Editorial: EA should stick with ‘The Sims’

Things were simple in the days of The Sims.

Controversies were few and limited to the… Things were simple in the days of The Sims.

Controversies were few and limited to the occasional affair, child abduction by aliens or a Grim Reaper appearance.

But now, with Electronic Arts’ new Medal of Honor first-person shooter, everything’s a bit more complicated.

Set to release this month, the game is “set in the midst of the bloody conflict in Afghanistan [and] is as realistic as it because real Special Operations soldiers from that conflict helped them make it that way,” reports MSNBC.

We see problems already, but few people were apparently bothered by the game until word got out that it featured a multiplayer mode that allowed players to fight or play as the Taliban. According to MSNBC, Electronic Arts opted to remove the Taliban name after hearing from friends and family of soldiers killed by the Taliban.

Other than the removal of the Taliban name, nothing about the game was changed.

In our opinion, a simple name omission doesn’t really change anything.

We fear the game is likely to fuel anti-Muslim sentiment at a particularly vulnerable time — amidst debates on whether or not a mosque should be built at the site of the Sept. 11 attacks.

And although all war games stand to turn war into entertainment, we find problems with Medal of Honor being concurrent with the war it is simulating.

What makes this dangerous is that a lot of people playing it might not understand the context of the game. We’re sure there are plenty of gamers up to date on current events, but we’re also sure there are plenty who aren’t.

The game is also distasteful, disrespectful and inappropriate.

On Fox & Friends, Karen Meredith, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq said, “War is not a game, period. They’ve already done games about World War II but that’s far enough removed. People aren’t dying in World War II anymore … Right now we’re going into a really bad time in Afghanistan, we’ve just come off of the worst month of causalities in the whole year … families who are burying their children are going to be seeing and playing this game. I just don’t see how a video game based on a current war makes any sense at all.”

Video games have always been attacked for being too violent. In November, the Supreme Court will hear a challenge to a California law banning the sale or rental of certain “violent” video games to minors.

Medal of Honor will not only be violent but also authentic to a currently ongoing conflict, according to MSNBC.

And although it could be argued that the game will educate players about the true experience of Special Operations soldiers, when it comes down to it, video games are really just for entertainment and profit.