I agree with Tom's and Brennus' sentiments as well as Raw Kryptonite's statement here:

"If the intention was to drive home the storyline, they could have done a much better job of it by putting you in the victim's perspective. That would be horror."

I'm afraid I'll likely be retracting my preorder now too.

They did a pretty good job with some messed up scenes in 4 and handled them tastefully IMO.

I'll judge this once I've played the game and seen everything in context.

Don't see the big deal honestly. Even if you ignore games like gta, just look at our own sim community. For years now we've been playing nazis facists and communists, not to mention blowing up and/or nuking civilians and other innocents. It's game. Some people like it, some don't.

I don't see the big deal here either, I could see if they had you playing a sequence as a 9/11 hijacker or a Chechen at Beslan, but what they've got is hardly pushing the line.

The problem is this speedo. We aren't talking about a game where you are going into combat. Combat games have been around as long as cowboys and indians, games that many of us played as children. This is a game in which you participate in wholesale slaughter of innocent individuals. It is an atrocity simulator pure and simple. You may shrug your shoulders and go 'big deal' but it is a big deal. We are traveling from games that are violent but at least give some kind of justification for violent acts to games where atrocity and slaughter are somehow acceptable.

Games where you are playing Soviet or German soldiers are games that have to playing German or Soviet Soldiers. I don't know of one game where you are called upon to slaughter civilians. There may be one out there but I doubt it would be that popular. Soldiering for the most part is an honorable profession and in general most games portray soldiers in honorable positions. Subjects, like that Nazi's and the Holocaust and event he role the Wehrmacht had in that horrible phase of our human existance have for the most part been taboo. Simulations where you randomly kill people have come up from time to time but for the most part these have been rare and with few exeptions have been given tons of grief.

Do you think the Native Americans in this country would stand for a simulation of atrocities that the occurred during the 1880s? I can imagine the firestorm that would occur if a game was released that allowed the player to participate in the murder of women and children, just the things that happened during that period. Likewise a game where you shove people into cattle cars or shoot people in the Gulags is in horrible taste. There is a reason that those games aren't made, it is because it sickens the average person.

Do these guys have a right to make this game? Yeah I suppose so. But that certainly doesn't mean that I don't have the right to object to it and to make my objections loud and clear. I have just decided that if Activision releases this game, with that gameplay option available then I will not buy a product from them again. My children will not play any activision game. I also suspect that there will be a widespread campaign to boycott their games. Activision sells a lot of games, they may pay more of a penalty for this than they suspect.

There are other ways of manufacturing tension, odium, urgency whatever...

Why not have you as an unarmed target attempting to save people or help the authorities gain entry into the airport?

There are so many more tasteful ways this could have been done. Just ask Leon Klinghoffer's family.

pfunk

Is there a video of it? They took it down...


I really don't think it's worse than Postal. Where you can taze someone until they pee in pants as poor victim is yelling for help and crying....

Agreed. Have yourself as a CIA operative who finds himself in the airport witnessing this atrocity, make getting him safely away from the slaughter as his goal. Heck, make him the focus of the attack. You attempted to infiltrate the organization, was outed and are trying to get away. You are at the airport when the shooting starts and you have to try to stay alive all the time watching this horrible scene take place around you.

Suspense, terror and outrage and you don't have be an active participant in it. There are ways to make this scene gritty, painful and you certianly can make the point that this Russian Dude is one BAD guy without putting the player in the game as an active participant. You can then tie that into the plot later on.

Postal developed a firestorm when it was released. It died pretty quickly because of it too.

AGE-OF-EMPIRES, there, now you know. Wich is a pit really, i wanted to make them my prisioners, or part of my populace.



No, enough of being the good guy, and now you're saying is not the atrocities toward digital virtual civilians AIs that is bad, but that you are the one to do it ? so its okay to have it in the game if it's not you doing it ? i dont quite follow you.
Or perhaps it's the fact that i's a CIA operative that is killing civilians that is your problem ?