Marketing campaign over: Taliban out of Medal of Honor

New contributor Brice followed by an S. commented on the same phenomenon in GT5 yesterday, but today the whole advertising features destined never to be in the game solely for publicity phenomenon got a new confirmed member when EA removed the Taliban from the upcoming Medal of Honor.

Raise your hand if you’re surprised. No, we don’t have any chips. Stop raising your hand, please, WE DON’T HAVE ANY.

Let’s flash back to the history of this development decision. In March, no one gave half a shit about the Medal of Honor reboot except really hardcore BF:BC2 players. Who are the core audience of any DICE shooter. This is a good audience, but not quite Call of Duty size. EA thought, “How do we get more people to play our game?”

“Let’s put the Taliban in!” someone said. Everyone looked at him funny, like he had sprouted wings that were desperately trying to detach his head from his body. “No, not permanently. We put them in the public beta. People play as the Taliban. Crisis reaches fever pitch, we get on Fox News, all the conservative gun nuts see it, think, ‘We buy this game to shoots us some terr’ists’, and get Battlefield to play the beta. Before release, we cut them from the actual game, so no one actually boycotts the game.” Everyone realizes this man is a genius and gives him a medal. Perhaps of honor. I don’t know, I wasn’t there.

So bravo, EA. You set gaming as an art form back about a year and got people to care about your shitty, derivative military shooter (derivative in that it is BF:BC2 but “realistic”). Good job. I’ve got a suggestion for your next step, too: rename the game after a barely related piece of literature. Seriously. Look how many people cared about Dante’s Inferno who wouldn’t have cared about Walkabout in Hell!