Why I do support Modern Warfare 2

I feel that for a long time, the game industry has been trying to emulate the movie industry. That's apparent in a lot of games, from Final Fantasy VII to Uncharted 2. New levels of cinematic flair have often been met with a lot of praise and enthusiasm and now that game budgets are becoming about as high as movie budgets, we have better suited technology to do such things.

Now let me just bring up a point I've thought up of.

Right now, we've been using analogies between films and other games to discern what's accpetable, and to see where the metaphorical "line" is.

Some say "Movies include violence all the time, look at a scene like the one in Die Hard where Alan Rickman shoots that douchebag hostage for being annoying. Same thing."

Others say "There's a difference between watching Alan Rickman do that, and being Alan Rickman and killing the hostage yourself."

I'd say that the former is wrong, and the latter is right.

But unlike the latter, I don't consider that a bad thing. The main thing we have to remember is no matter how much games have tried to emulate movies, the fact is, GAMES ARE NOT MOVIES.

No matter how realistic the graphics are, no matter how amazing the scripted encounters become, the fact remains that interactivity is still something that games have that movies do not.

In that sense, Modern Warfare 2 isn't just pushing narrative boundaries for gaming. It's pushing narrative boundaries, PERIOD. While a film could recreate the airport shooting and still make it a very emotional and gut wrenching scene, a game is the only one that can put you in the shooter's shoes and make you feel that sick pit in your stomach as you're picking off innocent civilians.

On top of that, I'd like to stress the importance of waiting until the finished product is out in order for everyone to gain more context when it comes to the scene. I'm reminded of a french film called Irreversible which is a revenge story told in a weird chronological order in an attempt to show the shocking shit first and then finally show you the meaning behind it.

In that film, there's a 9 minute rape scene involving Monica Belluci. Just like all the violence in that movie, it's a brutal and disgusting scene, and worse of all, it's a long take, the camera doesn't look away for one second. It makes you see every single minute of it. The point is that it wants you to get angry. It wants you to want revenge also. And it wants you to be heart broken when you get to know this character further, and know what's going to happen to her.

The film in general has a very powerful message. It's a disturbing film, not for everyone, but if you can brave it, it's worth the watch.

Imagine though if we were only shown a clip of the rape scene and had none of the film provided to show context. People would be reacting to it like monkeys, half the film critics still reacted to it like monkeys, which is saying a lot considering how the film community is arguably more sophisticated than the current game community, what with the occasional review score drama that constantly surfaces.

Fact is that even after games eventually reach the level of current film, people will still miss the point of things like this. However, it's still up to us as intelligent members of the game community to praise progress when we see it. We don't know how good the campaign we be. I don't know for a fact is this scene will meet my expectations in the context of the game, but I do know that the fact that it exists is huge, and it's a fucking good thing. Props to IW for including it.