New game lets players massacre civilians

By John Byrne
Thursday, October 29th, 2009 -- 7:55 am
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modernwarfaremain 420x0 New game lets players massacre civiliansA new video game allows players to pose as Russian ultranationalist terrorists and massacre civilians with assault weapons in an airport.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is set for release Nov. 10, in time for the American holiday shopping season. Its predecessor sold 14 million copies and earned myriad "game of the year" awards.

But the latest incarnation is drawing fire. The game allows players to pose as terrorists -- and play in first-person view -- engaging in violence against non-combat actors.

GameSpot said the scene where players shoot bystanders is "reminiscent of last year's mass killings in Mumbai."

Australia rated the game MA15+, or suitable for children 15 years of age or older. "Australia is one of the only Western democracies without an adult (R18+) rating for video games," the Sydney Morning Herald notes.

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A local critic who runs the Australian Council on Children and the Media said that she didn't feel the 18+ rating was enough. It means that children as young as 15 will be able to slaughter civilians in realistic fashion.

"The consequences of terrorism are just abhorrent in our community and yet here we are with a product that's meant to be passed off as a leisure time activity, actually promoting what most world leaders speak out publicly against," Jane Roberts said.

"If that material was on the internet about how to become a terrorist, how to join a group and how to wipe out people - that would be removed because it would not be acceptable," she added.

The Herald adds that "Activision, the game's publisher, and its lawyers, have been working frantically to remove all traces of the footage from the web, arguing that it was released illegally before the game had come out. But the company has confirmed the footage is authentic and that the mission is part of the game."

In the scene, Australian reviewers wrote, "Several civilians are shot with blood burst bullet wounds; civilian corpses are strewn across the airport floor, often in stylised pools of blood; injured civilians crawl away with lengthy blood trails behind them."

This video is from smh.com.au, broadcast Oct. 28, 2009.



Download video via RawReplay.com

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 leaked footage

This video is from Youtube, broadcast Oct. 28, 2009.



Download video via RawReplay.com

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Story comments are below...

  • Lang188
    Just saying, if video games make us violent, what video games made 'Jane Roberts of the Australian Council on Children and the Media' who opposes the game, fat? On that note, what video or video game was Hitler playing to make HIM violent? Yeah, right... Kiss my ass, this media has been around forever. And, the context of the scene isn't to promote violence. It isn't saying "go get yourself an AK and go to the airport near you!" So, actually play the game before you judge it. It's like a book, don't judge it by its cover or its review. Many of the Opera books suck, but she gives them a good review anyway, right? SO DON'T JUDGE.
  • stormryan
    No place for this in call of duty. This was a series about answering the call of duty and it now seems to be answering the call of terrorism. You could have left this crap on the cutting room floor or in your sick twisted mind. This is just as disgusting as the Grayson add on the page.
  • Lang188
    You idots, it's to make you mad at the terrorists, so you have motivation to beat the game and feel like you acomplished something! It's calling you to arms to fight those that are doing this. The role of the character who is with the terrorists is an undercover agent, who must go along with this to gather intelligence for the greater good. If you don't like that part, it lets you skip it, and if you still don't like that part and want to see it ANYWAY, because you're preverse bastards, don't shoot the civilians! It represents you with a choice, and only retards like yourself think "oh god, INFINITY WARD GAVE ME A CHOICE BETWEEN SHOOTING SOMEONE AND NOT SHOOTING SOMEONE, WHAT SHOULD I DO?!!! BLASFAMY, INFINITY WARD, BLASFAMY!!!!"
  • nameasdd
    THis part of the game was put in so you could see how ruthless the russians are so when you fight them, you have a reason. A warning comes up and says that it may be graphic and you can skip it. Robert Bowling and Infinity Ward put this in so you can see the horrible parts of killing, not so kids will be desensitized and kill themselves. I'm pre-ordering tomorrow.
  • nameasdd
    The game was made for the exact opposite as to desensitize violence. This part of the game is warned and you are allowed to skip it. The creators of the game said they put this part in the game so that when you fight against the russians, you know how ruthless they are and you have a reason to fight, not to condone violence.
  • valisk
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Mumbai_attacks

    So... by your logic...

    This was caused by too much Call of Duty?

    Come on.
  • stompy
    This article is great advertising for the game.

    And playing Super Mario Bros. never made me inclined to kick turtles around IRL, for the record.
  • Shooter McRealism
    Yeah, COD is great for preparing all your fat asses to get shot. Give me a break. I play COD WAW on a regular basis, and I can tell you i doesn't prepare you for squat. Try firing an AK-47 with any accuracy. Try running at a full sprint for 100 meters, then kneeling and pumping a half dozen rounds into a moving target, regardless of your weapon. Particularly if that target is shooting back at you. Anyone who claims that videogames prepare you for combat is delusional. If anything getting smoked as many times as you manage to kill another player when playing multiplayer would be a detriment to violence. (Though I must say that ever since pac man I've kicked ass at dodging ghosts while eating crackers.)
  • seen2much
    I would like to see how the scenarios pan out if there is an option to arm the civilians. I would be interested in keeping it as realistic as possible, and be able to adjust to varying levels the skills of each individual civilian(from total noob to say S.F. on leave.), also how first responders will react to the armed civilians. Maybe the best would be to allow human players to be armed civilians. If everybody playing the simulation were just ordinary people, we could use these to see how an armed society would fare against terrorism compared to an unarmed society. An example already exists: Israel.
  • anarchisto
    Nothing new really. Desensitization and programming to kill for push button warfare.
    This is fun and games?
  • wonglo
    Sounds like great fun, I just pre-ordered myself a copy.
  • Guest
    modern warfare 2 wasn’t around when the butchering was going on in africa. it wasn’t around when the serbs and the croatians were murdering and slaughtering each other. it wasn’t around when pol pot executed some 2 million civilians. look somewhere else for a scapegoat. start with yourself.
  • scott_ewing
    -exactly-

    Couldn't agree more, Kim.

    This is not a news story - If you want to think about something that's important then think about why we are killing people with military weapons in South West Asia, maybe.

    The recent season of Penn & Teller did a great episode on the comparison of violent video games vs reality.
  • Guest
    modern warfare 2 wasn’t around when the butchering was going on in africa. it wasn’t around when the serbs and the croatians were murdering and slaughtering each other. it wasn’t around when pol pot executed some 2 million civilians. look somewhere else for a scapegoat. start with yourself.
  • chili1
    All this article shows is that unarmed people are fools who allow others to decide their fate. If the people had been armed, they could have defended themselves and the terrorists would have been taken care of.

    Criminals will always have firearms, because they do not follow the law. Firearm laws only affect law abiding citizens, who become defenceless sheep.
  • seen2much
    Here's an idea: See if the game has an option to arm the civilians, and then let's see how different scenarios will play out. Any code writers up to the challenge if the game offers no such option?
  • MW2Supporter
    that would defeat the purpose of the mission
    this mission sets up the whole game and shows what a soldier has to do for his country
    Sheppard says that he (the character) would lose part of himself, the whole massacre is a set up to get America in war
    Nowhere does this game promote shooting people, events like this happen in real life, this game only shows that
    People aren't going to shoot up Russian airports just because they did it in a video game. You even get the option to skip this level whenever
  • amerikagulag
    I'd say this is just the latest in a trend of desensitizing our young to the sight of carnage, blood, death and a complete lack of humanity. A soul-less killing machine is what the US military requires in order to foist its imperialist agenda on...whichever country the Rothchild's decide need invading next. And once kids get to be good killers, they'll be ready to serve the NWO.
  • oroboros
    It is driven by the consumer as much as anything. I've played video games since I traded my addiction to cigarettes for an xbox in 2003. It's a great way to blow off stress after work.

    Would I let a 13 year old play Modern Warfare 2? Probably not.

    All games involve defeating your opponent in one way or another. I have a friend who objects to the violence in the current Modern Warfare game. While I see it, and am aware of it, it is all computer generated and not the main reason I play the game.

    It is as much about getting in your opponent's head as any other game. It is cat and mouse at times. It is ambush ("camping") vs. "run and gun" style of play.

    There have been studies showing that when gamers play against other people, different parts of their brains react. Specifically, the parts that are also associated with empathy. We are trying to put ourselves in our enemy's head in order to defeat them. It gives a little insight into possibly darker reasons why we evolved empathy to start with.

    Those same centers are also activated when we have sexual feelings. A recent review of another game (Borderlands at Ars Technica) mentioned that the game did a good job of "engaging our brain's reward centers".

    Now we might come back around again to your assertion that this is about desensitizing people to killing by engaging the reward centers. Does that happen to some people? Probably. I imagine the same things happens to them when they see it in the movies too. I'm not sure I want to live in a culture censored for the lowest common denominator. I do support keeping such games out of the hands of minors in any event.

    There's an alternate view that, in playing these simulated games, we can take out our aggressive and testosterone-laden displays in non-lethal ways.
  • oroboros
    And to clarify just a little more for people who aren't familiar with the Call of Duty series:

    There are two basic modes to most of these games, the campaign and the multi-player. In campaign mode, you play against the computer (possibly with the help of friends who are your allies in the game against the computer). The multiplayer mode is different in that it usually involves player against player combat (whether team or "free for all").

    So, I'm quite certain that killing civilians will happen in the campaign mode. No one would ever want to play a civilian in the multi-player matchmaking because you'd always lose.

    The reason I'm following up is that it occurs to me that no one would normally make a video game where the point of the campaign is to kill completely defenseless civilians because it would be boring. Whether the police in Grand Theft Auto or the MK-ULTRA agents in "Destroy All Humans", there is always resistance.

    So I have come to the conclusion that the intent in putting civilians into the campaign is an act of guerrilla marketing designed to get the game more publicity on sites such as this. In short, Raw Story has been trolled.

    Here are a couple links referencing the study (singular really) about gamers' brains:

    http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/02/hum...

    Also see "Gamers are more aggressive to strangers":

    http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17868-gam...

    Then before you leave the topic, go watch the female humpback heat run:

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsi...
  • I love obama
    What about GTA, was that any different, is this news, this is bullshit news for anyone who considers this new.
  • SouthernYankee
    This is great just what are kids need now to give the attitude I don't give a shit. A 15 yr old girl got raped the other day and 20 young people stood around and watched it happen. What is wrong? What scares me by the time my grandkids get to high people will be keeping them at home to give them schooling. I think they need to break these mega high schools down. You know make the community based and not have to drive them to school a half hr away.
  • oroboros
    The Onion has already covered the all-important question of Are Violent Video Games Adequately Preparing Children For The Apocalypse?

    Modern Warfare 2 is just preparing children for creating the apocalypse that our grandchildren are preparing for.

    And yeah, I have my copy pre-ordered.
  • Douchebag
    Yeah, I played that game, too. It's called Grand Theft Auto.
  • nader paul kucinich gravel
    Red Dawn 2010
  • bartroberts
    "The consequences of terrorism are just abhorrent in our community and yet here we are with a product that's meant to be passed off as a leisure time activity, actually promoting what most world leaders speak out publicly against," Jane Roberts said.

    World leaders are the people who promote and instigate wars.

    "If that material was on the internet about how to become a terrorist, how to join a group and how to wipe out people - that would be removed because it would not be acceptable," she added.

    There is material on the internet. it's call army.com, marines.com, navy.com. The US soldier is the most highly trained and well equipped terrorist on the planet.
  • dennycrane
    Nothing new. The "Death Health Care deciders" do it everyday by denying claims.
  • doctoracula
    This is just the kind of story we don't need to be spreading around the internet. The game does not promote terrorism, unless you believe that the US involvement in the Middle East is an act of terrorism.

    Leave it alone, there are far more important issues to deal with.
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