American or Taliban? In Multiplayer It Doesn’t Matter

Reading Michael Thomsen’s “Games With The Power to Offend” brought me right back to the whole Medal of Honor controversy I wrote about last week.  Now I have no plans to buy MoH but not because of the controversy.  As I wrote before, the idea of playing a Taliban fighter doesn’t really mean anything to me but I’ve been thinking about it for the last week so I thought I would add to my last post.

In BFBC2 Rush mode it's the US vs. the Russians in attack and defend.

Let me use MoH developer EA’s current game as an example.  In Battlefield Bad Company 2 you can either play as an American or a Russian soldier in the multi-player suite.  Of course the relationship between Russia and the United States is better now than it was during the Cold War, but the fact is as a Russian soldier, I have plenty of opportunities to kill Americans with knives, bullets, tank rounds, and mortar fire. However when I play as a Russian, I don’t see Americans in front of me.  Nor do I see Russian soldiers when I am on the American side.  Why is that?  Because both sides are exactly the same.  The only differences are the uniforms and the weapons you enter the match with.  I know that on some MP maps US forces have access to Apache attach helicopters while on others the Russians can fly the Hind attack chopper.  Americans use this type of assault rifle while the Russians use that type.  I remember that the two sides have tanks with slightly different capabilities. However the soldiers on both sides are interchangeable.

I’m betting that when MoH releases in October, gamers will find the same MP concepts as in Battlefield and other games in the genre.  As far as the game play and objectives of the match go, there is no difference between the two sides.  Yes, the weapons are different but that will not give one side an advantage over the other.  Balance is important in MP.

This notion of identifying with the different MP factions borders on the absurd.  If the tactics of one side differed from the other than perhaps it would make more sense to vilify EA for including the Taliban. Maybe if part of the game were to hurry up and construct an improvised explosive device (IED) and bury it in the road all the while reminding each other why we hate Americans, then perhaps gamers could experience why that role is abhorrent.  But gamers don’t have time for such things in MP. Everyone is in a rush to get to the killing.  In the real world, we know there are differences in ideology, tactics, and objectives when comparing US forces to Taliban fighters, but those differences don’t make it into MP. In MP gamers are not forced to listen to Taliban propaganda, ideology or religious doctrine. There is no talk of American oppression or the righteousness of their cause.  We don’t see what happens to American prisoners nor do we witness how IEDs are constructed and planted.  Images of Taliban fighters celebrating the deaths of Americans never becomes game content.  And so we don’t see those differences highlighted in the game.  How can we attach any type of meaning, and therefore hatred to those “Taliban” in the game? As a gamer striving to kill all the enemy players or grab territory, I have a hard time doing anything else.

The Taliban in MoH - are they just virtual fighters or hated enemies?

In order for me to have that type of hatred, I need to see that these characters are real Taliban.  I need to be able to demonize them for their heinous acts and their anti-American fervor.  On the other side, I need to be reminded that the Americans fight to protect their homes and families from terrorists and those who harbor them. Without that I feel nothing when I gun down an “American” or a “Taliban” except that, for a moment, I was better than the other guy.  I need that connection so that when I kill the Taliban I know that now there is one less person who can attack America.  Without that I feel no shame when the match starts and I see that for the next five minutes I will play as Taliban. This is part of what’s missing from all the news coverage of the Medal of Honor controversy, but it certainly need to be part of the conversation.

When Virtual Wars Become Too Real

Atomic Games' military horror shooter died a quick but painful death.

I’ve been a fan of military shooters for a long time.  It might have something to do with my six years of service in the U.S. Army.  Any decent shooter in that genre will catch my eye.  Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six, Call of Duty, and Battlefield Bad Company quickly come to mind but there are others as well.  There was a time I looked forward to playing Atomic Games’ Six Days in Fallujah. For those who are not familiar with this game, it died soon after reports of its controversial content surfaced on the Web. It seems that a game about the Iraq War was not possible while the war still raged. Outrage against the game quickly muffled all news about the potentially positive aspects of the game and that was that. (I really like the way Daniel Floyd covers this controversy as part of his youtube series on games.)

It seems that games about current wars are a no-no.

A year later I began reading about EA’s revival of its franchise Medal of Honor.  EA put the series on a path to the modern era. They would leave World War II behind and join Call of Duty and Battlefield Bad Company in the modern age.  However Medal of Honor‘s setting is the current US war in Afghanistan.

Here we go again, I thought.

Imagine my surprise when I read nothing about an uproar over EA’s shooter. Spring turned to summer and still nothing.  I thought MoH might actually make it to release with little controversy.  Guess I should have known better.  It seems the controversy is finally here.

However if you study the history of video games, you will see that writers and developers often look to outside media for influence and ideas.  Current events are a rich source of game content.  That’s why there are so many military shooters on the market.  While it is true that the enemies in those games are generic terrorists or dictators in fictional countries, the inspiration is today’s war on terror.  And that is the problem.  While World War II and Vietnam make for great war games, using a current conflict is out-of-bounds.  The pain is too fresh and the scars too raw. In ten years, perhaps, Afghanistan will be fertile ground for gaming, but in 2010 any attempt to use this setting must create controversy.

I believe the root of this issue goes back to what Floyd says in his video: games are judged by the name of the medium. When you say “game” you might as well say “enjoyment” and “fun” too.  To many non-gamers, the very act of picking up a controller means you will be having fun and picking up your virtual rifle and heading off to “Afghanistan” should not be fun.  They might not understand that there are times a gaming session is not all that much fun.  When I play NCAA Football 11 I enjoy it unless I lose by a lot of points.  I might say it was no fun at all. But I still played a game.  Last night while playing Dragon Age Origins I had to decide whether or not I should kill a person (I did finally).  That really wasn’t fun either.  However there are times I have so much fun I can’t help but shout and laugh and proclaim to the world how I am the greatest player who ever lived.

So I have to agree with Floyd when he says that video games, like comic books before them, suffer from the stigma attached to the name.  He reminds us how comics evolved into graphic novels and he muses that games might also find respect with a name change.  I don’t know about that, but what I do know is this: when I game I look for experiences and not just fun. The first time I saw Platoon I left the theater in awe.  What a profound experience.  Would I call it fun? No. If I use those same measurements, the single player campaign of Medal of Honor could very well be about sharing the horror and intensity of simulated combat.  Probably not too much fun.

Playing as the Taliban means killing American soldiers

On the other hand, the multiplayer portion should be fun and that brings us right back to the problem.  If you have played multi-player matches in EA’s Battlefield Bad Company 2 then you know how intense and overwhelming the experience can be.  It is fun?  Sometimes.  Most times it was a challenge and took all my concentration simply to achieve the goals of the match.  I didn’t see the enemies as Russian or American, they were simply targets to remove or merely players on the other side of the Internet to compete against. In that simulated world, thousands of “Americans” died. Where was the outcry?  In Modern Warfare 2 thousands of “US Rangers” fall everyday.  They are just as “real” as the American Tier One soldiers in Medal of Honor. But because the enemy is the Taliban, the game becomes more “real” than those other titles.  Is MoH bad because you can take the role of a real US enemy?  Or is it bad because you can “kill” American soldiers?

This is certainly a topic worth exploring, but in order to have a meaningful dialogue, we have to move past the narrow point-of-view of FOX News and others and investigate the full range of views on this topic.  We must address what it means to explore war this way as opposed to methods other media such as film, television, and books use.  Games bring their own perspective to the experience and that experience should be acknowledged for what it is: a different way to share the human condition.