In the wake of controversy around the terrorist mission in Activision’s Modern Warfare 2 and its record-breaking launch, a pair of articles in FastCompany and Washington Times have put the spotlight back on the issue of game violence.
Writing for FastCompany, Cliff Kuang focuses on the controversial mission that puts games in the shoes of a terrorist gunning down civilians at an airport. He cites the scene as the particular source of trouble surrounding the game, and he questions the positioning by Activision and the game’s developer Infinity Ward that a moral dilemma is the context for the sequence. Kuang quotes Brad Rice from game site Destructoid, who has penned his own piece deriding the scene. Rice labeled the level of violence in the game as bordering on snuff. Kuang sees some of the pushback rooted in the game s realism, where characters that look and act more humanlike than ever before are blurring the line between virtual and real. In the end he implies that the interactive and now ever more immersive experience in games might be making it harder to justify violent game content by comparing it to what people see in films. Read Cliff Kuang’s editorial at FastCompany.
Writing for a less game savvy audience in Washington Times, child advocate Mary Hicks sums up her stance in her article s headline, Reject violent video games. Hicks draws a paradox from the proximity between the Fort Hood shooting and the launch of Modern Warfare 2. She says the link between fictional violence and violent behavior is proven, citing a book by Northern Illinois University professor Mary Larson that found of 3,500 studies on the relationship only 18 failed to connect the two. Hicks sees American children surrounded by a cocktail of entertainment violence, the worst of which she believes are video games. Read a Mary Hick s editorial at Washington Times.
