Fox News Jumps in The Medal of Honor Debate

shane · August 15, 2010

The upcoming Electronic Arts game Medal of Honor for the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 has generated a bit of controversy over the fact that it portrays events from the War in Afghanistan in 2001.* Because the conflict is on-going and American lives are being lost, some like the Gold Star Moms find the concept of a game allowing gamers to play as members of the Taliban and shoot American soldiers during multiplayer to be disrespectful.* Fox News had one of the Gold Star Moms on their morning show this morning to get her opinion on the game.

Karen Meredith lost her son in Afghanistan says, “War is not a game period.* Right now we are going into a really really bad time in Afghanistan.* We’ve just come off the worst month of casualties in the whole war and this game is going to be released in October.* So families who are burying their children are going to be seeing this and playing this game.* I just don’t see that a video game based on a current war makes any sense.

EA responded to the controversy by saying, “Medal of Honor is set in today’s war, putting players in the boots of today’s solder.* We give gamers the opportunity to play both sides.* Most of having been doing this since we were seven.* If someone’s the cop, someone gotta be the robber, someone’s gotta be the pirate and someone’s gotta be the alien.* In Medal of Honor multiplayer, someone’s gotta be the Taliban.”

Ms. Meredith, though, finds it unrealistic to compare the current war in Afghanistan to kids playing cops and robbers.* The Fox News correspondent pointed out that the average age of gamers who would purchase this game is around 35 to 39 and that these are adults who should have the right to purchase these games for better or worse.* Ms. Meredith however contends that EA shouldn’t even be making the game out of respect for those currently fighting and should follow the lead of Sony who chose not release a game called Shock and Awe and Atomic Games who chose not to release Six Days in Fallujah.

Check out the video of the interview below and let us know your thoughts on the controversy.