Gaming & Terrorism

The truth is, there are a bunch of slf rightous nuts out there that want to censor everything so all entertainment will be acceptable for preteens and nothing offends anyone. Looks like they much have to wind with them this time. :(

im surprised the clancy book that inspired that forcasts this event hasnt been yanked off the shelf...

No one's going to want to hear this, but... computer gaming, especially the "I gots more testosterone than you gots" action type, is looking really sad in light of the events of 9/11. Not because it makes people violent or whatever (it doesn't), but because it's a fake adrenaline rush for people living in a soft, cushy, peacetime society, to make them feel like they're not just wasting time. Now that real life has suddenly gotten real, real serious, the idea of sitting around shooting bad guys and monsters on a computer is exposed as being not only pathetic, but part of the whole entertainment colossus that people were jerking off with while *real* bad guys were sneaking in and preparing to kick our asses. If you want a thrill, if you want macho action, hey, now all you have to do is enroll in the armed forces and go to Afghanistan. Anything short of that is basically "fiddling while Rome burns." ok, we return you to your regularly scheduled discussion of how important it is to have played all the latest releases... sorry for the interruption...

* THIS GAME INCLUDES CONTENT THAT PORTRAYS VIOLENCE, ACTS OF TERRORISM, AND DELIBERATE DESTRUCTION. *

Educate through warning labels, pictures and other packaging disclaimers.

Thanks!

-Lex

Personally I feel that games have prepared me for the coming nuclear apocalypse, when the remnants of humanity will hide in vaults while gangs of mutants and raiders roam the wasteland.

I think it's fair to delay "topical" games, such as ones heavily focused on terrorism and/or plane crash simulators for a month or two, until people are less stressed out by this (as it has had a very wide effect across the first world).

But obviously games shouldn't be cancelled or altered - many games have representations of events that would be terrible in the real world. Should violent driving games be cancelled so not to offend the relatives of the thousands of people who die in traffic accidents?? Should WW2 games be cancelled so not to offend veterans of that war?? &Etc.

In my oppinion pulling all games containing refrence to the WTC, Pentagon or terrorisme in general, would be letting them win. Why should the world change its normal behavior because of terrorisme. The people who should change their ways are those practising or supporting terrorisme, and if they won't (which they obviously won't) we should help them change. I think the best way to change terrorists would be changing them from being alive, to being dead. Harsh but fair.

remove nothing, censor nothing. america is already watered down enough as it is. Remember, games dont kill people, osama kills people.

The NPR Story is on right now. Turn on your radio!

I'll save you guys from a long speech.

This is America.

that is all.

I personally don't see what the big fucking deal is. If it'll traumatize you to see that stuff in a game, don't play the game. If it'll traumatize you to see it in a movie, don't go see movies.

People with deathly fears of dogs don't stop the rest of us from owning dogs. People who have been raped don't get rape and violence removed from movies. The Christian right doesn't get cursing and "evil stuff" removed from movies. The original WTC bombing didn't get terrorism taken out of games.

In fact, 99% of the time when you encounter such material in a game, you know what happens? THE GAME SCREAMS OUT AGAINST IT. You're the guy trying to thwart the bad guys. Anyone who's gonna be that affected by it needs to save the money they'd spend on the game and spend it on a shrink to fix their head so I can buy my games UNALTERED and playable the way the designer intended it to be. Of course, what do I know, I'm still confused why over 6000 Americans had to die for us to finally get pissed enough about terrorists to do something about them. We had two warnings before and nobody listened...

I think that if a game in developement involved terrorism related things at WTC they might want to rework that to happen at a differnt location, because thats just a shitstorm we dont need. but other than that i think its silly to take out anything related to planes or terrorism or WTC. I understand some people might be ofeended or hurt by some games, some people already were before 9/11, and i feel sorry for them. but I dont want them ruining fun for the rest of us because games dont really do any harm.

one thing that people have to remember (especially people who live in other parts of the country that have yet to be affected by terrorism. yet being the key word.) is that this event is going to change the world.

here in new york, we've already seen the good side of humanity in the face of the bad. people have really come together to help each other get through this nightmare. i no longer walk down the street and get frustrated with people who bump into me. they're people, too, and they're going through this with me and every other new yorker. i'm sure we'll start to see this me-oriented attitude present in current american culture start to change into a more humanitarian philosophy. we'll come together as a people and become stronger.

if a developer feels that they should change an aspect of their game in order to help people cope with the recent terrorist attacks, then they should by all means do it. we all need to do whatever we can to help people deal with this, but we also need to help them move on with their lives. i for one don't mind a few delays and modifications in order to help someone in jersey city who lost their husband in the collapse of the WTC.

Let's be realistic, people.

I live in New York City. Seeing these events on the 11th turned my stomach, especially since at the time I was in Turkey (7 hours ahead). I couldn't eat that evening, I couldn't sleep that night. I could not stop watching the news, almost like a bad recurring nightmare, haunting me over and over again, night after night. But it took a few days to realize it was no nightmare.

If we start to censor everything in sight, we're never going to get out of this. Yank out the twin towers out of games out of respect? Okay, maybe the new/upcoming games. Avoid the CS map involving hijacked planes? Counter-strike was meant to be as realistic as possible to begin with. Need I remind people that you can also play the "good guys" in that game. Are we supposed to yank out de_vegas if there was ever a killing spree to occur there, or a bomb to explode?

I realize respect is a very important thing, but life has to go on. The Taliban have destroyed television, radios. They censor newspaper and forbid music, video games, kites. People in Afghanistan cannot live. My mother, who works at the United Nations, says she has a friend that's been through it all - Kuwait at its darkest hour, Albania - the poorest country in the world, and yet she says that the worst place she's ever been to was Afghanistan because the people there never smile. She did not hear a single laugh in the two weeks she stayed there. Must it come down to this? America censoring everything in sight because it's "wrong"? What do you think the Taliban's argument for censoring is?

I have not personally lost any friends or family in the nightmare of 9/11, but I did have some friends who were living really near by and saw everything happen with their own eyes. People falling out of windows and literally exploding when they hit the ground. Debris making people bleed all over the place. Widespread panic, and total confusion as to where one was to go, knowing that any building might collapse on them. A traumatic experience that they probably will never completely get over.

But whatever happens, lots of things will remind these people of that day. For one, the media plays those video clips over and over again, as if they had suddenly realized they get higher ratings from it than their cheesy soaps. Pictures of explosions, the towers burning, and bin Laden are draping the newsstands. Pictures of people missing can be found all over New York City, on bus stops, phone booths, firefighter caserns.

The line has to be drawn. Let the developers write a message on game boxes, manuals, and even better, accessible from the game menu to indicate that they are deeply sadened from the events that took place, and in no way attempted to reproduce those events or any that might resemble them. Let them explain what it is they wanted to accomplish in doing the game. But don't take away months, and probably years, of hard work and investment on the part of game teams because "it's wrong." It would be a sad day if we were to take away freedom of expression.

I know what counter-strike has taught us about terrorism, the way to win the war is to use wallhacks and aimbots!

In fact, it'll work for the counter-terrorists too.

Shit, thanks VULVA, for making CS 1.3 a dissapointing experience. It now, for whatever reason, takes me 2x longer to load a level on connecting to a server.

God bless feature-bloat and lazy programming. Just cram some more of those Olestra chips in your fat mouths.

Reasonable way for the gaming industry to react: Don't make any game where the objective is to destroy (especially through flight) a very high skyscraper!

Don't know if this is on topic, but I honestly believe that 5-10 years of gaming intensely have assisted my aims with automatic weapons at least 10%.

Does it take a tragedy at as specific location for you to even warrant considering if games should feature violence? Is is location specific for you? Violence is violence, regardless of the location. To question this in gaming now is hypocritical.

I think it would be just swell if I could choose what games I play, and not have someone else do it for me. Game developers were never supposed to be babysitters, so if their ideas offend you or you feel they're not suitable for your children to play... don't play them. Americans kill 20,000 other Americans every year. These deaths result from shootings, stabbings, bludgeonings, being set on fire, bombs, poison, etc., my point being that WE killed three times the number of Americans as ALL terrorist activities COMBINED. Fact: The WTC was destroyed and thousands perished. To me it would seem that emulating real world events in a video game is more tasteful than hypothetical schoolyard massacres, etc.

Consider me "Against Censorship"

Games don't cause violence on this level, it's wacked out religions that do, or people who pervert religion to their own ends that do. I think it's probably appropriate to ease off on content related to terrorism for a while, but then the 8 or 9 counterstrike clones that are being worked on are going to be in trouble. On the other hand, blockbuster rentals of movies like True Lies and Die hard jumped 50% right after it happened. I guess people wanted to watch terrorists get shot to bits by the good guys. And who wouldn't. :) But I think it's proabably good to ease back a bit on some of the content for a while. Gimme more games where I'm shooting aliens and robots. Shooting people is boooooring after a while.

Hmm, what about www.globalopsgame.com ?

Here's my opinion:

The only thing gaming shouldn't do is release a game that involves a planes crashing into the WTC or the Pentagon. That's about it.

And even that, down the road, will be acceptable. Led Zeppelin released his album I with the Hindenburg falling to it's doom. If that came out anywhere near the timetable of the incident, it would've been bombarded with negativity and most likely never would've been put out.

In 50 years this is going to be another one of those things--a big thing, granted, but was the Titanic not big? Pearl Harbor?--we'll see movies about it, etc.

This isn't the end of the world I don't think, and shouldn't be treated like such in any entertainment industry.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go watch Independence Day.

i think computer games should be thought of more like a game, not a way to kill people in a vitual world. there was violence before computer games when kids played cow boys and indians... i think the movies are more responsible if anything as they show events like this happening realisitically on screen.

i dont think computer games should change much but ones that have direct reference to the WTC should be.

heh, you can't just rework games like that....
its LOL!
The new Swartzenegger movie gets canned and tons of concerts in europe gets canned... Everything gets canned because of that mohammed yalla lamer...
%#?=%?!#?%?!"#!"%=!")3`§!#(¤!§¤
I say:
% rm -f /bin/laden

The game industry just needs to redirect all the negative stuff about games into a positive thing. Put a big banner on the front of the CS box saying LEARN TO FIGHT TERRORISTS!!! and watch the sales soar. If someone then says "but you can't really learn to fight terrorists from a game" then you can ask them why they think a kid can learn to kill other kids from a game ala Columbine.

During the 60's to the 80's there was a real threat of nuclear missles being thrown around.

This hasn't stopped violence in games/entertainment. Don't thing this will either. If anything, it will become "edgy" to address it.

I don't see why everything should change because of what happened last month. Hell, the industry has never changed before for disasters which include loss of life, why should it now? Yes, I agree that references to the WTC in games should be taken out, i.e Metal Gear Solid 2, but is it really necessary to remove anything that could bring back memories for game players? In July 1996, my high school lost 20+ people to one of the most public plane crashed in american history, and in over 5 years since that day, I have yet to see any references to plane crashes in video games, or for that matter movies, television, or the like, dulled down or taken out because of it. I'm not bitching and saying they should have, but wouldn't the families of the over 200 people who died in that crash feel the same way as the families of those lost in NYC and DC? IMO, don't change the industry because of this, that only further proves the point that the terrorists won.

IMHO, Games have made us a little more prepared for a coming war that will be in our streets and homes and schools, rather than on TV and in the newspapers. I'm not saying that we can be or do the things that we have in games, but it's a bit more familiar to us. We know the weapons, we know the lingo, and I think we'd be both more comfortable and more willing to take up arms in defense of ourselves, our friends and families, and our contry than those that feel games are too violent.

Games are very violent, and I think that we, as gamers, have become more jaded and callous because of it. But it is a violent and jaded and callous world that we live in, and those of us who have already cut our teeth on the rotten.com and stileproject shit won't be hit as hard by what's coming.

All through school family and teachers told us that our generation, our age was going to see the world change, and to a kid, that didn't mean anything, but now, with what has happened, and what is happening, I look back on that and realize that they're right. It's a new world we're heading in to, and I think there's a lot of people who won't be able to deal with it.

I don't think many of those people will be gamers.

for that jet in the survivor map, maybe you could just put a big FedEx or UPS thing on it, denoting it was a freight plane that got taken down... passenger jets mean only one thing if they're down, dead people... then, if you really wanted to save human life, put used parachutes (like 4, for the freight-plane crew) to signify everyone landed ok...

has anyone heard else about the possibility that metal gear solid 2 would be delayed?
heard rumors about this a couple weeks ago

Well, we don't have to ban games but I think a immediate short term reponse on behalf of the game industy to not portray anything that just happened in Games is fine. If you remember, this happened after the Columbine tragedy. Almost all fps tactical mods/games had mappers immediately start to crank out maps of schools, and almost all of them were not released due to the bad taste of doing so.

I know for a fact that Red Storm has already decided to change a product after the Sept. 11 incident. Black Thorne's first mission is being completely redone to remove any similarites with recent events. I don't see anything wrong with this. It's simply being sensitive to the global situation.

There may be other games that do the same but I'm not aware of them. I haven't heard anything about Global Ops missions that might parallel recent events.

Events like this are very delicate to game companies and mods that focus on Terrorism and semi-realistic events as their primary game medium. The great thing is, you get to play the "good" guys too.

I personally look forward to games where you stealthly insert into a desert enviroment to retrieve/elimiate a world renouned terrorist.

On NPR's All Things Considered tonight, they're doing a story on this very topic.

I think that people are trying to do *something* in response to the events, no matter if it was something as lame as editing the game. I guess I might feel different if I had lost someone, but I feel as if all these people running around to change the games, well that they're giving in to the terrorists. So I wish that they wouldn't change stuff. Life as normal should go on.

I'm totally against censorship in games but I would agree with Steve that it might make me feel differently if I had lost a friend or family member in the attacks (why do people keep calling them "bombings"? Nothing was "bombed" they were attacks). It's easy to sit here and complain about someone taking the NYC skyline out of a particular game, but what difference does it make if they do? It's still the same game so who cares if they remove the crashed airliner or the WTC towers. So it takes a bit longer for MGS2 to be released. We've waited this long it won't kill us to wait a bit longer.

It's not being overly sensitive, it's just a matter of good taste.

I see gamer mappers going the route of adding more desert missions to favor Afghan combat situations.

Does anyone suppose there are some survivors from the Pearl Harbor invasion that take offense to games like Combat Flight Sim II, or those "Pearl Harbor" series of games that came out when the movie did? People are always hyper-sensitive about this kind of stuff for a while, but it eventually passes. In this situation, you can't possibly BAN people from seeing another plane again, or the NYC skyline, or an Arab terrorist....life should just go on.

think of all the people who get rabies from rabbits? like, omg.. no more games with rabbits you know? the horror... and I know someone eaten by dahmer.. so no more movies about Hanibal the Canibal... and JFK was assassinated and I am still not over it.. so no more books, movies, or games about assassination... and a friend of mine recently died in a motorcycle accident (that one is actually true) so no more games about motorcycles... and.. and...

Eventually we just won't be able to play games, cause we'll all be sobbing trying to deal with the misery...

or no. Life goes on. In about 6 months "terrorism" in movies, books, and games won't matter anymore, it'll all be back to normal.. unless the terrorism keeps happening (like a lot of us are expecting).

--Loco3KGT