Much like every other year in gaming ever, 2010 was stuffed full of controversies. Video games and sanctimonious public outrage just go together like peanut butter and bacon.
The Taliban in Medal of Honor
They can look like the Taliban, they can sound like the Taliban, they can smell like the Taliban (presumably) – but you can’t actually call them the Taliban, or a bunch of people will throw a weapons-grade apoplexy all over the tabloids. Which is pretty much exactly what happened when EA announced that the Taliban would be a playable faction in Medal of Honor’s multiplayer.
“Most of us having been doing this since we were 7 – if someone’s the cop, someone’s gotta be the robber, someone’s gotta be the pirate and someone’s gotta be the alien,” said Amanda Taggart, senior PR manager for EA. “In Medal of Honor multiplayer, someone’s gotta be the Taliban.”
After the US military pre-emptively banned the sale of the game on their premises worldwide, EA capitulated and renamed the Taliban to the “Opposing Forces.” They still look like the Taliban, they still sound like the Taliban, they still smell like the Taliban (presumably) – but they’re not actually the Taliban because they’re actually the Opposing Forces. Actually.
Hilariously enough, nobody seemed to care that the rest of the game was a load of shamelessly revolting ‘GO GO TEAM AMERICA’ jingoist propaganda for the war in Afghanistan. Apparently “offensive” is relative.
Blizzard’s Real ID proposal
Unless you’ve just arrived on the internet for the first time ever, you probably have already realised that the inherent anonymity of online users tends to invest some of them with a sort of supercharged ego. Basically, the internet is a giant bag of ****s.
In a sincere – if somewhat naive – effort to “promote constructive conversations” and preclude “flame wars, trolling, and other unpleasantness,” Blizzard attempted to introduce a “Real ID” system on their official forums, requiring users to register under their real names.
Predictably enough, the planet went supernova. In between posting compromising pictures of themselves and their exes on Facebook, users screeched about invasions of personal privacy and security concerns, eventually persuading Blizzard to drop the idea altogether.
Infinity Wardgate
In March 2010, Infinity Ward’s Frank Zampella and Jason West were dismissed for unspecified “breaches of contract and insubordination.” Then, half the development company walked out right behind them.
The following weeks and months were a dizzy series of ‘he-said, she-said, they-said,’ amid a hurly-burly of litigation filings, accusations, rumours and speculation’ and public slagging off between Activision and Infinity Ward’s former employees.
According to Activision, Zampella and West had been plotting a corporate defection to EA. According to Zampella and West, Activision hadn’t paid them any royalties for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. According to everybody else, it was all exceedingly boring.
Foreign correspondent edition: Cuba hates on Call of Duty: Black Ops
Just when Treyarch thought they’d managed to put out a Call of Duty game with zero scandal, the Cuban government decided to weigh in with accusations that the game was turning American kids into murderers.
“What the United States couldn’t accomplish in more than 50 years, they are now trying to do virtually,” an article on the government-operated website cubadebate said, referring to the alleged 638 CIA attempts on Fidel Castro’s life. “This new video game is doubly perverse. On the one hand, it glorifies the illegal assassination attempts the United States government planned against the Cuban leader…and on the other, it stimulates sociopathic attitudes in North American children and adolescents.”
Oh, Cuba. It was going so well until the bit about “sociopathic attitudes.” That’s so 2006.
Fox News Award for Journalistic Integrity: GTA: Rothbury
On 3 July 2010, a guy named Raoul Moat went on a shotgun spree in Rothbury, Nothumberland in England. After shooting his ex, her new boyfriend, and a cop, Moat fled the scene, prompting a six-day manhunt operation. Eventually caught out in the open, Moat shot and killed himself.
Sometime later, a rather poorly Photoshopped image of a hypothetical “GTA: Rothbury” turned up on the internet. Of course, it might have been a rather poorly Photoshopped image, but that didn’t stop UK tabloid The Daily Star from running a lurid exposé, claiming that “Grand Theft Auto Rothbury – a version of the XBox hit Grand Theft Auto” was totally real. You know, on the basis of a single rather poorly Photoshopped image. The article was quickly yanked from the site when readers pointed out that, well, it was just a rather poorly Photoshopped image.
Undaunted by reality, the writer responsible for this egregious bit of garbage responded to critics with a pious Facebook rant, saying he was “baffled by the fury of adult gamers! These are grown (?!?) men who sit around all day playing computer games with one another who’ve today chosen to enter the real world just long enough to complain about my story slamming a Raoul Moat version of Grand Theft Auto! You would think I’d denied the Holocaust!!! Think I’ll challenge them to a virtual reality duel….stab….I win!!!”
He didn’t, though. Rockstar deployed their lawyers, and The Daily Star was forced to publish a humiliating front-page retraction.
“We made no attempt to check the accuracy of the story before publication and did not contact Rockstar Games prior to publishing the story. We also did not question why a best selling and critically acclaimed fictional games series would choose to base one of their most popular games on this horrifying real crime event.”
Discuss 2010’s biggest video gaming controversies on the MyGaming forum.
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