News Islamic extremists using games to recruit

I think that fairs fair, if the US govt can use a video game to recruit why the hell cant terrorists, to be honest though the terrorists propaganda machine seems to work a hell of a lot better than the Govts one, they at least seem to have a never ending supply of volunteer cannon fodder

 

Well looks like there is consensus on the board (bar one individual natch), and quite right too. It seems like the US invading Iraq shooting up the place and then complaining all that will listen when the Iraqi forces use guns and bombs in retaliation. I know this is a bit of a stretched analogy but there we go. Pick a side of the coin and stick with it either they are for using video games to recruit combatants or they aren't.

 

Actually, the U.S. Army has been using modified versions of Doom II and several other FPS and combat simulation games since 1997. I'm sure they've upgraded to CS:Source now.

Of course, to say that we do not kill Middle Easterners in real life is slightly askew of reality. We do --in Iraq and Afghanistan, although in the not-so-distant past the U.S. also performed a bombing raid on Lybia.

I have joined this tread relatively late, but I must also endorse Da Dego's recommendation to stay within the topic of this tread. When people stray into the politics of the recent wars, I note that they get quite emotional but are very uninformed about the actual facts. I would recommend some strategic searches in the Serious Discussion subforum, where we tend to discuss these things in more (accurate) detail. But let's stick to topic here, please.

 

Playing pacman when I was a kid made me want to run around eating fruit off the floor.

 

Aye and I'm still chasing tails

 

total hypocracy by the US government.
Besides, anybody else notice that the Desert Combat and DCX mods for Battlefield 1942 were strangely biased against Iraq? At times there is little point even playing on the Iraq team, because the Americans annihilate you. I guess you could say that American extremists are using this glorify killing Iraqis ...

 

Hehe...sorry, that came across as harsh. Nobody's asking you not to say anything again, we're asking you to please keep with the topic at hand. As Nexxo pointed out, politics and the emotional passion equivalent to a thousand suns often go hand in hand...and usually that is not a good thing for the unprepared, expecting a discussion on video game mods and not an attack on their political viewpoints. To discuss that, please see the serious discussion forum, which is more fit for such things.

As for the topic here, speaking of...I have to agree with many things mentioned here. It's not exactly sensible to say "Crap, they're doing the same thing we are...ban those mods!!!" It's a symptom of technology that our videogames are closer and closer to real life now...why wouldn't they be used for this? Airline pilots (and fighter pilots in the USAF) have trained on Microsoft Flight simulator (and modifications of) for *years*. Including practicing finding building targets for bombing runs visually, should they lose their computer support in the air, so as to carry out their mission. I think it would almost be idiotic to assume that the other side does not do similar things... so the question becomes, do they think it's that horrendous, or are they just upset that the 'enemy' is not nearly as behind technologically as they suspected?

 

grade A fear mongering. just combining fear of terrorism with the fear of the relatively new medium of video games.

video games are a medium just like cinema and books and can have positive or perverse messages just like cinema and books. The only thing I personally think is that usually video games are less impacting in that the story is not innate you have to "create" the content by running around or what ever. Now I can't think of a single civilization or organization that hasn't used propaganda or fear mongering to recruit and align it's citizens so having a mod that shows the reverse side of the coin isn't that big of a shocker. I mean this really sounds like the mirror of America's army just a game that shows their side of the story. I don't see how our enemies making the same thing could be so shocking.

last I thought about alot of video games have us fighting our enemies whether its commies in red faction, or nazi's in call of duty, any media from a culture that lets us enact fight against our "evil" enemies is not new.

as far as using video games as any sort of training aid for military is a mixed bag of results. Any soldier will tell you that video games are nothing close to real life and can't simulate the actual feeling of being in combat, but likewise like sports games and board games, video games can be used to teach things like critical thinking and teamwork.

to be honest I don't get what the big deal is about video games they aren't particularly more impacting then any existing medium like books or cinema and from 50 years from now I don't think call of duty or GTA will ever has as much impact as mein kampf or any other book on the subject. and because you create your own content messages at most are probably much more watered down. I don't think the developers or any patriot had it in mind, but we all know in BF2 loading up an american humvee with c4 and ramming it into an enemy convoy would be considered "terroristik" by most. but its pretty beneficial to game play.

in conclusion this is hardly suprising or a big deal.

 

Funny thing this. As it turns out, there is no mod by al qaeda operatives or islamic extremists. The entire thing was a mistake. The origin of the debacle is a BF2 fan video by someone calling himself SonicJihad. As is usually the case now-a-days, someone got their hands on the video and made a whole series of assumptions about the existence of a mod for the game. Then everyone falls for it, gets up in arms, and people start fighting eachother. The real story can be found here: http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2006/5/7/3874 and the video can be seen here: http://www.qj.net/Fan-made-Battlefield-2-Video-Mistaken-For-Terrorist-Propaganda/pg/49/aid/35682

 

Modders: +1
Goverment: - ....I lost count

Now the main thing is, will any major news company post THAT part? About being wrong? Probably not. Meaning that the modding industry is probably still going to catch flack for a few months from this whole thing.