Screw it: show EA where their money comes from

[HyenaThePirate]

We should now boycott a game and work ourselves into a self-righteous frenzy simply because they chose to NOT officially label the "other team" in team-based multiplayer by a SPECIFIC label? What, is there some sort of intense burning desire to BECOME a member of the Taliban to help along some sort of fantasy of killing U.S. soldiers? Is it really that gratifying of a fantasy?

Thanks, Captain Strawman. You almost made it look like I was trying to force EA to do something entirely new rather than just restoring a work to how its creators intended it to be seen.

As far as the "self-righteous frenzy" goes...sure, you can do that if it tickles your fancy. I'll just be not buying the game. Sure, it doesn't require motor oil, garden shears, and a blonde wig like yours does, but it works for me.

1. Yay! You learned how to take things out of context AND remain completely oblivious to the concept of sarcasm! Good on you.

2. You won't be buying the game? OH nooooes! Well EA is certainly doomed without your $59.99 msrp to help sustain them! Hey, wait a second... that sounds suspiciously like you would be exercising your right to NOT purchase an item. Congratulations, welcome to the free world.

The point being that at the end of the day, the opposite teams are just a means to allow you to differentiate between the enemy team and not putting dozens of rounds into your own teammates. I don't care if you call the team the Westboro Baptist Church Brigrade, as long as they look different enough from the team I'm currently playing on that I won't be trying to figure out who is on my side in a firefight (not that it matters because I've learned that the best action in a confusing situation is to simply kill everything and then say "Sorry" afterwards while looting the corpses.)

Blah, blah, blah, missing the point, as I guessed you would when I started reading your rather hilarious post.

Arrrgh! You got me with the "I won't bother intelligently discussing your difference of opinion, so I'll make a poor attempt at ridiculing it because it doesn't coincide with my own point of view, thus rendering any and all discussion on a thread created to promote discourse entirely moot!" The irony is that while you declare I have missed your point, you entirely IGNORED mine. Good job.

Also, you can't really claim a violation of Freedom of Speech if YOU willingly censor YOURSELF. If you stand around in a KKK hood preaching about how much you hate them colored folks, and then when you find it difficult to obtain employment suddenly decide to throw away your hood and start being friendly to brown people, you can't go around crying that you were FORCED to be nice and are some how being violated. YOU made the decision, therefore there is none to blame for it but yourself.

Oh, look: now no one on Earth can ever claim to have their first amendment rights violated because they can't remove the filters between brain and action. What a delightfully backwards world you live in.

Ground control to major Tom: Here on Earth, in order to claim ANY right has been violated, it requires them to have been VIOLATED. Exactly WHOSE rights have been violated here? EA? The developer? YOURS? Why is it YOUR right? So EA deciding that THEY decided of their OWN volition to NOT include something in a game that received enough negative feedback to warrant such a decision on their part, is a violation of their first amendment rights? Last time I checked, the first amendment might give you the RIGHT to act like a dick, it doesn't mean you HAVE to, or should. They made their decision out of consideration for OTHER people, and the decision has little to NO impact on you or your potential experience with the game itself. Considering you haven't even PLAYED the game yet, how can you possibly condemn their decision? At any rate, you can not claim to be a VICTIM if you do not ACKNOWLEDGE that any VIOLATION or CRIME took place. Exactly which part of that are you having the most difficulty understanding? You can't decide that it would be disrespectful to go picket a soldier's funeral because you disagree with the war and not do it, and then turn around and bemoan that your first amendment rights were violated. Because if anyone violated them, YOU did, by having the misfortune of being born with a CONSCIENCE.

Somewhat related, I have a phrase for you to look up in your fantasy world where you can run screaming obscenities wearing a Klan-emblazoned thong into a crowded intersection: disturbing the peace.

And I, in turn, have a single word for you: IRRELEVANT. As in your entire point was IRRELEVANT. Disturbing the peace has absolutely nothing to do with this situation. In such a case of disturbing the peace, you'd actually HAVE to be doing something that "disturbs the peace." Marching down the street in a Klan outfit screaming about how much you dislike colored people is your RIGHT, and is defendable. The police will dutifully escort you down the STREET to do so. Now if you go onto some guy's PORCH and start screaming such obscenities through his screen door, then you are having a problem. But all of that is IRRELEVANT, because in THIS situation, no one was violated. EA did what any business would do... they looked at the situation, listened to feedback from focus groups (assumably) and made a decision that would be in the BEST interest of their GOAL: To sell games to as wide a market as possible. It's actually the same goal YOU would hope to accomplish with a boycott: To use your power of consumerism to apply adequate pressure on the company to bend to YOUR wishes and make games the way YOU want them, free-markets be damned. Whether or not they really, really wanted to name that team "The Taliban" has no bearing on you, yet you would boycott them for making a decision that was in your opinion forced by others who did NOT want that included in the game. So now they would be caught in an impossible situation: Please the people like YOU who want to force them into expressing their first amendment rights by keeping the name they wanted to change, or please the people who didn't want the name by removing the name of little signifigance to the GAME's quality.

EA isn't the bad guy here. Unfortunately, YOU are.

 

[zombiesinc]

I've been keeping up with this whole debacle, but I honestly couldn't give a fuck about the fact that they gave in and changed the name. Though, I must say, it's quite entertaining to see military stores refusing to sell it still.

I buy a game if I'm interested, and I continue to support it through buying DLC and future titles if I enjoy it. At this point, I just don't care much beyond that. Eh, I may not be helping the problem, or I may even be supporting it, but... eh.

Oh, and I've got two copies on pre-order.

 

[Kurokami]

Since EA's already caved in to pressure from whatever hundreds or thousands that wouldn't have been buying Medal of Honor anyway, why don't we simply assert the obvious leverage that *we* have as the actual gamers?

For US gamers, it's a blatant violation of the first amendment's to be pressuring a group with no legal basis, so the hell with it: don't buy Medal of Honor when it comes out.

EA seems to be forgetting that we're the ones who buy their games, and that we're the ones who ultimately decide whether or not their game will sell millions or a few thousand. So how about it? Why not take a stand here? Or at least some time before the logic if "We're currently waging war on these guys, so they can't be in our video games" inevitable expands. This is a dangerous precedent: let's stop it here.

Jesus christ, will people let this die down already? How about you put a sticker on your TV whenever/wherever it says 'opposing force' that would instead say Taliban or have a friend slap you in the face whenever you read it as anything other than that. Look I wasn't in favor of the change, but why ***** over the fact that they actually thought the people who care about the game would be smart enough to realize it doesn't matter? Maybe they give people too much credit.

Case in point: Wanna boycott EA? Do it because of shitty games or something, not because they changed one insignificant detail in an attempt to avoid being the media's scapegoat. Or... Blame the fucking media and whoever spoke out against it instead.

I've been keeping up with this whole debacle, but I honestly couldn't give a fuck about the fact that they gave in and changed the name. Though, I must say, it's quite entertaining to see military stores refusing to sell it still.

I buy a game if I'm interested, and I continue to support it through buying DLC and future titles if I enjoy it. At this point, I just don't care much beyond that. Eh, I may not be helping the problem, or I may even be supporting it, but... eh.

Oh, and I've got two copies on pre-order.

Why two?