So, word got out today that “Medal of Honor” has caved to the pressure to rename the playable Taliban characters in the multiplayer mode. Can I be frank with you here? I’m disappointed. Not because I thought putting the Taliban in the game was okay, mind you, but because of what that action implies about the status of video games in our culture. I’m continually frustrated by how little respect the outside world thinks we deserve, and how poorly they mask their contempt for who we are and what we believe. It was incredibly poor taste for Electronic Arts to do what they did, but art has the right to be in poor taste. At some point, someone is going to have to make a stand for being an insensitive jerk.
Another case in point: Bioware. The original “Mass Effect” contained a tastefully rendered sex scene. It wasn’t a Hot Coffee mini-games or explicit humping, just a little bare skin on top of more bare skin; racier things air during commercials for “True Blood.” But then Fox News got wind of it, and decided that a game which explicitly states its intention of being played by 17 year olds was out to destroy our swaddling babes. They painted this elegant, sophisticated game about sacrifice and heroism as dolled up, virtual voyeurism. Of course, they’d never actually seen the game they were talking about in action, and many of them dropped the case when they finally got around to it. The issue evaporated, and Bioware won.
Except then “Mass Effect 2” went all soft on us, over-sanitizing the “sex scene” until it was a dry-hump fest without an ounce of real emotional impact. The message was clear: we don’t feel like going through this again. I’ve long been a critic of sex scenes, I think they’re stupid and pointless, but nothing irks me more than knowing that Bioware probably wanted to put a sex scene but decided it wasn’t worth the trouble they’d get into. Someone told them they weren’t an art form, and they’re starting to believe it.
Electronic Arts is now doing the same thing. Yes, it’s offensive and stupid to put the Taliban in “Medal of Honor” as playable characters. But offensive and stupid is absolutely precious in America, because it’s how we know we’re still free. My civics teacher used to say that unpopular free speech is the most important free speech, and never is that more true here. We’ve got legislation going to the Supreme Court that wants to treat video games like some kind of psychological contaminant, and we’ve got media focus groups that Banhammer (if I can use a Bungie expression) any game that pushes their delicate buttons. And just because it’s not Orwellian censorship, just because Big Brother isn’t hiding in the bushes, everyone thinks our First Amendment rights aren’t being violated.
And what’s this crap about corrupting our youth? When I was growing up, if my parents didn’t want me to see a movie, I didn’t see it, period. When I was eight, my mother saw me reading “A Time to Kill” and took it right out of my hands, knowing there was a horrific rape scene in the beginning. My father bought me “Turok: Dinosaur Hunter” for my birthday one year, but when he saw the actual game play he took it right back. I was angry at the time, but he was doing his job. It’s called paying attention to your children.
Put the Taliban back in, EA. Not because it’s a nice or considerate thing to do, but precisely because it isn’t. I’m sick and tired of eating scraps from the table of the so-called “real” art forms. And it’s not enough that no one can arrest me anymore, I’m not talking about the law. I want the people of this country to finally admit that we are a community of artists and clients. I want the respect we deserve, and I’m willing to make things very ugly until we get it.
