It's A Rare Day I Agree With Kotaku

Posted on November 10, 2008 by Scott Jennings| 41 Comments

…but hey, even a stopped watch is right twice a day.

Note to game developers: war is not TURBO XXXTREME NO RULES NO FEAR AWESOME. And previous Call of Duty titles (up to the magisterial Call of Duty 4, which is a fantastic epic both in its overt and less open messages) handled very well the respect required for making an entertainment product based on man’s bloodiest endeavor.

Whereas Activision has, with one demo movie, shown that they really, really do not get it.

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  • dartwick

    The graphics and animation look good.

  • Ashendarei

    yeah .. it’s one thing to display your game in its’ most impressive (Graphically) light, but that is DEFINATELY not how i’d display this game ..

  • Mortarion

    I agree, the graphics look amazing. I’ve never played any of the CoD series, but that looked like a next-gen Battlefield 1942.

    Except for, you know, the wicked cool rock music overlaying the images of Japanese soldiers horribly burning to death at the hands of a flamethrower to the face.

  • Amaranthar

    It’s disturbing. I wasn’t there, of course, but I’ve had occasion to talk to allot of men who were, and talked in detail down to the feelings involved.

    This is very disturbing stuff. I’m affected by it, and I only talked about it. My old friend Carl, God rest his soul, would have cried.

    I don’t know how I feel about the game right now, maybe it’s good to reveal the horror. Maybe it’s not. But as an ad, it really does suck.

    By the way, how ’bout that GTA4 ?

  • Todd Ogrin

    A bold musical choice, but I think they could have delivered a better mix of anachronism, gracelessness, and non-sequitur if they’d gone with “Rough Sex” by Lords of Acid.

  • Brandon Reinhart

    I think the moral outrage toward this trailer demonstrates hypocrisy. We love to run around these games, shouting and shooting people in the head, glorying in virtual violence. Hell, that’s the point. Call of Duty 5 doesn’t exist to teach you the horrors of war. Games are not war. Humans are intelligent enough to play the game and enjoy it, enjoy the trailer even, but also at the same time understand the true nature of war.

  • Pandanapper

    *sigh*rakafrakakids
    /rant
    Yes the graphics look awe inspiring, the game play is orgazmic and it over all just looks kick ass. The POINT that Kotaku was making(yes they were making another point) is that to say the soldiers had “NO FEAR” is a F!@#ING INSULT to everyone who has fought and who has died in WWII. And as cool as the game looks, to actually live through a war like this would be a complete mindf*** to the people who just focus on the graphics.

    /endrant

  • Iconic

    I don’t find the trailer to be offensive in regards to WW2 veterans (or any other veterans). War has been glorified over and over in every medium. It’s routine in a violence obsessed culture to glorify all sorts of immoral and illegal activities to sell things.

    I do think the “NO FEAR! NO RULES!” appeal to morons is troubling, but it’s troubling in all forms of advertisement. When Frito Lay tries to tell me that some new shape of Dorito is “XTREME!” I also tend to wince.

  • http://GOZORN! trich

    Taxing to victory. The flamethrowers were… hot.

  • TurdBlossom

    DUDE THERE IS NOTHING AS HARDCORE AS SHOOTING A GUY IN THE FACE FROM FOUR FEET AWAY WITH A SIDEARM AND THEN WATCHING HIM FALL TO HIS DEATH! OMG SO HARDCORE, WORLD WAR 2 MUST HAVE BEEN SO WICKED! I’M TOTALLY GOING DOWN TO THE RECRUITER RIGHT NOW TO SIGN ON TO GO TO AFGHANISTAN! HAHAHAHAHA SO AWESOME LOLZ!

  • TPRJones

    #4 is correct, but unfortunately #6 and #10 are also correct. Which is unfortunate.

    I don’t blame whoever made this trailer, though, they’re just part of the current culture. *shrug*

  • TPRJones

    If it make anyone feel any better, in another 30 years we’ll be playing games about the events of 9/11. And it’ll be treated with just as much class as this is.

    Every generation fails to understand the one before it, and ends up annoying the crap out of it until it shouts for them to get off it’s damn lawn.

  • Engels

    TPRJones, may want to check out the HL2 mod Insurgency on Steam. The 9/11 game? That’s already here. Play ‘Insurgent’ Iraqi or Taliban against US Marines in yer typical CS shooter. I don’t find it offensive, however, since at the very least it stops pussyfooting about and says,”Here’s the thing that’s been going on for 6 years now”.

  • http://www.damnedvulpine.com/ J.

    War is hell.
    Bring friends.

  • chacmool

    #13: yes because iraq as we all know, was about 9/11.

  • Mortarion

    #14: I thought that was the zombie apocalypse?

  • http://www.feralchild.net SSFC

    No, you have to play the game through before you can unlock the Nazi Zombie Apocalypse level.

  • http://www.feralchild.net SSFC

    And more seriously, as cool as Nazi Zombie Apocalypse is on some levels, I’m not sure that a game deserves to be made of it at all. As much as watching Night of the Living Dead at 12 branded me with a permanent fear of the Zombie Apocalypse, with or without cartoon Nazis, that imaginary fear pales in comparison to what World War II was about.

    My grandfather fought on Saipan, and even though there weren’t any Nazis within three thousand miles, he never wanted to talk about it. I’ll bet he had plenty of fear, whatever the Activision contractors who made this trailer think he should have felt.

  • aet

    War is only fascinating and exciting from a distance. But let’s ignore the moral outrage for a second:

    The CoD series has always seem a little more interested in drama and realism, or at least some mix of immersion and authenticity. Gamers have a lot of choice right in terms of what they can play, and they probably will for the forseeable future. Abandoning what makes your IP unique might just be a really bad idea.

    This trailer basically shot that uniqueness in the face, thereby turning CoD into Generic Boring FPS.

  • Freakazoid

    insert faux-outrage here, plus reference to deceased family member who served in ww2 for internet cred.

    Maybe if overhyping games in stupid ways didn’t happen on a constant basis, I might be outraged.

  • Pandanapper

    So many people still missing the point.

    It’s not about “overhyping” it’s about respect for others and respect for the dead.

    At this point in time I think it would be great to have a nuclear fallout just to teach so many who have taken this life for granted a great lesson. Yeah, sick of me to say that, but it’s disgusting for me to see so many to continue with such a disrespectful attitude.

    .
    .
    .

  • http://www.feralchild.net SSFC

    insert faux-outrage here, plus reference to deceased family member who served in ww2 for internet cred.

    insert comment on ancestry of #20, who doesn’t know who his father is, much less that his grandfather shot political prisoners for Stalin during the war.

  • chacmool

    are you telling me wolfenstien disrespected your grandfather to? if you want to complain about the hype go ahead… dont tell me games are supposed to respect history.

  • Mortarion

    @23: With all due respect, Wolfenstein was first released 16 years ago, and was one of the first shooters. Hell, it was out before even the ESRB existed. I’d like to think the genre has matured since then.

    More to the point, with realistic (Return to Castle Wolfenstein doesn’t count) WWII shooters, the status quo has been one, for the most part, of respect. This trailer is not the status quo.

    It’s kind of like the difference between fiction & non-ficton. This is clearly a non-fiction novel (as far as I can tell, with the realism apparent), but the trailer seems to be advertising it as a Michael Bay blockbuster movie. Regardless of the quality of the game, the trailer itself is rather tasteless.

  • Boanerges

    I won’t argue that WWII games are anything close to accurate (they’re not) but there is an important fact in that real people fought that war and died. You wanna make a Halo 3 or GoW2 trailer like that, go ahead. Those are caricatures of war at best with villans who aren’t even human (literally). But with real war you need to respect the ground on which you tread. The implication of the trailer is that people did things just like that and, moreover, that things like that were fun or something to be proud of. Having known a few vets who have had to kill another (especially in close quarter combat like that) it’s nothing of the sort for them (most have nightmares about their kills). To recreate it just so Activision can say NO RULES and sell a few games is over the top. I’m sure you can do them in other games but do you need to highlight them, as if those were the game’s selling points? “Buy CoD5 and you can beat men to death just like they did in WWII!”
    No thanks.

  • Kade

    The “Feign Outrage at fucking the corpse of a human tragedy for money” train left about 10 years ago. Sorry. I can understand someone wanting to be angry, I can’t comprehend them sitting through god knows how many WW2 shooters, but drawing a line here of all places.

  • Vandermint

    So a couple weeks ago Lum compares Republican political events in the presidential campaign to Nazi rallies. That’s totally in perspective, but a game trailer with rock music and a few silly “No Rules” taglines goes beyond the pale?

  • olejade

    Well what did you expect? This is a logical outcome for games that pander to the public’s desire for “realism” and mindless violence. It’s not just the video, it’s the whole thing, including the game itself and the players that buy it.

    I am ashamed to be part of the game community when I see this.

  • http://www.thisisnotacommunity.org D-0ne

    PvP is for the insane.

  • UnSub

    Mmmmm, that was some good war porn.

    Unfortunately, I’ve got no tolerance for war porn that makes WWII look RADICALLY EXTREME AWESOME.

    You know what did it? The song. The masculine grunting, the YEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAHHHHH, the macho-ness of it all. Someone recut that video with a sadder song – hell, start with Last Post and see how it fits – and the nature of those images would change dramatically.

  • UnSub

    Just tried it – start the Last Post found here (http://www.awm.gov.au/commemoration/customs/last_post.asp) up at the same time as the CoD trailer (with no sound, obviously) and see what I mean. It isn’t a perfect fit, but it really changes the attitude of the trailer. Finishes at the right time too.

  • Mortarion

    I am curious about all these other WWII games that everyone is saying have been just as bad. Could someone name a few? I’ve played through the whole Medal of Honor series, Day of Defeat, logged god-knows how many hours in BF1942, and countless WWII fighter sims, but I can’t recall any I’ve heard of being like this trailer. I’m really curious now.

  • Triforcer

    Remind me the difference between this and ever other game based on a real life war again? Either all of them are incredibly offensive and inappropriate (and I’m not mocking people who believe that, especially people who have been in real wars), or none of them are.

  • TPRJones

    @13: Well, Engels, I’m predicting something more specific. Like, say, a 9/11 highjacking & flight simulator that at least has the advantage of not having to learn how to land the plane.

    It’s only a matter of time.

  • Iconic

    “It’s not about “overhyping” it’s about respect for others and respect for the dead.”

    What is sacred about WW2 veterans compared to, say, victims of carjacking or gang violence?

    As a military veteran who never saw combat, I have a ton of respect for those that came before me, and I can only hope that I’d have had the same courage if I’d been in the same position. However, as a veteran, I also don’t see veterans as being somehow touched by God and elevated above the status of civilians.

    The outrage IS about overhyping. It’s about taking very real events and reducing them to an easily understood lowest common denominator for idiots. However, as others have asked, why is the line drawn here? Haven’t you been living in this culture all of your life? Don’t you understand that advertisers who aren’t promoting their product as the MOST EXTREME, MOST OUTRAGEOUS, MOST INDISPENSABLE THING EVER are practically considered to not be doing their job? There are two ways to sell something:

    1) Make an awesome product and hope people tell other people about it (see: Google).

    2) Make a product (awesome or terrible) and sell the crap out of it. Cut it up into easily chewed bites and shove it down the throat of the consumer until they have no choice but to swallow.

    What Activision SHOULD be doing is #1, because COD4 was an awesome game, their franchise is already mainstream, and as long as people know when it’s available, they will probably buy it.

    Whether or not they are disrespecting veterans (and I’m not really sure how you turn war into something fun without being disrespectful) the real stupidity is the choice of advertising technique.

  • http://metrogamer.wordpress.com Shiro

    The only sad thing about this is that they’re trying to get more younger (XTREME GENERATION YEAH) into the game. As if the few 14-year-olds screaming into their mics weren’t enough.

    I’m not entitled to say something about respect and all that, but yeah. For the people affected, it isn’t very funny at all.

  • http://ixobelle.com ixobelle
  • Lee Quillen

    I’m personally flabbergasted that the music is pointed out by some out there as a reason for the offense. Heck, I’m shocked that anyone who has been playing shooters based on various wars would have anything to say about a company glorifying there shooter.

    It’s based on WWII… get over it.

    All Wars suck. There’s no reason to think it’s ok for just about every movie ever to put Vietnam to a rock score and the feign offense that they try to sell WWII with some of the same.

  • Ibn

    Wait wait, so Activision has “shown that they really, really do not get it.” OK, but Activision also made CoD4, “which is a fantastic epic both in its overt and less open messages.”

    So which is it?

  • Hatch

    Yanno, when I was in the service my neighbor at my house was a WW2 vet. He liked me cause I was in the military… but he was in the MILITARY.

    Let me explain the difference:

    My body: Very very slight scarring from getting into some razor wire in the gulf.
    His body: Riddled with bullet wounds, one of which actually ripped his right collar bone off (yes, off. gone.) because he charged a pillbox (and got his grenade in there to boot).

    My mind: scarred by the horror of the MRE titled “Ham Slice in ‘Natural’ Juices”
    His mind: Only there about four days every week. Sometimes he was out in the fall planting his garden thinking it was spring. The stuff he was willing to talk openly about was rough, the stuff he eluded to was horrifying.

    The reason I bring this up is there are two types of veterans in this world. Those who offered themselves, and those who had to give up some or all of themselves. The video game is offensive to the ones who lost some/all.

  • Tet

    Well that was certainly weird.