Well, I kind of understand his angst. Nazi's have all but become the boogie man of modern times. The Sunni's and Shiites are still a very real people we deal with.

So as long as we are dealing with semi-mythical and mythical enemies it is okay.

If his beef is with killing Iraqis that he thinks the US shouldn't be killing the first place, then he obviously isn't paying attention to CoD4's story.

As anyone who has completed CoD4 will tell you, it's not set in Iraq, it's set in an unnamed (and likely fictional) Middle-Eastern country where the government has been overthrown by Middle-Eastern terrorists who are funded by Russian terrorists. In fact, only a few missions are actually set in the Middle-East where the targets are terrorists. Most of the missions are about killing Russian terrorists.

I hate to say it, but even though I feel for the guy, I would have thought that a game with 'Modern Warfare' written on the box in bright green writing does not mean shooting nazis.

is it just me or did he say that this parent didn't want to play an M rated game with his kid, because its too realistic?

i'm sorry, but that, to me, narrows down to "dont want to let kid play M rated game."

well done.

"That’s because it sends you… into the teeth of the Iraqi war… The one I don’t believe we should be fighting. The one I vow my son will never take part in.
And there he is playing it out on his Xbox 360."

I'm not actually sure what the father's issue is. I think it's that he believes that the Iraq war is being fought for the wrong reasons and that it is bad to have people play through it as if you are a hero on the "right" side, whereas fighting the Nazi's was the right thing to do.

Then he muddies his message a little more when after being informed that it isn't about the war and the people are insurgents he says: "Well, actually, they're not insurgents. They're computer code and graphic animation."

Either he's dismissing the fact that it isn't actually about the Iraq war, or he is just dismissing his own argument altogether with the fact that the action isn't real.

It's a strange little article, the man seems upset about something but he doesn't explain why very well. At least this isn't one of the rabid "THIS GAME WILL CAUSE CHILDREN TO MURDER. I DON'T APPROVE THEREFORE NO-ONE SHOULD PLAY IT" articles we have seen in the past.

There's also 2 choppers on the cover.... not very big on choppers was WW2, regardless of what Wolfenstein etc would have you believe....

I was looking to see if he mentioned how old his son was but I didn't notice it anywhere. I'm assuming that this reporter knows that this game isn't recommended for anyone under 17 and if he really wants his kid to not play it he could just be a parent and take it away.

I think this guys problem is he played online and he saw he got put on the.... oh no Middle Eastern side!!!

I have to agree with odc04r most nazi soldiers were not there by choice, and those that were had been blinded by the truth, they fought to win and survive like we all would do, for this guy to say well it was ok to kill them they weren't really human is so ignorant.

@Weighted

I just peed my pants on that one visualizing the guy from the mac vs pc commercials saying that :P.

CoD4 doesn't take place in Iraq....

This story is fictionnal and not in any way based on actual facts. Any ressemblance to actual events or characters was not intended.

German conscripts are people, too, you know. :(

@Malevolent

I'm here mate. Well, it was actually Afghanistan, but it's not much different.

Now, firstly, i'd just like to say that anyone who finds killing one group of people easier than others has gone wrong somewhere. That doesn't show morals. It shows some form of desenstisation.

And although I can understand where he's coming from, as the American Missions are Vaguely similar to Operation Iraqi Freedom, he's made the classic mistake. He's taken opinion and mixed it up with fact.

It's not about killing Iraqi's. It's about hunting a Dictator and hopefully bringing him to "justice".

But hey, I wasn't going to buy the game originally. I only went out to get it because of the excellent reviews I saw. If he finds his "morals" challenged, then by all means, exchange it.

Besides, CoD5 is going back to WWII. It won't be a long wait.

@BlackIce

"Besides, CoD5 is going back to WWII. It won’t be a long wait."

The way I see it, the only way this'll be good is if you get to play as the Germans for a change.

A tank driver among Rommel's Panzer Brigade? hmmm...

@Twin-Skies

If. Fucking. Only.

Of course, if the developers ARE brave enough to do it from the German's perspective, they'll be swamped with Soccer Mom Marches.

I actually think that the guy who said it is Iraq is making a broad assumption. Just because some of the enemies you encounter are "towel-heads" (god I hate that term), doesn't automatically mean that they are Iraqi's, or any other particular group. The fact that he thinks it o.k. to kill Nazi's in a videogame, but not nuclear weapon weilding terrorists is very much a double standard. No matter what he may think about the war, the video game is fiction, and should be treated as such.

Wait, if he's saying, when corrected about how it isn't Iraq, that 'They aren't insurgents, they're just lines of code'...isn't that completely destroying his whole point?

And seriously, the american invasion didn't start until the terrorists had staged a coup and EXECUTED the duly-elected president of the country. That's a HELL of a lot better reason than any we've gone to war over in the last decade or two. Not to mention there was rather solid intel (I mean, you SEE it in the first mission!) that there was at least one nuclear weapon in play...

Technically, I don't think you ever fight any *actual* soldiers in CoD4...except ones that were very, very corrupt. I certainly don't remember seeing many enemies in the middle east missions that were wearing actual uniforms. In this case, CoD4 is LESS 'it's okay to kill one group'...you're killing people who actively want you dead, not just conscripts or people who've been deluded to a Cause. (Like oh, EVERY World War 2 game ever made, except *maybe* (big maybe) Wolfenstein.)

Really, I think that too many people think way too hard about games. What ever happened to the good old days where you were just a fat Italian plumber trying to save a princess from a giant turtle? Am I one of the few who remember that games are to be *enjoyed*, without assigning meaning to them that they don't have?

I must be, considering that 'essay' on Portal about how it was actually all about female empowerment and stuff...And not, y'know..just a super fun puzzle game, which made the Orange Box collection worth buying all on it's own.

I thought at least a part of it takes place in russia, or has russian connections.

@Joker

Russia?

Correction:

You don't kill Iraqis in COD4: Modern Combat, you will terrorist insurgents. Why can't people make the distinction between civilians and insurgents...

Everyone else has already voiced the points, though personally I do not believe the soldiers kid is 17. Either that or it wasn't the soldier but some guy typing what he said decided to say kid. Most soldiers I've talked to refer to their kids who hit 16 as young men...
Anyway
@BlackIce
From the rumours I've read, yes COD5 is supposed to be WW2, and worse yet, made by the same people who made COD3. Great. I pray rumors stay as they are and just be crummy rumors and lies.

@ Vinzent

Part of it is that even the likes of Micheal Moore agree that the Nazi's were evil and deserved death... but never actually stopped to realize that only a small portion of the German military were part of the Party. In fact the only ones were the SS, as most of the other branches frowned upon party membership among the ranks.. On top of that some of the soldiers were even German, but conscripted from the conquered European nations to fill in the ranks of the 'expendable' units.

So what it comes down to is that he is saying that its ok to kill conscripted Europeans, but not ok to kill violent middle eastern and Russain terrorists.

One of those pot meet kettle situations I think.

Someone should really forward this article+comments to the author of the printed article...

@Joker

Probably.

@Vinzent: I don't think he's a bad guy..he just disagrees quite a lot with the Iraq War, and sees it where it isn't. A lot of people do that. And a lot of people have the old 'Nazi' double standard. The Nazi's of old have essentially evolved into myth and legend now, like pirates, and ninjas, except they're nigh-universally reviled instead of nearly worshiped. People have stopped thinking about the Nazis (and WW2-era Germany in general) as actual people and more like faceless minions of Hitler to be mowed down. Like the mooks that are sent after James Bond, or Bruce Willis.

I think, more or less, that a two-generation gap is about right for the descent into myth and legend. The original generation lived it. They know what went on. The first generation after may or may not have lived it, but definitely grew up with the aftermath...usually stories of the war from their fathers. The second generation, they're starting to forget, or aren't getting the stories passed down....and that brings us to the current generation, who, chances are, don't even have a relative that actually lived it anymore. The kids that are in elementary and middle school right now will be the third generation or so since Vietnam. They'll probably have to deal with eighty seven million Vietnam FPS's, whereas for us 20+ year olds, we're just getting tastes of it...and we're still finding them a little distasteful. Of course, it probably doesn't help that the few Vietnam-setting games we've had so far aren't that *good*.

I'm actually surprised that we haven't had a slew of Korean War games yet. I guess since that war never actually *ended*, it's still off-limits. (Fun fact: The Korean War is still ongoing, just in a state of prolonged cease-fire.)

@Black Ice

I don't know, in the CoD games I've played I saw many a Wehrmacht and Kriegsmarine, as well as SS and Waffen-SS.

I just have one thought. What's with everybody prefixing "ultra-" onto everything negative about video games?

The only think I wonder is if people start to, you know, go after games about the ACTUALL Iraq war.

Enter insurgency.

http://www.moddb.com/mods/3622/insurgency/news/25529/insurgency-beta-20e...

The thing I really wonder about insurgency, is if it will be exempt from target status,due to it's (relative) obsurity, or actually attacked by media. The main reason that I wonder this is that's it's truly, you know, about the Iraq war, and that the game is gritty and realistic (for a game).

I hope it isn't though, because while it would make more sense to go after it (unlike bully), it's a highly enjoyable game that I hope doesn't get set back.

Sorry I got the impression that his mom made the statemnet, not his Dad, sorry about that.

That's ridiculous...
"Who could begrudge a man and his boy from killing a few nazis?..."

I can't really put into words the bull crap I think this is

@Mnementh2230

See, that's the thing, killing because your religion says so is way worse than just following orders, in my opinion. If I could get ahold of some of the terrorists (Osama, etc, and his followers), what I would do to them would be much worse than just a Nazi soldier. Only the Nazi leaders were as bad in my eyes as terrorists nowadays.

I went on Wikipedia's COD4 article, did a CTRL+F search for "Iraq".

I think my comptuer is broken beyond all repair according to that dad, because I got a "Phrase not found" message.

WHOA WHOA WHOA!

Stop! Is that actual parnting taking the place of government regulation in popular media?

Apocalypse sign 1/4

@Jonathan Josi

I'm on the lookout for the other 3 signs.

So as soon as they stop showing previews in movie theaters, Thompson decides to be pro-game, and Wal-Mart starts selling Disney porn I'll let you know.

At least I think those are the signs.

i love the fact that Infinity War is portraying the Iraq War today. has it ever crossed your mind that maybe it's not a portrayal of Iraq but just some made up game? Sure, the soliders are middle eastern and there are plenty of russians and a nuke. Did his father freak when his son killed Russians....this whole thing is a waste of time...its a fictional scenario...tell your son that its not real and move on. Pansy.

If CoD4 actually took place in Iraq, this precedent might actually bring into question what is socially acceptable in times of war. However, considering that his conclusion is based upon fallacies, I refuse to take anything that is said seriously.

After reading all this, i feel i need to put in two cents worth:
I must say that, first of all, This is an incredible game, definatley the best of the CoD series, and probably the best shooter of all time (thus far).

One of the reasons for them putting it in a modern setting is that it allows a lot more leway for an epic story (which they were aiming for). One of the themes i got from it was none other than, "War is Hell," not so much "Kill Middle-eastern terrorists lulz" I dont ever remember being in more shock and awe in any other game or movie than during these three scenes from the game (note, spoilers):
1. During the Intro credits, witnessing the rebellion as fictional character Al-Fulnari (After the mission Crew Expendable in Act I)
2. On your last mission as marine Sgt. Paul Jackson, when the nuke goes off. (end of Act I)
3. At the very end of the game (Act III, Game Over) where you witness the death of your comrades and go into last stand mode to take out the enemy leader.

If anything, it should make you think twice about the current situation.

Like I said: NOT FOR CHILDREN. So, where I would normally applaud the dad for not allowing his children to play the game, I dont because he does it for the wrong reasons.

seriously, you guys (girls)
we live in a different world now
no more Nazi's (presumably), no more Kamakazi's, no more Cold Wars
Yet, still we find it ok to kill russian and nazi soldiers, shooting the hell out of their corpes, and find a way to think killing murderous psychotic communist terrorists who are carrying 15,000 nuclear weapons in the ballance, bad
WTF??
Is this America, the land of the free? where we play Grand theft Auto and kill hookers for money and snipe police officers in New York?
Or is today's world becoming so naive that we have to critically think if it's ok to buy this kind of game and let our generation play against these insergians, bent upon nothing but world domination?
*sigh*
what the hell is this world coming to, honestly?
leave our entertainment alone and go jack off to maralyn monroe again you sick hypocrytical fucks!

@Dark Sovereign

That's exactly what Medal Of Honor: Rising Sun tried. It phailed.

@GO

You mean Heer, right? The Wehrmact is the whole damned shooting match, save for the SS.

perhaps that is why we don't have any WW1 FPS it's much more morally ambiguous. or Korera war FPS... the Nazis are seen as evil non human characters tha do evil thing out of racism. even though racism was a world wide problem still is in some part o the world

@GO

That's on excuse! My German is terrible, but I know they're called the Heer!

[...] Has anyone else have face similar moral issues? Virtual History Lesson [Sun-Sentinel via GamePolitics] [...]

btw - how about weapons of mass destructions in iraq, or any prooves of ethnic cleanings in Kosovo? all of that is still unprooved by facts....
do You remember what all Your "democratic" mass media told at one voice (like it was written by one hand) before both wars?
no propaganda..
I read what US and EURO media writes about Russia, and I see - they lie a LOT.... believe me... I prefer DIFFERENT sources, to have more or less believable picture on things going on... not "democratic" single voiced media

@a lurker

Yes. Squaddies don't charge out into the middle of a bog.

Thats fine if he doesnt like the game. But he better not piss on my party cuase i want to play games like that.

One thing to say and that is.....HOLY COW!!! what was this guy thinking, i bet if some terrorist was shooting at him he would blow him away.....either that or throw some hippie flowers at him....this guy needs to get a life.

So, this guy doesn't have a problem killing you know 'Nazis' from World War 2. But in the past Call of Duty games were not killing 'Nazis'. We're killing regular German soldiers, they're not goose stepping, they're not wearing armbands. They're soldiers. So I don't think it's fair to say it's better. Now the SS is a different story but the majority of time you are facing the Wehrmacht. Though I guess it's easier to call them all Nazis and be done with it. As for this game... um... when did it say the fighting was in Iraq? I'm just saying maybe you should know what you're talking about before bashing a game.

Civilian Death Toll in Iraq May Top 1 Million

http://www. commondreams. org/archive/2007/09/14/3839/

http://www. shoutwire. com/comments/33626/Massive_Death_Toll_in_Iraq



http://www. youtube. com/watch?v=0rzudm0t1DY

THESE ARE THE WORDS TO ZACK'S SPEACH: (RATM)


"A good friend of ours said that if the same laws were applied to U.S. Presidents as were applied to the Nazi's after World War II, then every single one of 'em, every last rich white one of 'em from Truman on would have been hung to death, and shot. And this current administration is no exception. They should be hung, and tried, and shot. As any war criminal should be. But the challenges that we face, they go way beyond administrations. Way beyond elections. Way Beyond every four years of pulling levers. Way beyond that, because this whole rotten system has become so vicious and cruel, that in order to sustain itself, it needs to destroy entire countries, and profit from their reconstruction, in order to survive, and that's not a system that changes every four years, it's a system that we have to break down generation after generation after generation after generation after generation. Wake up."

America is the terrorists the new nazi .. the 4th reich

"Terrorism is the violence targeted at civilians to achieve political gain."

I could cite examples of just that action from nearly every military engagement the United States has carried out, but to keep things nice and apt, here we are:


"Thomas Nagy, Professor of Expert Systems at George Washington University with a doctoral fellowship in public health cites recently declassified documents that show the United States was aware of the civilian health consequences of destroying Iraq's drinking water and sanitation systems in the Gulf War, and knew that sanctions would prevent the Iraqi government from repairing the degraded facilities.

These civilian health consequences, according to Article 54 of the Geneva Convention, are prohibited by international law.

Article 54 states that "It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking installations and supplies and irrigation works, for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value to the civilian population or to the adverse Party, whatever the motive, whether in order to starve out civilians, to cause them to move away, or for any other motive".


And from a government document, we get the handy little definition of 'sanctions':

"The aim of economic sanctions is to coerce the targeted regime into changing its policies or behavior by subjecting it to the consequences of economic decline. In theory, one path to success for such sanctions would be manifested by a progression from domestic discontent due to economic turmoil, to popular unrest and uprisings, to eventual weakening or removal of the targeted regime."

http://commdocs. house. gov/committees/intlrel/hfa81812. 000/
hfa81812_0.HTM



Hmm, that sounds a lot like 'violence against civilians for political gain' to me

"It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensable to the survival". Read this carefully. 'Render useless' is exactly what you described with,

"The water treatment system in Baghdad deteriorated to the point of failure not becuase of attacks on the water treatment plants, but because of attacks on power generation stations and other infrastructure."

= Rendering them useless.

So yes, regardless of what I may wish it to be, the US DID violate the 'GC' in reference to targeting of civilian water supplies. But even besides this, the point of the matter was your definition of terrorism, which still applies, regardless of which type of structure we bombed. As I quoted from that government definition, sanctions directly target a civilian population in the hopes of creating 'domestic unrest' to topple whomever we dislike, in other words, very political reasons. Sanctions target civilians and indirectly target regimes.

As far as Saddam being the fault for our unilateral sanctions against Iraq for about a decade of food, medicine etc, well. Just think about that for a moment, god damn. Saddam may have taken some money, but the guy who knocks people over in a fire to get out isn't the most blame-worthy, it's who set the god damn fire in the first place.

You talk about lavish palaces, we are building the largest embassy in the world right smack in the middle of the green-zone where Saddam has all those palaces you speak of. Bremer made Saddam's main palace his HQ, in the same way we prudently changed managers but not charater of Abu Ghraib.


@akam80

"Think about how many civilians are dying because of radicals, extremists, and independent milita groups, not to mention Sunni and Shiite faction groups."

This falls under the same burning-house logic, perhaps even more so, as these classifications include a good number of average people forced to the edge. But I'll do you one better, ever heard of 'death-squads'? If not, your real American history is lacking, especially regarding Nicaragua and El Salvador. The former where the United States was convicted by the World Court of 'crimes of aggression', for using Contras to massacre civilians.

It is called 'The Salvador Option', and it is all too real for Iraq today. The 'option' is used to break the legs out from under the population, which indirectly affects any anti-occupation elements in it. It targets professors, students, doctors, educated people, opposition of populist leaders and organizers etc.

"Fearing defeat, the US-backed army set out to kill not only guerrillas but also those they viewed as sympathisers.

Of the memories of death and mutilation I witnessed in El Salvador, the sight of six Jesuit priests, their cook and her 16-year-old daughter with their brains blown across the neatly cropped lawn of their house, is the one that still haunts the most.

They were among the country's leading intellectuals, and I knew them well."
news. bbc. co. uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/4209
595.stm


How about some further reading from more government sources, this is a public record of The House of Representatives,

"On January 8, 2005, Newsweek magazine first published a report that the Pentagon had a proposal to train elite Iraqi squads to quell the growing Sunni insurgency. The proposal has been called the ....Salvador Option,'' which references the U.S. military assistance program, initiated under the Carter Administration and subsequently pursued by the Reagan Administration, that funded and supported ....nationalist'' paramilitary forces who hunted down and assassinated rebel leaders and their supporters in El Salvador. This program in El Salvador was highly controversial and received much public backlash in the U.S., as tens of thousands of innocent civilians were assassinated and ....disappeared,'' including notable members of the Catholic Church, Archbishop Oscar Romero and the four American churchwomen. According to the Newsweek report, Pentagon conservatives wanted to resurrect the Salvadoran program in Iraq because they believed that despite the incredible cost in human lives and human rights, it was successful in eradicating guerrillas.

Mr. Secretary, at a news conference on January 11, 2005, you publicly stated that the idea of a Salvador option was ....nonsense.'' Yet mounting evidence suggests that the U.S. has in fact funded and trained Iraqi assassination and kidnapping teams and these teams are now operating with horrific success across Iraq.

We know that the Pentagon received funding for training Iraqi paramilitaries."
-DENNIS J. KUCINICH OF OHIO
thomas. loc. gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r109:E04MY6-0027:


That death-sqauds in Iraq are a reality is hardly worth debating, simply 'google it' for more than you can read. The question is, who is funding them and who is 'them'?


Official: Guard Force Is Behind Death Squads
"Jawad al-Bolani [Interior Minister], speaking to a small group of reporters in Baghdad, blamed the Facilities Protection Service, or FPS, a massive but unregulated government guard force whose numbers he put at about 150,000.

"Whenever we capture someone, we rarely find anyone is an employee of the government ministries," Bolani said. When they are, "they've turned out to be mostly from the FPS, with very few individual, actual incidents involving anyone from the Ministry of Interior or Ministry of Defense."
washingtonpost. com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/13/AR2006
101301447.html


"Twenty-seven of thirty-one ministries of the Iraqi government have their own paramilitary forces, generically designated the Facilities Protection Services. They constitute approximately 150,000 personnel under arms. The Facilities Protection Services has a reputation for gross misconduct. Indeed, according to the Prime Minister’s remarks to Senator Biden and me, they have in numerous cases caused more mayhem then the insurgents."

-Senator Jack Reed after his 8th visit to Iraq
http://reed. senate. gov/news/defense/rel%20Iraq%20Speech%20AS%20P
repared%2007-31-06.cfm


"The police are in the most urgent need of reform. Sectarian forces riddle their ranks. The facilities protection service – 140,000 individuals assigned to specific ministries – is heavily involved in sectarian violence."
-Senator Joseph Biden Jr.
http://biden. senate. gov/newsroom/details. cfm?id=263406&


The FPS was created by Paul Bremer,

"The establishment of the ‘Facilities Protection Service’ was on 04.10.03, according to Paul Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority Order Number 27 (see appendix one).

This document says that “The FPS may also consist of employees of private security firms who are engaged to perform services for the ministries or governorates through contracts, provided such private security firms and employees are licensed and authorized by the Ministry of Interior as provided in Section 7 herein.”
http://www. brusselstribunal. org/SecurityCompanies. htm

So we have a massive army, rivaling U.S. forces, created by the occupation forces, using private security mercenaries, that has been implicated several times as the source of the death-squads and so-called 'sectarian violence'. This, combined with our brutal bombing and use of force, is the real reason behind these huge death statistics. We are targeting the civilian population.

THE?SE ARE? THE? WOR?DS TO ZAC?K’S? SPE?ACH?: (RA?TM)?

“A goo?d fri?end? of our?s sai?d tha?t if the? sam?e law?s wer?e app?lie?d to U.S?. Pre?sid?ent?s as wer?e app?lie?d to the? Naz?i’s? aft?er Wor?ld War? II,? the?n eve?ry sin?gle? one? of ‘em?, eve?ry las?t ric?h whi?te one? of ‘em? fro?m Tru?man? on wou?ld hav?e bee?n hun?g to dea?th,? and? sho?t. And? thi?s cur?ren?t adm?ini?str?ati?on is no exc?ept?ion?. The?y sho?uld? be hun?g, and? tri?ed,? and? sho?t. As any? war? cri?min?al sho?uld? be.? But? the? cha?lle?nge?s tha?t we fac?e, the?y go way? bey?ond? adm?ini?str?ati?ons?. Way? bey?ond? ele?cti?ons?. Way? Bey?ond? eve?ry fou?r yea?rs of pul?lin?g lev?ers?. Way? bey?ond? tha?t, bec?aus?e thi?s who?le rot?ten? sys?tem? has? bec?ome? so vic?iou?s and? cru?el,? tha?t in ord?er to sus?tai?n its?elf?, it nee?ds to des?tro?y ent?ire? cou?ntr?ies?, and? pro?fit? fro?m the?ir rec?ons?tru?cti?on,? in ord?er to sur?viv?e, and? tha?t’s? not? a sys?tem? tha?t cha?nge?s eve?ry fou?r yea?rs,? it’?s a sys?tem? tha?t we hav?e to bre?ak dow?n gen?era?tio?n aft?er gen?era?tio?n aft?er gen?era?tio?n aft?er gen?era?tio?n aft?er gen?era?tio?n. Wak?e up.?”

This guy is a moron who has no idea what the game is even about.  The game has nothing to do with Iraq.  It take splace in a fictional Middle East country as well as parts of Russia.  You spend most of the game fighting Russian pro-communist terrorists.  Maybe this guy should get the facts before striking the game down.  Besides, what is wrong with killing terrorists?  The more terrorists that die, the better.  i'd much rather it be them than us.