The Energon Pub

So, the new Medal of Honor game. You may have heard that, in multiplayer, one side plays as Americans, and the other as the Taliban.

There's an absurd amount of people getting angry over this. The UK Defense Secretary was angry that it was "shocking that someone would think it acceptable to recreate the acts of the Taliban against British soldiers," presumably unaware of the fact that there are no British soldiers in the game, nor would you be able to recreate anything, or that the Taliban are playable only in multiplayer, and therefore can be killed in both single player and multiplayer.

You play as Nazis in the multiplayer mode of almost every WW2 game ever made. So I have to ask the question: What makes the Taliban worse than the Nazis? They're both pure evil, no one is denying that. But what makes the Taliban so much worse that people get angry over this and not every multiplayer game ever made?

[End rant about stupid people looking for controversy where there is none]

Shadowman wrote:What makes the Taliban worse than the Nazis? They're both pure evil, no one is denying that. But what makes the Taliban so much worse that people get angry over this and not every multiplayer game ever made?

The Taliban is an existing organization, that is still active. Some people who are in MoH's target audience could easily have friends or family that are direct victims of the Taliban's actions, or could be.

I'm not personally offended, but surely you can see why people are upset? It hasn't even been 10 years since September 11th, let alone anything else the Taliban has done.

Forward 2.0 wrote:The Taliban is an existing organization, that is still active.

Look up "Neo Nazis."

Forward 2.0 wrote:Some people who are in MoH's target audience could easily have friends or family that are direct victims of the Taliban's actions, or could be.

Last I checked there are still World War 2 veterans and Holocaust survivors still alive. You don't have to look too hard to find someone related to them.

Forward 2.0 wrote:I'm not personally offended, but surely you can see why people are upset?

No, I can't. It's digital representations of people in a very fake environment, who happen to have the same name as a group of individuals who happen to be pure evil. So what? If they remove the Taliban from the game, what happens? Free speech is dealt a serious blow out of ignorance and fear of characters in a video game.

Forward 2.0 wrote:It hasn't even been 10 years since September 11th, let alone anything else the Taliban has done.

That was al-Qaeda, not the Taliban.

pretty dump controversy considering Call of Duty World at War allows you to play as Nazis who are not only cooler than the pathetic Taliban but also more deadly and evil besides they're making this game to compete with Halo Reach and call of Duty Black ops

Eh the thing about this particular controversy I find most amusing is that you've been able to play as middle eastern terrorists in online games under a different name for years (Call of Duty 4 anyone?) but the moment the company goes from calling them the Op For or terrorist team to Taliban its instantly wrong.

So yeah, pretty dumb controversy, I could at least understand the controversy over No Russian in MW2 (although again I thought it was over the top).

Airhawk wrote:Eh the thing about this particular controversy I find most amusing is that you've been able to play as middle eastern terrorists in online games under a different name for years (Call of Duty 4 anyone?) but the moment the company goes from calling them the Op For or terrorist team to Taliban its instantly wrong.

So yeah, pretty dumb controversy, I could at least understand the controversy over No Russian in MW2 (although again I thought it was over the top).

I agree with you there just because yoyu can play as the Taliban it's controversial even though modern warfare 1 and 2 both have Opfor which are basically the taliban but with better weapons and technology I honestly don't understand what the big deal with video game controversies is I mean there's already an M rating on these games so it lies with the parents to monitor what games there kids are playing here not the game developers. I myself have been playing mature games as long as I can remember the first video game I ever played was Doom it's not like they're adding porn to these games with the exception of Grand theft Auto what harm can these games do I mean would you rather have your kid killing fictional videogame characters or smoking pot and drinking you know videogames gave me a bit of morbid personality but to this day I've never done drugs or gotten drunk off my ass

Dumbest. Controversey. Ever!