As soon as we heard that Medal of Honor would feature the Taliban in its multiplayer component, we all could have easily predicted the media shitstorm would ensue, as “real journalists” stumbled over each other in a scrabbling bid to declare their insincere outrage the loudest.
Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello is apparently “surprised” by the controversy, however, and lays the blame for the anger squarely at the feet of the media.
“The controversy kind of caught me by surprise,” he says. “No one noticed [the game] … until a journalist decided to put the game box in front of a mom who’d lost her son in Afghanistan to create some controversy. I think that says more about the newspapers than it does the game industry.
“Having said that, we’re incredibly sensitive to the challenges that a non-gamer who doesn’t really understand what I’ve just described might imagine when a journalist who also doesn’t understand a game describes it to her. It tends to excite a little bit of angst.”
I do agree that certain journalists’ handling of things says nothing favorable about them as professionals, but I also refuse to believe that anybody at Electronic Arts was surprised by this. I’ll defend the game’s right to exist and mock the silly things said by journos and politicians, but come on … don’t play the innocent bunny rabbit, sir!
Riccitiello: MOH outrage “says more about newspapers than it does the game industry” [GI.biz]
