Okay, I’ve played through to the mission (“No Russian”) where this takes place. First and foremost, you are very strongly warned when starting the game that some missions are very disturbing and that can disable them with no penalty. Second, the context is that you are an undercover agent trying to stop this Russian ultranationalist terrorist and are warned by your superiors that the mission will be extremely difficult to live with, but many more lives will be saved in the long run by taking down the cell. During the massacre, which is extremely disturbing, you are not obligated at any point to take part, so you don’t get “points” or credit of any kind from killing civilians — it is, in COD series style, mostly a cinematic mission where the point is to watch (in this case, in horror). At the end of the mission, tour character is then promptly murdered by the terrorists in order to implicate the United States in the massacre (the name of the mission, “No Russian,” refers to an order the terrorist gives at the beginning of the mission — he orders no one to speak in Russian so the survivors won’t think that Russians committed it). The briefing for the next mission then strongly implies that this incident will be the focus for the ultranationalists picking fights with the United States directly, so it’s intended to be 1. highly disturbing and 2. set up the M.O. for the rest of the game’s conflict.

I haven’t played the game yet (though I already bought it), but the COD series is known for immersive scenes, putting you in strange situations where you are one of the bad guys, or which are deliberately disturbing. For example, COD4 opens with you being a Middle Eastern dictator captured during a coup and assassinated. Another scene, later in the game, involves you dying after a nuclear explosion — there’s nothing you can do about it. It doesn’t totally surprise me that they’d do something like this (one of the early audio-only trailers depicts what clearly turned out to be this scene). Not having played the game, I’m not even sure that you’re forced to open fire yourself — you may just be along for the ride.

This just struck me…isn’t that what does/will happen to Jihadist apologists, that they’re just shot last?

Interesting perspective, that makes you actually believe Infinity Ward really gets it, when you also include their lionization of the military.

Miss_Anthrope on November 12, 2009 at 2:34 PM

It does, doesn’t it?

It’s no more surprising that games developers will grow towards producing games that shock, thrill, inspire and titillate just like the pioneers of cinema moved from producing 30-second nickel odeons that travelled with circuses to the sprawling $300-million dollar blockbusters we’ve all grown up accepting as legitimate expressions of art and culture.

And just as with Cinema there will be those who pique the most carnal human responses for profit. Already there are thousands of pornographic videogames ranging from the simplistic to some that are so realistic and brutal that there has been legislation banning them from export. And we’ve all become familiar with games that are designed specifically to target its core audience for maximum appeal: violent action games and the males 18-35 who play them.

That demographic is key to divining the future of gaming and it also provides the answer to the perceived oversaturation of violent videogames. You see, Videogames surpassed cinema in gross revenue back in 2001 (it’s roughly double today) but it has done that with ONLY the males 18-35 market. Those games which have a broader appeal to women and others are slowly proving to be more and more successful (the Sims is a collossal success and its playerbase boasts a much larger proportion of women).

But then again film audiences are well-distributed across genders and we don’t exactly have a shortage of brutish and violent movies either.

It might be because boys are awesome and girls are lame.

I played COD4 and dont recall this part in the game. This must be an add-on.

tx2654 on November 12, 2009 at 1:08 PM

That’s MW1…we’re discussing COD 6/MW 2…hubby just got to Part 3, so he’s already played the massacre at the airport. He didn’t like it…wondering if I should give him the spoiler??? >:)

No, you do NOT have to actually participate in the slaughter yourself; but you do have to walk along with the butchers, and watch what they are doing. The real kicker, of course, is that no matter what you do (or don’t do), at the end of the mission, the leader of the group turns around and kills YOU, last.

Cylor on November 12, 2009 at 9:01 AM

This just struck me…isn’t that what does/will happen to Jihadist apologists, that they’re just shot last?

Interesting perspective, that makes you actually believe Infinity Ward really gets it, when you also include their lionization of the military.

I even got dizzy watching the vid. Weird, I just stick to strategy games now.

UncleZeb on November 11, 2009 at 8:13 PM

Simulation sickness. Very common. Depends on motion clues from your environment.

Just walking around killing gets boring, though. See GTA. There has to be some gameplay eventually.

Seeing the usual pompous types put video games down is amusing. The hypocrisy they display, it’s comical.

This mission has nothing to do with the rest of the game (at least as far as I can see so far), and is so completely pointless, and known to be so potentially offensive, that you are asked at the beginning of the game if you want to skip “a potentially offensive” mission. Im not sure why they included it.

I’d read about it and shrugged it off, but now having seen it, I’m shocked at how disturbing it is. Maybe that’s a reaction to the proximity of Fort Hood, maybe it’s the amazing realism of the scene, or maybe it’s the first-person perspective, but somehow this is way more unnerving than it would be in a movie.

It really, truly is. I hadn’t read about it beforehand and the first time I played through that mission I was genuinely horrified by it from start to finish, in a way that no video game has ever struck me before.

And I honestly think this sort of thing is HELPFUL to our current society, in this sense: it forces people whose awareness of such occurrences in the real world is limited to headline blurbs and short sound bytes to face the reality of it — albeit in a simulated way — and to face the true horror of it in such a graphic, unabridged way. Because it then forces you to consider the people who really commit such atrocities in the real world, and the kind of hatred and sheer evil that would lead someone to carry out something like this with such methodical deliberation.

The game tells you right at the start that you will not be “scored” on this particular mission in any way whatsoever. It is SUPPOSED to be horrifying. It is SUPPOSED to be repulsive. It is SUPPOSED to make you sick. That’s the POINT. And any game that makes you think on a level like this is an absolute work of art.

No, you do NOT have to actually participate in the slaughter yourself; but you do have to walk along with the butchers, and watch what they are doing. The real kicker, of course, is that no matter what you do (or don’t do), at the end of the mission, the leader of the group turns around and kills YOU, last.

The millions of gamers who play COD are more patriotic than a lot of lefty liberals. This is a very popular game amoung American troops. NO PC and the enemy is named. Islamists and Russians.

Yet I do not see gamers in real life life shoot innocents. They know the difference. It seems that those of you you are so upset can not discriminate between a game and reality.

Ask a soldier who has killed an enemy combatant. Most will tell you they don’t sleep well at night because of it.

Bringing down a creature made in the image of God is ALWAYS sad.

RAH on November 11, 2009 at 8:21 PM

The problem is that you as the gamer do the shooting.

If that still doesn’t bother you than there probably is no limit as to what virtual unpleasantness would.

How about virtual rape?

My big question to gamers is this, “Will you play this level over and over until your civilian kills per fired rounds improves?”

I don’t think I can justify playing the game now.

For those who mistake killing in a video game with real life. Get a grip. Movies and books and games are not reality and those that play can easily tell the difference. But it does show the ugliness of war and many gamers have accepted the idea that bad things like this can happen, At least a segment of our population does not stick their head in the sand like our current crop of leaders.

I love the game, however, I tried to kill (many times) Makarov and his gang immediately when they started shooting civilians. After that, because they turn on you and kill you, I tried many times to kill them (grenades, shooting, etc), to no avail. I ended up walking behind and did not shoot the civs. There was a graphic content warning at the beginning of the game, this is one of the parts of a level that you would not play if you went the “clean” route.

At any rate, a few scenes in the game upset me (upset as bringing out some deep emotions), like the scene where the general shoots and kills the “roach” and the skull mask compatriot are shot by a superior, and then lit on fire after having gasoline poured on them, from roaches perspective. I actually cussed at the character — another scene that would not show up in the “clean” version I am sure.

On another note, we have Spec-Ops and CIA and other embedded persons in our countries history that have seen horrible things done to people but kept “undercover” for the missions sake. Those are people that this scene also brought to my mind. At our church we have a Spec-Ops guy (retired) who was part of Sandinista “death squad” hunting teams, he has some pretty amazing stories beyond even that. He goes down to the VA and counsels soldiers coming back from the theater. He has taken his experiences and seeing death up close and turned it into an opportunity to heal himself and others.

Side Note: I am salivating for the next Splinter Cell — my favorite game… where you get to really kill some bad people. However, Sam Fisher wants to get out of doing what he is doing and they try to kill him, so he goes rouge. Sam would never kill on the level in COD 6 (Modern Warfare 2)! I hope.

PapaG

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