Modern Warfare 2: Outrage Edition



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Infinity Ward is going to come under heavy fire – no pun intended – for the latest Modern Warfare 2 revelations.

In case you missed it, a video that leaked yesterday showed what appears to be the opening to what is likely the biggest game of the year. An opening in which, without context, the player takes control of a terrorist and mows down civilians in an airport.

We've since had clarification, thankfully. Activision has helpfully pointed out that not only will the segment in question be skippable, but the context appears to be that the player is undercover and attempting to get close to the terrorist cell. Perhaps the most important thing, though, is the comment that “The scene establishes the depth of evil and cold bloodedness of a rogue Russian villain and his unit. By establishing that evil, it adds to the urgency of the player's mission to stop him.”

Good.

For all the flak Infinity Ward is going to get, and for all the outrage I'm certain there will be, I'm honestly glad this risk has been taken. Not so much the fact that it will apparently add to the urgency, but that it's something in a game that's going to evoke a response, and that's far too rare.

When a game usually comes under fire from the moral outrage brigade, it's semi-deliberate – Carmageddon, Grand Theft Auto, and Postal 2 all took things to cartoonish extremes, which prevented them from being taken seriously. The most recent outrage I can think of that happened for a reason other than tabloid-baiting is the attempted rape scene in Heavy Rain, but even that differs from this. While some may consider an interactive scene in which the player has to try not to be raped or murdered distasteful – or uncomfortable, which, again, I feel can be a good reaction - the player is still the victim. In Modern Warfare 2, if what we've seen and heard is accurate, the player is the killer. It's the player that marches into the airport and opens fire on the defenceless innocents with a machine gun, not the character in a cutscene. We are complicit in the character's actions.

Again: good.

Every other medium has ways of causing emotional response, and maybe I'm getting old and jaded but I don't just want games in which I'm the badass marine with a bullet for every enemy and the improbable ability to heal grenade shrapnel by ducking behind cover for a few seconds. I want games that will have the same impact as films, books, and even music. I want games to make me feel empty and hollow, or outraged at injustice. I want them to make me feel truly happy, or truly sad. I want them to make me feel something other than the general excitement and wow-factor at blowing off another alien's head with a well-placed shotgun burst.

And it actually does sadden me, because the interactive nature of games means that they're uniquely placed to make us feel personally attached to what's going on, and too few do it. No game has yet made me feel overwhelming disgust at something paralleled in the real world, nor has any made me personally understand any real sort of atrocity, as flippant as it might sound that I want some degree of understanding.

I think that all of this comes down to the one of the many, many stigmas of games, which I will come back to again and again: they're an entertainment product, and they're seen that way. I don't think that anyone would dare claim that films are purely “entertainment” any more – at least, not if they've seen Requiem for a Dream, or City of God, or Schindler's List, or thousands of other films – but games are, well, games. They have set win/loss conditions, and an overarching “good” goal. They're things that kids play when they've done their homework, or that you maybe put on for an hour or two with your mates when you come back from the pub.

But it doesn't have to be this way, and maybe all the tears and all the screaming that this section of Modern Warfare 2 could cause – depending entirely on how it's handled - will wake a few more people up to this. For that, Infinity Ward, I salute you.