Call of Duty: Modern Warfare isn’t a political game say Infinity Ward devs
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
Can I Run It?
Add FPS
Compare GPU
Trailers
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
Have your say
User Review
8.84
Optimisation
8.4
Most Demanding
Most Demanding Score?
Low vs Ultra Screenshots
Editorial
Related News
If you’ve ever wanted to know what it’s like to overdose on hallucinogens and convince yourself your brain is leaking out of somebody’s else nose, you probably want to watch Game Informer’s interview with the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare developers.
Campaign gameplay director Jacob Minkoff and studio narrative director Taylor Kurosaki both tackle the world’s easiest question – Is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare a political game? They somehow then spend five full minutes twisting themselves in knots as they jump through hoop after hoop, finally settling on the twee idea that because Modern Warfare doesn’t have Trump, it’s not political.
It starts off with a bang. “What do you mean by political. That doesn’t mean anything.” Oh boy, Merriam-Webster may as well pack it all in.
“Is it political? No. Is Trump in the video game? No,” they go on to say.
“These are the types of questions which have been asked for the last 50 years. We do talk about concepts like colonialism, occupation, independence, and freedom. The specific story we’re talking about, proxy wars and the superpowers involved in the Middle Eastern countries; you could set this in Afghanistan in the ’80s and you’d have the same story.”
Quite how anybody can talk about colonialism, occupying forces, and proxy wars without admitting their game is political is bewildering. Vietnam War was a proxy war, its effect is still felt today. Implementing something analogous to this, or to the Soviet-Afghan war, as directly mentioned, is sending a message. The pair of them name-check political conflicts and dilemmas like they’re going out of fashion, but, as long as they don’t mention Trump’s name, it apparently isn’t political.
You can still full chat for yourself below.
It’s absolutely extraordinary the lengths to which studios will go these days to avoid labeling their game for what it is. They are terrified of a certain section of their audience and it truly shows. It’s so peculiar. When we walk into bookshops there are entire aisles dedicated to cheap throwaway political thrillers. They’re not picketed by angry ‘fans’ and the authors aren’t scared to admit what they are. It’s literally just a facet of storytelling, a simple genre choice which can open the door to interesting tales.
I’d really just love it if we could move beyond this now. If we could call a spade a spade. Video games are one of the most fertile environments around for storytelling and it’s unbelievable there is so much pushback to something so basic and fundamental as politics. It’s just weird at this point, they’re babying their audience and preventing video game narratives from evolving to become more than they are today.
You too can be an apolitical CIA agent, a rebel fighter, or a child soldier in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare when it comes to PC, PS4 and Xbox One on October 25th.
