Warning: The following news piece may contain Modern Warfare 3 spoilers, developers blaming the media for stirring up controversy and dead children.
If you played Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, you undoubtedly remember the “No Russian” mission. Immediately following the game’s launch there was a firestorm of controversy stemming from the segment, which saw your character going undercover with a group of terrorists and shooting up an airport full of unarmed civilians.
This morning, a video appeared on YouTube documenting a section of the upcoming Modern Warfare 3 that has been widely dubbed the sequel’s equivalent of the “No Russian” mission. While the clip has since been removed from the video sharing site, CVG has an apt description:
The section in question features a family of tourists in London on a daytrip to see Big Ben. A cutscene in which the player cannot intervene shows a father taking a movie of his daughter and the girl’s mother when a truck pulls up and explodes beside them, blowing them to bits and releasing some sort of toxic gas.
Controversy immediately began to ripple throughout the ‘net, and in a few short hours, it attracted the attention of Infinity Ward executive producer Mark Rubin, who downplayed the hysteria.
“… for the most part what happens is a lot of media outlets play it up, and it goes on some Friday afternoon, Friday night news thing, and they talk about how horrible it is that they’re killing people in the middle of our subway, but it’s the cricket after that, and no-one cares,” Rubin told OXM.
“The media a lot of times plays on it because they hope to get something out of it, rile somebody up to start a conversation about it, but everybody kind of stares at them just going: ‘Next … oh, that’s an interesting story.’ And they pass right over it.”
As part of that media Mr. Rubin mentioned I’ve obviously got a bias toward myself, so let’s address the other point he makes: This kind of in-game event, with it’s dead children and overt terrorism, is this a big deal for you, the gamer? Are you appalled? Are you apathetic? Are the more sociopathic of you actively excited by this?
In short, is anyone interested in making this a controversy?
Source: OXM
Published: Nov 4, 2011 07:19 pm