Legal Niches

Columnist: Why Isn't There Any Dead U.S. Civilians in MW2?

By pete_gallagher

The lack of dead U.S. civilians portrayed in Activision's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 implies that foreign civilians are more expendable than their American counterparts.

This is the vein of a column appearing in France24, in which the author notes that the game's Brazilian and 'No Russian' levels feature plenty of dead civilian bodies, while a level set in Washington D.C. depicts nary a body from American non-combatants.

Mehdi Chebil writes:

But while Activision producers go to great lengths to depict fatally wounded Russian civilians leaving big streaks of blood as they crawl on the airport floor – all in the name of realism - they designed the US-based levels in such a way that no virtual American civilian can be seen nor hurt.

An Activision representative refused to comment '…on the use of civilians in our games.'

The author also thinks that the media focused too much on the game's overall violence:

The fact that critics focused their attacks on the generic violence of 'Modern Warfare 2', forgetting its big red 18 rating, without playing enough of the game to see the discrimination it applies within its civilian categories, also reveals another form of contempt for the entire video game industry.

He encourages the media to 'pay attention to some of the videogame industry's more disturbing messages.'

GP: Just to play devil's advocate, the 'No Russian' airport level could feature American civilians… there's no way to know without checking passports or ids.

Full post as published by GamePolitics.com on January 21, 2010 (boomark / email).