now listening
shared items
...more shared items
archives

11/01/2003 - 12/01/2003

12/01/2003 - 01/01/2004

01/01/2004 - 02/01/2004

02/01/2004 - 03/01/2004

03/01/2004 - 04/01/2004

04/01/2004 - 05/01/2004

05/01/2004 - 06/01/2004

06/01/2004 - 07/01/2004

07/01/2004 - 08/01/2004

08/01/2004 - 09/01/2004

09/01/2004 - 10/01/2004

10/01/2004 - 11/01/2004

11/01/2004 - 12/01/2004

12/01/2004 - 01/01/2005

01/01/2005 - 02/01/2005

02/01/2005 - 03/01/2005

03/01/2005 - 04/01/2005

04/01/2005 - 05/01/2005

05/01/2005 - 06/01/2005

06/01/2005 - 07/01/2005

07/01/2005 - 08/01/2005

08/01/2005 - 09/01/2005

09/01/2005 - 10/01/2005

10/01/2005 - 11/01/2005

11/01/2005 - 12/01/2005

12/01/2005 - 01/01/2006

01/01/2006 - 02/01/2006

02/01/2006 - 03/01/2006

03/01/2006 - 04/01/2006

04/01/2006 - 05/01/2006

05/01/2006 - 06/01/2006

06/01/2006 - 07/01/2006

07/01/2006 - 08/01/2006

08/01/2006 - 09/01/2006

09/01/2006 - 10/01/2006

10/01/2006 - 11/01/2006

11/01/2006 - 12/01/2006

12/01/2006 - 01/01/2007

01/01/2007 - 02/01/2007

02/01/2007 - 03/01/2007

03/01/2007 - 04/01/2007

04/01/2007 - 05/01/2007

05/01/2007 - 06/01/2007

06/01/2007 - 07/01/2007

07/01/2007 - 08/01/2007

08/01/2007 - 09/01/2007

09/01/2007 - 10/01/2007

10/01/2007 - 11/01/2007

11/01/2007 - 12/01/2007

12/01/2007 - 01/01/2008

01/01/2008 - 02/01/2008

02/01/2008 - 03/01/2008

03/01/2008 - 04/01/2008

04/01/2008 - 05/01/2008

05/01/2008 - 06/01/2008

06/01/2008 - 07/01/2008

07/01/2008 - 08/01/2008

08/01/2008 - 09/01/2008

09/01/2008 - 10/01/2008

10/01/2008 - 11/01/2008

11/01/2008 - 12/01/2008

12/01/2008 - 01/01/2009

01/01/2009 - 02/01/2009

02/01/2009 - 03/01/2009

03/01/2009 - 04/01/2009

04/01/2009 - 05/01/2009

05/01/2009 - 06/01/2009

06/01/2009 - 07/01/2009

07/01/2009 - 08/01/2009

08/01/2009 - 09/01/2009

09/01/2009 - 10/01/2009

10/01/2009 - 11/01/2009

11/01/2009 - 12/01/2009

12/01/2009 - 01/01/2010

01/01/2010 - 02/01/2010

02/01/2010 - 03/01/2010

03/01/2010 - 04/01/2010


Monday, May 08, 2006 
i was just a boy when the infidels pwned my village
oh noes! islamists are taking over our video games!

The makers of combat video games have unwittingly become part of a global propaganda campaign by Islamic militants to exhort Muslim youths to take up arms against the United States, officials said on Thursday.

Tech-savvy militants from al Qaeda and other groups have modified video war games so that U.S. troops play the role of bad guys in running gunfights against heavily armed Islamic radical heroes, Defense Department official and contractors told Congress.


One of the latest video games modified by militants is the popular "Battlefield 2" from leading video game publisher, Electronic Arts Inc of Redwood City, California.

Jeff Brown, a spokesman for Electronic Arts, said enthusiasts often write software modifications, known as "mods," to video games.

"Millions of people create mods on games around the world," he said. "We have absolutely no control over them. It's like drawing a mustache on a picture."

"Battlefield 2" ordinarily shows U.S. troops engaging forces from China or a united Middle East coalition. But in a modified video trailer posted on Islamic Web sites and shown to lawmakers, the game depicts a man in Arab headdress carrying an automatic weapon into combat with U.S. invaders.

"I was just a boy when the infidels came to my village in Blackhawk helicopters," a narrator's voice said as the screen flashed between images of street-level gunfights, explosions and helicopter assaults.

first they hijack planes; now they hijack games! what kind of world do we live in where someone would create military training video games?

there's only one problem. that video, the one that was supposedly made by a jihadist, was made by a typical american gamer, simply to show up his 1337 bf2 skills.

oh, and another thing: that quote about the infidels invading a village? it's actually the voice of south park's trey parker from his puppet movie team america: secret police (and is even on the imdb quotes page).

oh yeah, and that stuff about how terrorists are modding the game... well, game modding is cool and all, but that video didn't require any mods. it uses the special forces expansion pack (created by EA, the game manufacturer) right out of the box.

oh, and one more thing. (how many things is that, four?) just in case you didn't click the link above, the US army has a free online first-person-shooter game to get kids snazzed about going overseas and shooting some brown people. if it's good enough for the goose...

so basically, just about nothing in the story is true. the story, which has been spreading through the media since thursday, is about a "global propaganda campaign by islamic militants" but the reality is it's just a bunch of kids playing shoot-em-up.

so what is the most absurd aspect of this story? is it that dan devlin, a DoD public diplomacy specialist, showed a gamer's fan-video to a congressional subcommittee claiming it was al qaeda propaganda?

is it that reuters' david morgan wrote and filed this story, clearly without doing any more research than calling someone at EA for a statement? (if he'd spent a few minutes on google, morgan could've discovered the truth behind the video and had a much better scoop: dan devlin is full of crap.)

for that matter, is it that EA's jeff brown had the opportunity to debunk the whole story but instead offered that silly duchampian quote about "drawing a mustache on a picture"? (in fairness, brown surely doesn't lurk on forumplanet and might not have seen the video before morgan called him, but he could have said "terrorists are modding our games for a global propaganda campaign? that's news to me; let me look into it and i'll get back to you.")

personally, my vote for the most embarrassingly ridiculous thing about this story is that wired news even bought into it, and to date hasn't posted a correction. i can accept that dozens of clueless media outlets worldwide eagerly ran the story, including the presitgious washington post. the media loves this kind of fact-free alarmist claptrap. but wired really should know better. and even accepting that wired bought into the hype and ran it, the gamer community has been laughing its ass off about this since at least friday. that's more than enough time to post a correction: sorry, we got pwned.


0 comments:

Powered by Blogger hosted by Sensory Research