Is MW3 sanitizing war??

[mad_mick]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuzaxlddWbk

So here is the offending clip. D.B. Grady, a former U.S. Army Special Operations Command paratrooper and veteran of operations in Afghanistan, has described how the commercial is "hideous," "a new low," and "trivializes combat and sanitizes war to an extreme."

Writing in The Atlantic, Grady says that, "If this were September 10, 2001, maybe it wouldn't be quite so bad... after ten years of constant war, of thousands of amputees and flag-draped coffins, of hundreds of grief-stricken communities, did nobody involved in this commercial raise a hand and say, "You know, this is probably a little crass. Maybe we could just show footage from the game."

I can see were the man is coming from but is his argument valid? Does this offend you? I can remember films, games, trailers and other mediums that have glorified war to a far worse extent than this. I'm on the fence on this one.

Your thoughts?

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

1. The "battle" in the video isn't supposed to represent real war, but the "in real life" equivalent of a match in MW3. It's not glorifying real war so much as it attempts to make players feel like they can do what their avatars on screen are doing.

2. SmashLovesTitanQuest makes a good point. I've seen recruitment commercials for the marines which weren't much tamer than the commercial in question. The military really doesn't get to speak out against "trivializing combat" when their own recruitment ads are so completely bullshit.

 

[NoMansLand 666]

a) He went for MW3 to generate traffic. There are instances out there, some by the armed services of certain countries, that do this much more distastefully.

b) Really? Dragging 9/11 into this to moan about a video game trailer? That's more offensive to me than the trailer itself. It was 10 years ago, let them rest in piece for fuck sake.

c) What is it about certain members of the armed services, no matter what your country, that makes them feel like they are spokesmen on the boundaries of morals, good taste etc. I've seen people I know do this crap on Facebook.

d) He really lost me when he moans about MW3 glorifying war, then glorifies a dead soldier by dedicating most of the article to telling the story. If I were to die tomorrow and the long term legacy of my death was the tale of it being used to slag off a game trailer I would endeavour to haunt the living shit out of the person responsible.

 

[getofish]

He's just pissing and moaning for the sake of.
Dont you dare try to make me sit through 4 years of WW2 study in highschool (i feel like i saw every jew die twice) and then after seeing all of the photos we were shown in school and then try to tell me that if i want to be like that kid from super bad i am no longer seeing the harsh reality of war.
doing it just for the sake of traffic, and probably had something in his side already that was pissing him off.

 

[Gorilla Gunk]

Anybody remember that Marines recruitment ad that was almost literally like a video game? Where the Marine had to avoid a bunch of traps and then at the end faced this big fiery demon with a sword?

Maybe somebody should have shown this guy that commercial.

 

[almostgold]

My thoughts are he should shut the fuck up. After years of being bombarded by commercials and newsletters trying to convince me to join the army, all of them glorifying and playing down war worse than any movie I have ever seen or any game I have ever played, this just seems silly.

Fuck off Grady, you stupid ****. Go fuck yourself. Asshole.

How dare Grady personally create, approve, and distribute all of those recruitment ads for every branch of the military himself. He definitely deserves to be called a ****. A

For example, a non-cuntish thing for a Special Forces soldier to do would be to be completely aware of the hellish nature of war and its effects on both communities and soldiers, make a statement expressing the seriousness of war and chastising a company for glossing over that for profit, all while serving to protect others despite his first-hand knowledge on the nature war. To band the asshole never did any of those things.

Yeah.

 

[Zhukov]

The following is a US marine corps recruitment advertisement.



Enough said.

 

[Nouw]

Has there ever been an accurate depiction of war in a videogame? Hmmm...