In promotion for EA’s upcoming Medal of Honor: Warfighter, the publisher decided to create a new charity called “Project Honor”, the purpose of which would be raising money to “benefit the families of fallen Special Operations Warriors.” The public was delighted, and most people agreed that the charity sounded like a great idea, but all good feelings were ripped apart after EA said that the money would be raised through the sales of special Medal of Honor branded weapons. Coming as a surprise to no one, the whole situation has caused an uproar of concern, resulting in EA taking down all Project Honor related ads and promotions from their official website.
Up until last week, EA was lining everyone up and sending them off in the direction of places they could purchase a Medal of Honor branded weapon, all the while saying it was in the name of charity. Ever played Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, or Battlefield? Well now’s your chance to get your very own real-life gun, just like in the popular modern military shooters on the market. EA also had ads for different sniper rifle kits, tomahawks, silencers, and other accessories for sale on their website, and journalists everywhere have been more then vocal with their opinion on the controversy.
Ryan Smith of Gameological had an interesting point, saying “if we want the vicarious thrills of violent video games to remain morally justifiable, we need to protect the fourth wall between the first-person shooter and real life…EA’s willingness to make a connection between a video game gun and an actual firearm is the strongest evidence yet that we’ve already let the wall crumble too much.”
The point of the whole thing is that violence in video games is frowned upon enough already, and the beloved gaming industry has always had a tough time proving its innocence without major players promoting the sales of real weapons. Plenty of crimes all over the world are routed back to video game origins, and this does not help our case as gamers.
In defense of the publisher, Eurogamer caught up with the executive producer Greg Goodrich, who stated “the Voodoo Tomahawk has since been removed from our website”. He went on to try and clarify the matter by adding “that was an effort to raise a lot of money for charity, and we were well on our way to raising a lot of money with that tomahawk, but I don’t know what will happen with that now…That whole effort, we’ve been working with those partners because we wanted to be authentic, and we wanted to give back to the communities. Every one of those partners, none of them paid a dime for product placement – all the money generated went to Project Honor.”
Goodrich also said that a video game is merely an experience, not a teaching tool, and he gave a few examples of how this is shown in our day to day video games. He explained scenarios like “if I played Need for Speed, and I’m handed the key to a Porsche, does that make me want to get in it and drive like a maniac and run people over? No.” In response to the matter directly related to Medal of Honor, he firmly stated “In a first-person shooter we’re not teaching someone how to shoot better or be a better operator just by playing a game. It doesn’t compute, just like when I play John Madden football I can’t expect to win the Super Bowl just because I played a video game.”
