a real warzone (especially one which is still active). The Coalition and the Taliban aren’t just costumes or polygon maps – they’re real people and organisations, with real agendas. People with beliefs that are important enough to them to fight and die for.

Even the most two-dimensional half-baked hack of a writer should have the decency to include some of that background, some of that belief, in his work.

But do I think the game should be banned? No. People are still allowed to produce tasteless, ill-conceived shite. It’s as good a way as any to announce to the world that you’re a fucking moron.

I don’t think I’ll be consuming any of it, though.

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¹Yes Americans, we do have one. We just don’t make a song and dance about it every 35 seconds.

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Posted by Dave in Geekery, Politics (23/08/2010 at 10:00).
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