Modern Warfare 2 depicts State Sponsored Terrorism?

[KeenInsight]

Here is a leaked video from the upcoming military arcade shooter "Modern Warfare 2."

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=364_1256689255

The above footage shows the player who is a CIA operative undercover as a terrorist who mows down dozens of innocent civilians in an airport.

[JackRiddler]

Hang on there - is that airport inside the US? Because maybe they have a legitimate national security interest to mow down enemy civilians.

[8bitagent]

Damn, the video is taken down. Hopefully it shows on youtube soon.

I've seen a LOT of false flag/staged terror/agent provocateur bombing
storylines in countless movies lately.

It started with Revenge of the Sith Star Wars Episode III as well as V For Vendetta and even Children of Men...

Then last year Iron Man(al Qaeda in Afghanistan turns out to be a puppet of US defense elites), Traitor(the whole film is about a CIA guy getting terrorists to stage attacks), and Body of Lies(where the CIA stages a massive false flag terror event)

Hell even in The Simpsons movie, toward the end the government hatches a plot to secretly stage a mini nuke suitcase attack in Springfield.

And often times military video games get to play nostradamas
(In Tom Clancy's 2002 Ghost Recon, US backed Georgian forces get blitzed by Russian forces...the game takes place in 2008)

[operator kos]

Here's an article about it:

http://www.gamepolitics.com/2009/10/28/leaked-modern-warfare-2-footage-shocks

Surprisingly, a lot of the reader comments on the story are actually intelligent.

Somewhat disturbingly, one of the comments notes that the army will be at their local Gamestop with a Humvee the day the game releases.

[Nordic]

Assimilation?

Or a certain rebellion of sorts from the creative community?

Most people I know in the creative community here are pretty well informed and know the whole 9/11 thing smells pretty damn fishy.

Or is it something else, where in ten years Fox News Heads will be talking about the "necessity" of false flag events?

[8bitagent]

Assimilation?

Or a certain rebellion of sorts from the creative community?

Most people I know in the creative community here are pretty well informed and know the whole 9/11 thing smells pretty damn fishy.

Or is it something else, where in ten years Fox News Heads will be talking about the "necessity" of false flag events?

First came 2001(9/11)....

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Assimilation?

Or a certain rebellion of sorts from the creative community?

Most people I know in the creative community here are pretty well informed and know the whole 9/11 thing smells pretty damn fishy.

This post's going to be quite long. It's not really about games, though, for those who don't care for them. And William Colby, of all people, will pop up in it, too.

The games industry, perhaps more than any other branch of entertainment, has been neck-deep in conspiracy culture for a long time, mostly in a good way. I still remember playing Deus Ex many years ago and being astonished at what they "got away with" putting in there - in fact, I think there was a thread about it here not so long ago, and we even had a poster for a while called JC Denton (main character in the game) but he got a bit of ribbing over that, some of it from me, and didn't post much after. Shame.

Plot synopsis from the Wiki:

The plot of Deus Ex depicts a society on a slow spiral into chaos. A lethal pandemic known as the "Gray Death" ravages the world's population, especially within the United States, and has no cure. A synthetic vaccine, "Ambrosia", manufactured by the company VersaLife, nullifies the effects of the virus, but is in critically short supply. Because of its scarcity, Ambrosia is available only to those deemed "vital to the social order", and finds its way primarily to government officials, military personnel, the rich and influential, scientists, and the intellectual elite. With no hope for the common people of the world, riots occur worldwide, and a number of terrorist organizations have formed with the professed intent of assisting the downtrodden, among them the National Secessionist Force of the US and a French group known as Silhouette.

They foresaw the TeaBaggers!

In order to combat these threats to the world order, the United Nations has greatly expanded its governmental influence around the globe. The United Nations Anti-Terrorist Coalition (UNATCO) is formed, with the intent of maintaining peace internationally and combating the world's ever-growing number of terrorist groups.[26] It is headquartered near New York City in a bunker beneath Liberty Island, placed there after a terrorist strike on the Statue of Liberty.[27]

UNATCO turn out to be the bad guys, though it seems the terror strike on The Statue of Libertyreally was done by the terrorists, but they were pawns. Oh, there has also been a complete collapse of the financial system, so all transactions are digital. It's set in 2050.

Came out in the year 2000.

During sections of the game where the New York skyline is visible in the background, the two towers of the World Trade Center are noticeably missing; the real towers were destroyed a year after the game was released. Harvey Smith has explained that due to texture memory limitations, the portion of the skyline with the twin towers exists in the game's data files but had to be left out of the final game, with the other half mirrored in place of it. According to Smith, during the game's development, the developers justified the lack of the towers by stating that terrorists had destroyed the World Trade Center earlier in the game's storyline.[34]

As for the subversive creativity in the industry, which makes me almost love the industry more than the games, it's not going to be around for much longer. A recent speech made by the CEO of Activision (creators of World of Warcraft - the game equivalent of crystal meth, and considered a lifewrecker even by it's fans) there is no longer a place for creativity in creative circles.

This speech reminds of nothing so much as the Goldmann Sachs "suck it up!" announcement, except this guy actually goes further:

Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick has been on fire this week. At the Deutsche Bank Securities Technology Conference in San Francisco he made a number of comments that seem to have been calculated to explode the heads of gamers, developers, and anyone who cares a jot about the industry. In a wide-ranging speech, Kotick – who earned $14m last year – dropped a number of bombs about Activision’s future plans, none of which were designed to make anyone happy apart from Activision shareholders....

“In the last cycle of videogames you spent $50 on a game, played it and took it back to the shop for credit. Today, we’ll (charge) $100 for a guitar. You might add a microphone or drums; you might buy two or three expansions packs, different types of music. Over the life of your ownership you’ll probably buy around 25 additional song packs in digital downloads. So, what used to be a $50 sale is a $500 sale today.”

...Maybe the choice quotes of the event, though, came when Kotick talked about Activision’s developers; you know, the guys who actually make the stuff he gets so rich from. You’d think he’d have a bit of respect for them, right? Oh no, Kotick’s goal over the past 10 years has been – you couldn’t make this up – “to take all the fun out of making video games.” How? By instilling a culture of “scepticism, pessimism, and fear” amongst the company’s staff based around the economic depression and an incentive program that rewards “profit and nothing else”.

We’re having a hard time coming to terms with all this. While we tend to expect mega rich corporate bosses to be at least a bit evil, this flagrant display of gamer hate has left us dumbfounded. Activision is a mammoth company, with some of the biggest-selling franchises in the world under its umbrella, but at the end of the day its profits come from the pockets of gamers who don’t want to miss out on some great titles. If any other CEO exhibited as much contempt for his or her customers as Kotick has, their company would surely expect to face negative feedback or even a consumer boycott. But you just know that nothing like that will happen here. Apart from running the negligible risk of a few blogs printing pictures of him with devil horns or a Hitler moustache, Kotick knows that he’s invulnerable. The gaming “community” just doesn’t have the will or the organisation to, say, boycott Modern Warfare 2, and that – even more than Kotick’s comments – makes us truly sad.

http://www.geeks.co.uk/7282-activision% ... -games-you

Makes me sad too. Makes me sad that a public figure of any kind can talk that way during business hours in the middle of an actual depression and keep his job. But hardly surprising in this day and age.

What is surprising is that while reading up on William Colby again after going through the John de Camp thread, I remembered that I have actually played the ancient FMV computer game that Colby and Oleg Kalugin advised on. Spycraft: The Great Game. From Activision.

Oleg Kalugin, incidentally, wrote a book called SpyMaster: My 32 Years in Intelligence and Espionage Against the West. It's years since I read it, but I remember he spent at least half a chapter telling the reader in detail about how he's really good in bed - and also claiming that he ran a massive black propaganda op in the US to cover up the fact that it really was Oswald who shot Kennedy, and that all the other theories were injected into public discourse by the KGB just for lulz.

So... he's reliable, then.

It was a very enjoyable game for it's time. I'm not going to speculate about the likelihood of it being little more than a spook recruiting-tool, like America's Army being openly an Army recruitment operation, but it had some hilariously biased moments. The CIA agent (the player) reacts with shock and outrage to an MI6 agent recounting a successful assassination - the Agency, of course, would never do such a thing.

There was also a highly controversial scene where the player must interrogate, and then torture (if interrogation doesn't work), a female terrorist who knows the location of a suitcase Nuke. If the victim dies under torture, the CIA agent gets a mild telling off from his immediate superior. Actually, that bit was quite realistic.

If anyone's wondering why I played a game where I got to be a CIA agent and torture a woman to death, I can only say that I was fourteen, and it was only a game. No doubt that's the same way a nineteen year old UAV operator might feel now, except they're probably even more excited about it.

Here's the Wiki page for the game if anyone wants to look further into it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spycraft:_The_Great_Game

And a Youtube vid of the promo for the game, featuring Colby:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkc4f2hvr6c

[Penguin]

I recall there was a thread before of games and propaganda...I mentioned these then too.

COD 4 Modern Warfare part one was also pure propaganda storytelling from start to finish... (yes, I played it through)
Arctic Sea - like ship on the nordic sea, russian ultranationalists with nukes, and a mid-eastern country with a mad islamic dictator and a nuke explosion. Its got it all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_Du ... rn_Warfare

The story takes place in a fictional near-future, where a radical leader has staged a coup d'état in the Middle East, and an "Ultranationalist" movement has instigated a civil war in Russia. The events of the conflicts are seen from the perspectives of an American Marine and a British SAS commando, and are set in multiple locations, including the Middle East, Azerbaijan, Russia, and Prypiat, Ukraine.

During the single-player campaign, the player controls six different characters from a first-person perspective. The player assumes the role of a young SAS member named "Soap" MacTavish for most of the game, starting with his enrollment in 22nd SAS.[4] Sergeant Paul Jackson is part of USMC 1st Force Recon deployed to the Middle East, and the player controls Jackson's character during five levels of Act 1. Captain/Lieutenant Price is an officer of 22 SAS who is playable in a flashback. Price is voiced by actor Billy Murray, most famous for playing Don Beech on the television series The Bill. Yasir Al-Fulani is the president of the unnamed Middle Eastern country mentioned in the game, and is playable only in the game's opening credit sequence before he is executed. The player assumes the role of an American thermal-imaging TV operator aboard an AC-130 gunship during one level, and a British SAS counter-terrorist operative infiltrating a hijacked airliner to save a VIP in the epilogue level.[4][6][8]

The game's non-playable characters (NPC) feature prominently in the story. Captain Price (in his NPC capacity) and his right-hand man, Gaz (voiced by Craig Fairbrass), serve as mentors to MacTavish. Jackson's USMC platoon is led by Lieutenant Vasquez (voiced by David Sobolov) and Staff Sergeant Griggs (voiced by and modeled after Infinity Ward lead animator Mark Grigsby); Griggs later accompanies MacTavish in Russia. Sergeant Kamarov leads the Russian Loyalists that ally with the SAS and USMC forces. Nikolai is a Russian informant who helps the SAS. Captain Macmillan is Price's (then a lieutenant) mentor and commanding officer during the flashback to the assassination attempt on Zakhaev. The villains in the story are Imran Zakhaev, the leader of the Russian Ultranationalist party and the main antagonist of the game; Khaled Al-Asad, the commander of the revolutionary forces in the Middle East and an ally of Imran Zakhaev; and Victor Zakhaev, the son of Imran Zakhaev and a priority figure in the Ultranationalist party.[6]
Plot

On a mission in the Bering Sea, Sergeant "Soap" MacTavish, Captain Price, "Gaz", and several SAS members find a nuclear device onboard a cargo ship. Suddenly, the ship is attacked, and the team evacuate with the cargo manifest, which provides evidence of ties between the Russian Ultranationalist Party and a rebel faction in the Middle East. Russian Ultranationalist Imran Zakhaev, who plans to return his motherland to the times of the Soviet Union, draws international attention away from his plans by funding a coup d'état in an unnamed Middle Eastern country, organized by a local separatist leader named Khaled Al-Asad. The British and American governments, who discover the plot, initiate a police action to stop the uprisings in both regions. After President Al-Fulani of the Middle Eastern country is executed on live television and Al-Asad takes control, the SAS rescue their compromised informant in the Russian Ultranationalist Party, Nikolai.[6]
A panoramic view of Prypiat, taken in 2001 The same scene, as depicted in the game
One section of the game takes place in Prypiat, Ukraine. Several iconic aspects of the abandoned city, such as this square, were recreated in the game.

In an American invasion of the Middle Eastern country, a platoon from the USMC 1st Force Recon, led by Lieutenant Vasquez and Sergeant Paul Jackson, searches for Al-Asad, but only manages to secure a television station broadcasting Al-Asad's propaganda. During the final stages of the operation, United States Central Command is notified by Seal Team Six of a Russian nuclear weapon nearby, and sends the NEST to disarm it. However, the nuclear device suddenly detonates, leveling most of the city and killing everyone in the area, including Vasquez's squad, whose helicopter had not left the blast radius after coming to the last-minute rescue of the pilot of a downed AH-1 Cobra helicopter.[6]

The British learn that Al-Asad fled the country before the USMC's invasion. With the help of their informant Nikolai, the SAS finds and interrogates Al-Asad. After learning from him that Zakhaev supplied the nuclear bomb, Captain Price executes Al-Asad. Price then has a flashback of his mission to eliminate Zakhaev in Prypiat, Ukraine, 15 years earlier. In the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Zakhaev took advantage of the turmoil to profit from nuclear proliferation and used his new wealth to lure soldiers from the Soviet Army to form his Ultranationalist Party. Price was paired with Captain MacMillan to carry out the black op assassination of Zakhaev. After stealthily sneaking into Prypiat and taking up a position in the top room of an abandoned hotel, MacMillan spotted Zakhaev while Price fired a .50 BMG sniper rifle, but Zakhaev survived, losing only an arm. Price and MacMillan were pursued from the scene and narrowly escaped, with MacMillan sustaining an injured leg in the process.[6]

Back in the present, a joint operation, by the SAS regiment under the command of Captain Price, a USMC Force Recon unit led by Staff Sergeant Griggs, and forces from the Russian military led by Sgt. Kamarov, is undertaken to stop Zakhaev. They capture his son Victor to learn of Zakhaev's whereabouts, but before they can question him, Zakhaev's son commits suicide. Zakhaev becomes enraged, blaming Western nations for the death of his son, and plans to retaliate by launching ballistic missiles armed with nuclear warheads at the United States. When SAS/USMC operatives arrive at the facility, Zakhaev manages to launch two missiles towards the United States. However, the squad successfully deactivates the missiles. They escape the facility in military trucks, Zakhaev's forces in hot pursuit.[6]

Before the squad can escape across a nearby bridge, it is destroyed by a gunship, leaving them trapped. Zakhaev's forces arrive and engage the remaining members of the strike force. Suddenly, Gaz receives a call from Sergeant Kamarov, informing him that his forces are on their way to help the American and British forces. On the bridge, a gas tanker explodes, incapacitating most soldiers nearby except Griggs, who is shot while trying to pull MacTavish to safety. Zakhaev, along with two of his soldiers, finish off Gaz and other surviving members of the strike force. Before he reaches Soap and Price, he is distracted by the destruction of his gunship and the arrival of a Russian military helicopter. As Zakhaev looks away, Price slides his pistol to Soap, who shoots and kills Zakhaev and his two guards. When Kamarov and his team arrive, MacTavish is evacuated to safety, while a Russian medic attempts to resuscitate Price. MacTavish survives and becomes a captain in the SAS before leading an elite military force in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, but Price's ultimate fate is unknown.[6][9]

Also see Ghost Recon series (has the Georgian war too, down to exact same year as it actually happened in the then-future):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Clancy%27s_Ghost_Recon (first part of the series, released in 2001. Game takes place in 2008)

Ghost Recon begins in April 2008, with civil unrest in Russia. Ultra-nationalists have seized power in Russia, with plans to rebuild the Soviet Union. Their first step is clandestine support of rebel factions in Georgia and the Baltic States. This is where the Ghosts come in - to silence the invasion. Armed with some of the most advanced weaponry in the world, the soldiers of the Ghost Recon force are covertly inserted into the area of operations and given specific missions to curtail the rebel actions and overthrow their benefactors.

Check out the other parts at the link.
Also "End War" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Clancy%27s_EndWar

[AhabsOtherLeg]

COD 4 sounds terrible. Even the Russian villain is called Imran. They must've had a meeting and decided that just having one Islamic/Eastern/Arabic stereotype wasn't enough.

[Penguin]

Yeah, it was a right pile of it...
No wonder that game is stocked on those Army Experience centers...

[KeenInsight]

Nice to see some good responses in here .

If the mass media outlets pick up on this, I wonder if they'll even speak of the fact that the player is instigating terrorism as a CIA operative. That might be a little too "truthy" though and close to reality. Overall, it is indeed a fact that CoD video games are propaganda from start to finish, killing hundreds of stereotypical bad guys. I guess it would be out of there way to play as an "insurgent" fighting because his family was blown to smithereens by a US missile?

[Joe Hillshoist]

Ahab Deus Ex is a great game.

To me it feels more like a good book or movie, ie its engaging... and the idea of making moral choices (you can play the whole FPS game without actually killing anyone... its not a requirement or anything, just something you can do if you choose to.) Anyone ever read the Terry Pratchett book "Only you can save mankind."?

A Russian village named Imran... wonder if they play cricket there.

[elfismiles]

New game lets players massacre civilians
By John Byrne
Thursday, October 29th, 2009 -- 7:55 am

A new video game allows players to pose as Russian ultranationalist terrorists and massacre civilians with assault weapons in an airport.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is set for release Nov. 10, in time for the American holiday shopping season. Its predecessor sold 14 million copies and earned myriad "game of the year" awards.

But the latest incarnation is drawing fire. The game allows players to pose as terrorists -- and play in first-person view -- engaging in violence against non-combat actors.

GameSpot said the scene where players shoot bystanders is "reminiscent of last year's mass killings in Mumbai."

Australia rated the game MA15+, or suitable for children 15 years of age or older. "Australia is one of the only Western democracies without an adult (R18+) rating for video games," the Sydney Morning Herald notes.

A local critic who runs the Australian Council on Children and the Media said that she didn't feel the 18+ rating was enough. It means that children as young as 15 will be able to slaughter civilians in realistic fashion.

"The consequences of terrorism are just abhorrent in our community and yet here we are with a product that's meant to be passed off as a leisure time activity, actually promoting what most world leaders speak out publicly against," Jane Roberts said.

"If that material was on the internet about how to become a terrorist, how to join a group and how to wipe out people - that would be removed because it would not be acceptable," she added.

The Herald adds that "Activision, the game's publisher, and its lawyers, have been working frantically to remove all traces of the footage from the web, arguing that it was released illegally before the game had come out. But the company has confirmed the footage is authentic and that the mission is part of the game."

In the scene, Australian reviewers wrote, "Several civilians are shot with blood burst bullet wounds; civilian corpses are strewn across the airport floor, often in stylised pools of blood; injured civilians crawl away with lengthy blood trails behind them."

This video is from smh.com.au, broadcast Oct. 28, 2009.



Download video via RawReplay.com
http://216.87.173.33/media/2009/0910/sm ... 91028a.flv

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 leaked footage

This video is from Youtube, broadcast Oct. 28, 2009.



Download video via RawReplay.com
http://216.87.173.33/media/2009/0910/ca ... 91028a.flv

http://rawstory.com/2009/10/game-lets-p ... civilians/

[JackRiddler]

I recall there was a thread before of games and propaganda...I mentioned these then too.

COD 4 Modern Warfare part one was also pure propaganda storytelling from start to finish... (yes, I played it through)

When you cleared the final level and after you had a snack, which armed group did you join, the military or the terrorists?

[Penguin]

Neither, really...

Anyone ever read the Terry Pratchett book "Only you can save mankind."?

Yup!