Blast away stains with new extra-strength Palmolive.
Less than two weeks before the launch of the year’s most anticipated title, Infinity Ward finds itself embroiled in controversy. As reported by Destructoid, a viral marketing video for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has attracted criticism for perceived homophobia.
The clip, featuring American baseball star Cole Hamels, is presented in the guise of a public service announcement. A virtual Hamels urges players not to engage in grenade spamming, a practice decried by a large segment of the Call of Duty audience. Hamel refers to the spammers as ‘pussies’. Moments later, he is ‘killed’ by a barrage of grenades. The fictional group responsible for this public service announcement is then revealed to be Fight Against Grenade Spam, the acronym of which is FAGS.
Is the video satirising the embarrassing machismo and casual bigotry of the online gaming scene? Perhaps. Infinity Ward Community Manager Robert Bowling described the clip as ‘social commentary’ but withdrew it shortly thereafter and acknowledged the concerns raised by critics such as Phillip Kollar and Mitchell Dyer. The video is still widely available on YouTube.
Was the advertisement really intended as satire? Let’s take Infinity Ward at its word. Why? Because it means the studio is aware of the problem. Hopefully this encourages Infinity Ward (and parent company Activision) to implement serious measures to discourage hate speech during online play. Such measures are long overdue.
