If you’ve been following gaming news at all this past week, there’s little doubt that you’ve heard about the latest fiasco surrounding the upcoming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 due to a video released by Infinity Ward that slipped in the phrase “fags.” If you are somehow unfamiliar with it (and, incidentally, how did you end up here of all places?) basically every major gaming site has covered it already. And if you’re a college student with a campus newspaper that covers gaming culture, like I am, chances are somebody covered it there too.
There isn’t much left to be said about the subject now, so this post is dedicated to letting you, the reader, actually see what all the hubbub is about. Infinity Ward has taken down the video from their own YouTube account and has been forcing other users to do the same with copies. Below is one of the few still active as of the writing of this post, though IGN has so far retained the advertisement in a different format.
I’m confused. While this video clip is weird enough, it doesn’t match up with what you wrote.
If what we discussed in class didn’t make it clear, the controversy is surrounding the fact that the acronym of the organization credited at the end of the video spells out “fags.” If you’re still curious about why this video made such a huge amount of noise, ask students about XBox Live and the kind of people you generally speak to during online play.Infinity Ward was blasted because this video seems to be saying that it’s okay to be extremely sexist, homophobic, and insulting during the course of a game–in other words, everything that is considered wrong with the people encountered while using the XBox Live service.
…Perhaps I *should* have elaborated on the story after all, in retrospect.
This is crazy. I don’t understand how they got Cole Hamels to be apart of this. The game looks really really intense.
Yea this is nuts. I guess this is what Cole Hamels was doing instead of being a productive pitcher during the post-season. I wonder how many other famous people have been involved in these video game ads that we don’t know about, that’d be something interesting to look into.
Not too sure if Hamels really thought this one through when he decided to become involved. I’m not too well-versed on the video game scene, but there definitely seems to be some tasteless aspects of this.
I don’t like Cole Hamels, but I do love me some Call of Duty, and will definitely be getting Modern Warfare 2 as soon as I have the money!
This game is sick, I cant say the same for Cole Hamels though.