Obviously EA and DICE are feeling a bit invisible or something with Activision and Treyarch’s Call of Duty: Black Ops hogging all the headlines from their upcoming Medal of Honor reboot, so they decided to let people play as the Taliban in the game’s multiplayer. Who needs a marketing budget when you’ve got Fox News?

Asked whether players might feel uncomfortable about it in the latest issue of PSM3 mag, project producer Patrick Liu conceded “a fair point”, adding that, “We do stir up some feelings, although it’s not about the war, it’s about the soldiers. We can’t get away from what the setting is and who the factions are, but in the end, it’s a game, so we’re not pushing or provoking too hard.”

So presumably no dragging women out into the street and stoning them for going to school are working a job or having the disgraceful audacity to get raped then. So much for realism.

I think my favourite bit of this is that, when some disgruntled Counter-Strike player goes on a homicidal rampage, outraged gamers are quick to point out that “GAMES ARE JUST GAMES”. But when the game has pretend-Taliban shooting pretend-Marines, it’s suddenly something so much more significant. 

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