Blackwater: Virtual civilian-killers based on the real ones...

I'm re-blogging this from overly analytical ally MovieBob aka the Game Overthinker.

Check out what Bob has to say about this shit.

Now, here is where we need to tread lightly and examine this situation. This game will most likely be made, and 505 Games has every right to develop it. My message isn't to censor anyone, even when crap like this is far from what I would consider art.

My message, is that if you care about the medium of video games, and believe as I do that they deserve to be more than tools of those who would like to propagate violence as proper politics, then you gotta voice your opinion on this. Chances are, the more hate this game receives, the more advertising will be provided; and from where I'm sitting, it seems inevitable. But as gamers who want more for our culture than exploitation, if you want to shake the label as a generation trained from childhood to be virtual soldiers, then we have to be the first to voice our opinions against games like this. If we fail to express our disgust and our rejection of this level of pandering, then our medium is at risk of further backsliding.

And yes, this is exploitation, this is marketed controversy. We've seen it again and again, and it's something that is inescapable for video games, due to their nature and the adolescent stage of existence. If you enjoy violence, that's fine, so do I. But it's our responsibility, not the government's or the ESRB, to tell us what should be acceptable. We know the difference between fiction and reality, we know the difference between art and commercial, and we know the difference between soldiers and thugs. Regardless of our varying opinions on the Iraq war, we as consumers can't support these murderers with our consumer choice. The government may have paid them, but we can draw the line here.