If you watch the embedded MSN report on its release, you’ll find that the newscasters seem to find the notion abhorrent, or at least in bad taste, even if they don’t explicitly say so. Before launching into a fit of apoplectic rage, ponder a few questions with me, after the jump.
What makes Special Force 2 tasteless, as opposed to the slew of army- and combat-based FPS that saturate the market?
Is it the fact that it depicts a present-day war, as opposed to World War I or II? See Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare for a rebuttal.
Is it because genocide falls very clearly at the “horrible” end of the morality spectrum? Killing Nazis is socially acceptable because genocide is bad; however, the moral highroad in the Gaza Strip (i.e. Hezbollah vs. Israel) is hard to find> Hezbollah thinks themselves to be morally righteous in their struggle against Israel, and who are MSN newscasters to say differently? Don’t get me wrong: I’m not throwing my internet fame behind Hezbollah, but I’m not going to overlook the fact that Israel has its fair share of skeletons in its collective closet. There is definitely some moral gray area here. Rather, nobody is right.
Maybe because Special Force 2 was expressly created with propaganda in mind, we should find it inherently bad. Video games are simply the next step in the evolution of media, and as such, are subject to the same pitfalls as art, sculpture, radio, film, and TV; that is to say, it can be easily used as propaganda. Our very own Army is guilty of using our favorite pass time to its own devices as well, not to mention that they did it first.
So let’s recap: Ubisoft is developing a present-day war game, there is no clearly delineated “right” or “wrong” on the Gaza Strip, and our own government has used video games as propaganda. It seems that our newscasters’ (and, in all probability, collective America’s) indignation is left with very little to stand on, apart from the fact that an enemy of Isreal is an enemy of ours.
But, is that really enough to discredit the game, call it “controversial”, act haughty and smug, and imply that Lebanese Muslims are somehow inherently evil? Again, I re-iterate, I’m not exactly stoked that Special Force 2 exists, but I will try to take the time to understand where it comes from. To boot, I wasn’t exactly happy when my own government got into the digital propaganda game. It’s not so much that Hezbollah are a shining beacon in the video game world, we should just remember that maybe our own, big budget blockbusters aren’t that different.
[Thanks to Sam for sending this in!]
