Is Playing as the Taliban a Case of Selective Anger?
by Joseph Jackmovich on 16 August 2010, 2790 views
Is playing as a Taliban fighter too soon to be in good taste? Are people angry for the right reasons, or are they being selective and overly critical of playing a Taliban fighter?
On October 12, 2010 EA will release Medal of Honor, a title in which you can play as Taliban fighters in the multiplayer. A recent interview with Gold Star Mother Karen Meredith on Fox & Friends describes the problems she and many other people are having with the title.
At the crux of the matter is the issue of playing an opposition force that kills Americans during a still-ongoing conflict. But this isn’t Modern Warfare; these forces have a name, and the conflict is located in a real place. In the case of Medal of Honor, these forces are the Taliban and this place is Afghanistan.
First off it needs to be said that debating against the points of people such as Karen Meredith may come off as tasteless or insensitive. I am not making a personal attack against Meredith or attempting to blemish the loss of her or anyone else’s loved one in this conflict or any other.
I’d also like to put down the oft-toted rebuttal to Meredith: “It’s just a game.”
I hope the same people making that argument are not the same people advocating that games are art, because the hypocrisy is simply ridiculous. Medal of Honor may “just be a game,” but like all forms of media, it both has something to say and is able to have something said about it. We don’t live in a vacuum. If someone has something to say about a topic, then it merits discussion. You simply cannot dismiss an entire issue because of the medium the issue is presented in. Not only that, but you demean the entire gaming industry by rebutting in such a way.
Unfortunately the things people have to say about these kinds of issues are spearheaded by individuals like Meredith. For this reason these types of debates quickly become filled with pathos and as such become difficult to discuss in public without talking points or charged rhetoric being applied to obfuscate the issue. You get one side being labeled insensitive and the other side calling out how inane it is to get mad over a video game. Both arguments demean the other and do nothing to further understanding of the topic at hand.
Yes, it is true that you play as the Taliban in Medal of Honor. But you only play as them in the multiplayer. Aside from the weapon selection, the spoken language you hear, and the uniform (or lack thereof) there really aren’t discernable factors between the two factions in a multiplayer setting. Besides the objectives of the game mode, there is no greater narrative framework.
Regardless, Americans are still being killed in the game, and that is an ethical dilemma for some people. It’s understandable to have misgivings about playing a game where you kill fellow members of the armed services for entertainment. I know having named forces such as the Taliban make the killings seem all too real. But is this really the tipping point?
Look back to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. In one section of the game you play as Sergeant Paul Jackson of 1st Force Recon. While Jackson may be fake, the USMC and 1st Force Recon are very real. During the course of the campaign a nuclear device is set off, killing Jackson and 30,000 fellow Marines. This was demonstrated not only by a cut-scene, but by a player-controlled sequence where a crippled Jackson crawled around the wreckage of a burning helicopter before succumbing to his injuries.
Talk about a visceral experience. Not only was the player-character and his entire friendly army killed, but you had to experience and control Jackson’s final moments as he died alone in a foreign country. This was not a multiplayer sequence. This was part of the story required to complete the single-player experience.
Was the reason no public outcry followed this because the game took place in an unnamed Middle-Eastern country while fighting unnamed opposition forces? Are people so easily able to separate themselves from tragedy if only the names surrounding that tragedy are changed? Is it really because the Americans dying in Iraq Untitledistan are being killed by unnamed rebels, opposition forces, or Russians?
That’s not even to mention that in numerous other shooters Americans are under the gun. Look at the long-standing franchises of Call of Duty, Battlefield, and Medal of Honor.
I can’t give people the argument that World War II is okay to emulate because it was so long ago. It was only 65 years ago, and there are still people who feel its effects every single day. Not only in America, but across the entire world.
Even Meredith, a woman who has lost her own son in war, acknowledges that the loss of life during World War II has been mitigated with the passage of time. She even goes so far as to say that World War II titles aren’t based off the exploits of real people.
“War is not a game, period,” Meredith said. “And the fact that they’ve already done games about World War II, that’s far removed from our current history, and people aren’t dying…and it’s not based on real people.”
Open wounds may turn into scars, but there is still entertainment being levied on the loss of real lives – American, European, Asian – whomever. And they were most certainly real people. With real lives, real families, and real dreams. Maybe the passage of time is more powerful than I care to realize.
But if time can mitigate the pain of recreating war in entertainment, then the question still remains: Why is there no resentment from real American forces dying in other titles focused on modern conflicts besides the upcoming Medal of Honor? Despite where the bullet is coming from, the target is always the same – an American (or sometimes British) soldier. With American forces being cannon fodder in so many current titles, the introduction of a named enemy is the only new variable in the discussion.
Maybe it isn’t just Americans being killed that bothers people. Maybe it’s the personification of the enemy. Perhaps people want their enemies to be nameless so it’s easier to kill them (and be killed by them). It creates more of that action movie vibe – that kind of movie where a few men carve their way through hundreds of henchmen to reach the dramatic climax. And as much as it pains people to realize, the people that fight and kill American soldiers in real life aren’t henchmen. They’re people too. With real lives, real families, and real dreams.
That sentiment is where I have the most trouble with these arguments. Everything becomes so cut-and-dry along these nationalistic boundaries. We should all be questioning why games which feature the up-close slaughter of people on a grand scale doesn’t offend our sensibilities. We shouldn’t get angry only when people born under our own flags are killed.
War isn’t about nations fighting nations; it’s about people killing people. When entertainment emulates war, it emulates that sentiment. We should all look for answers as to why war is entertainment, and what exactly that says about us.
Stick around VGChartz later in the week when U.S. soldiers weigh in on the debate.
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