Play of the Land: Topography and Turn-based Strategy

Here’s a hook about a hook:

War is Fun

Eager to stress test the axiom that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, publisher EA and developer Danger Close have set their reboot of the Medal of Honor series in Afghanistan. Other games have made a backdrop of sand, IEDs, and turbaned tangos, but like a soldier’s letter, the specifics have always been redacted. Medal of Honor is a big-budget, AAA title that explicitly trades on the war in Afghanistan.  This has drawn the ire of soldiers’ families, which has drawn the attention of the mainstream media. This has attracted in turn the attention of gamers, always sensitive to the representation of games in the mainstream. All this attention has lead to Danger Close renaming the Taliban in the multiplayer to “Opposing Force,” which has lead to yet another round of publicity, which adds up to a great deal of attention paid to a Modern Warfare clone. Ian Bogost at Gamasutra took EA to task for this successful PR strategy. He sees the renaming as proof that the game is not fundamentally about Afghanistan; it just uses it for flavor.  In his article he urges game makers to simply “say something.” But today’s video game industry can’t say anything, and not just because of cowardice or a fear of reduced profits: video games, as a medium, can tell us nothing about war.