General Gaming A pair of Iraq War veterans (one Marine, one Army) associated with the games industry share their thoughts on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Their respective twitter postings are quite extensive, but definitely worth the read to see things from the perspective of a couple of military veterans with ties to the gaming industry:

 

 

 

Their "tweet essays" were probably prompted by this article in Kotaku today:

 

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare's Developers Are Still Deciding How Disturbing To Get

Quote

In a hotel suite at E3 2019, Infinity Ward studio art director Joel Emslie and single-player design director Jacob Minkoff showed off two levels from the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare campaign. They showed these same two levels to the press this past May, but the messaging around those levels has changed. At this presentation, the two designers leaned hard on the realism and the potential emotional discomfort that players would feel while playing the campaign.

 

[Brick]

At the end of the day Call of Duty is, and always will be a power fantasy, and romanticizes war, and being a "badass" soldier. It'd probably be best if the developers just straight up acknowledged that and embraced it. We're not going to get a methodical, deep, and serious look at military life, and the horrors of war from a AAA video game like Call of Duty. That kind of deep narrative will probably need to come from a non-action indie game, or keep it to film and TV.

 

I appreciate these two men's input on how silly the developers are marketing this game as a serious look at military life.

[Moa]

Allowing people to 360 no-scope a baby is not how you make a meaningful statement about war.

[johnny]

IW is so dumb. People are going to shoot babies the first chance they get. 

 

I doubt the No Russian level from MW2 would make it into a game now with all the mass shootings. 

[Bloodporne]

6 hours ago, Brick said:

At the end of the day Call of Duty is, and always will be a power fantasy, and romanticizes war, and being a "badass" soldier. It'd probably be best if the developers just straight up acknowledged that and embraced it. We're not going to get a methodical, deep, and serious look at military life, and the horrors of war from a AAA video game like Call of Duty. That kind of deep narrative will probably need to come from a non-action indie game, or keep it to film and TV.

 

I appreciate these two men's input on how silly the developers are marketing this game as a serious look at military life.

I was going to type something very similar but you hit the nail on the head already, especially the bolded.

 

Personally, I actually think it's incredibly tasteless and offensive coming from a fucking video game series all about Monster energy drinks, gym-bro marketing with faux-hawks, zombies and whatever other nonsense they can cram in to sell more copies. I'm not a fan of pseudo-realistic military and WWII games to begin with but from what I'm reading here, this definitely takes the cake and is the definition of tone-deaf. 

[ShreddieMercury]

I love that the first reply is someone concerned about "moral guardians encroaching on my hobbies".  Fucking gamers.

 

Thanks for sharing these, because I think they do a good job of highlighting the effects that "modern warfare" has on people besides making them feel slightly pensive during the next loading screen.  The more realistic games get, the less I find myself wanting to play shooters.  I remember being fairly turned off by Max Payne 3 because the damage and physics were so realistic that it began to make me queasy.  Maybe there is a way to challenge perceptions of warfare and combat via a video game, but I have my doubts about CoD being the franchise to do it.

[Chris-]

1 hour ago, ShreddieMercuryRising said:

I love that the first reply is someone concerned about "moral guardians encroaching on my hobbies".  Fucking gamers.

 

Right? I fucking hate gamers.

[nublood]

Games just need to be fun. That's it. That's all. If your version of "fun" is shooting babies or any other innocent being in a hyper simulated setting then yea, you have problems.

[XxEvil AshxX]

Press X to feel emotional discomfort.

[CitizenVectron]

9 hours ago, Moa said:

Allowing people to 360 no-scope a baby is not how you make a meaningful statement about war.

 

It could be, if after doing it the game makes you do an unskippable 8-hour CGI hearing on your actions, followed by being court-marshalled and perma-banned from the game.

 

I agree with the sentiment here though, that games shouldn't be dealing with serious issues simply because they are not able to. FPS games should be focused on shooting monsters and aliens. Leave human enemies out of it for the most part. Even the most-evil human enemies (like WWII Germans) were mostly just men conscripted or tricked into serving their country, and didn't hold the pure-evil beliefs of their leaders. 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

White phosphorous as a killstreak reward is totally freakin' awesome, amirite?

[Biggie]

It’s a ViDeO gAmE

[TheGreatGamble]

On 6/13/2019 at 12:41 PM, CitizenVectron said:

 

It could be, if after doing it the game makes you do an unskippable 8-hour CGI hearing on your actions, followed by being court-marshalled and perma-banned from the game.

 

I agree with the sentiment here though, that games shouldn't be dealing with serious issues simply because they are not able to. FPS games should be focused on shooting monsters and aliens. Leave human enemies out of it for the most part. Even the most-evil human enemies (like WWII Germans) were mostly just men conscripted or tricked into serving their country, and didn't hold the pure-evil beliefs of their leaders. 

While I agree with some of what you said, the idea of no human enemies in games is just flat out ridiculous. 

[Mercury33]

Everyone who tweeted a complaint about White Phosphorous better have also tweeted complaints about everything in every single military shooter ever or else the hypocrisy is staggering.

[Moa]

2 hours ago, Mercury33 said:

Everyone who tweeted a complaint about White Phosphorous better have also tweeted complaints about everything in every single military shooter ever or else the hypocrisy is staggering.

 

To me, there are two obvious issues at play here. The first is that everyone's tired of Call of Duty's hack shit war porn, so nobody is willing to continue to give them the benefit of the doubt. The second issue is that now more than ever CoD is trying to have it both ways. If they want "you to experience just how difficult it is for a soldier to face the modern battlefield," then they can't reward players with chemical weapons. You can be irreverent about war, but you can't intercut your focus group tested solemnity with integrated G-fuel ads, especially when you're the same series that already brought us "Press F to pay respects."

[Biggie]

Ima pre-order this