I found it disappointing, that most gaming magazines, webistes and journalists didn't raise their voice against this distasteful game element.
And it was hippocritical from infinity ward to say the level should help the gamer to understand the motivations of the terrorists better, they added it for pure shock value. How far they were willing to go showed me the fact, that the player can play the mass murder on the moscow airport and not the JFK Airport in the USA.
This wouldn't be possible, but if it's only in russia, it's ok.

I disagree completely. The level is there to provoke an emotional reaction and generate buzz. From what I've seen of it, it does both remarkably well.

I found myself playing the FPS in a way I'd never played before - NOT shooting where possible. It was full of hard choices when in actual fact, the level technically played like any other. The context made me play it another way. Not everyone's cup of tea, but as far as I'm concerned - bravo.

My biggest problem with the level was that I wasted so many rifle grenades on civilians that I didn't have enough for the guys with riot shields later.

What Russia is concerned that it is being unfairly portrayed in video game? Russia has some sort of stellar human rights record to protect? The Russian government's level of hypocriticism is staggering.

No, what Russia is concerned is not, that they are unfairly portrayed in a video game. They find it disgusting that an american company publishes a game, were you can mass murder hundreds of innocent people in the name of good. Again, I doubt that the same scene in the game could be played on the JFK airport.
The vocal protest would blow away Activision and Infinity Ward.

By the way, the US doesn't have a stellar human rights record to protect either.

It's a game! GROW UP!

"It's a game! GROW UP! "

Six posts and there it is, the most stupid argument on earth. If games want to be taken seriously, as serious as literature, films, theater, it's you who have to grow up. If games are some kind of cultural expression, then it must be possible to criticize this cultural expression.
If you say, it's just a game, you say it's a worthless toy for bored 15 year old middle class boys, but then don't come and complain that nobody wants to understand what a great artform games are, cause then those people are 100% right.

"If games want to be taken seriously, as serious as literature, films, theater, it's you who have to grow up."

Who says they have to be treated like literature and theater? It's definitely entertainment and art. Don't give me that rhetorical nonsense! The same issue was made with RE5 being politically motivated. IW put in a scene to put you in the shoes of a terrorist. You don't like it, don't play it. They even tell you as soon as you insert the disc about a very questionable scene and you can turn it off.

This PC nonsense has got to stop.

I willl say it again, GROW UP. Enjoy the game for the game.

Not it doesn't put you in the shoes of a terrorist, it puts you in the shoes of one of the good guys who infiltrated a terror cell. You kill the people for the greater good. You aren't a terrorist, you are a hero.

You say games are entertainment and art. I expect from entertainment AND from art a substantial viewpoint. I don't play a game like "Ethnic Cleansing", cause I don't support it's political stance. From your point of view, it's only a game.

Art tells us something about the world and art tells us something about the way it's creators see the world. COD4 let the player commit war crimes and COD5 let the player commit mass murder. Both says a lot about the state of mind great parts of the major games industry are in right now.

Imagine this, COD6, at the beginning, the player takes active part in the highjacking of the 9/11 planes (as an undercover agent of course). He can walk around freely in one of the planes, that's heading to the WTC. He can kill any passenger (he doesn't have to). People all around him are crying and begging for mercy. At the end of this level, he has to enter the pilots cabin, cause one of the kidnappers has an heart attack, he has to fly the plane into the WTC.

Do you think Infinity Ward could publiush this game? I don't think so. It isn't that the content of the game doesn't matter, it is more that the content of COD5 is mainstream within a very militaristic and aggressive gamer community. This community is adressed by the US Army who lend plenty of support for every military shooter that is developed today.

After 9/11 the US Army said they want Hollywood to produce more patriotic films, that show the US Army in a good light. Hollywood refused to do so, but that wasn't necessary, the games industry willingly jumped in to fill this gap.

Games can be art, just like any other art form, the creators have to face the fact, that their works are statements. Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph des Willens" isn't just a movie, Ayan Rand's "Atlas shrugged" isn't just a book, "Ethnic Cleansing" isn't just a game.

As a Russian, I do get tired of shooting other Russians much in the same way Germans are tired of shooting at other Germans. At its core level, I don't have anything wrong with the scene. I do, however, take notice to the game's stereotyping and marketing material. In the same way I don't care for 6 days in Fallujah... its not because I disapprove of their sources, its that the game isn't really doing anything different when it claims that it is.

I believe this entire subject can be best described by the theater scene in Inglorious Bastards.

Regardless of all the issues, it's not like the official release of the game is the most played one in Russia, with all due respects. Most people play pirated versions, which will obviously not be censored.

@Christian
"Imagine this, COD6, at the beginning, the player takes active part in the highjacking of the 9/11 planes (as an undercover agent of course). He can walk around freely in one of the planes, that's heading to the WTC. He can kill any passenger (he doesn't have to). People all around him are crying and begging for mercy. At the end of this level, he has to enter the pilots cabin, cause one of the kidnappers has an heart attack, he has to fly the plane into the WTC"

Well that doesn't make sense.....why the hell would you send an undercover operative to partake in what is essentially a kamikaze mission?? It wouldn't achieve anything, while the terrorist attack is proposed as something that's going to happen whether your a part of it or not, being a part of is a way to get to a higher link in the chain, it's like the FBI agents who infiltrated the mafia in America not too long back, I don't doubt they also did/or at least had to passively take part in unspeakable things to other Americans just to bring down the bigger prize. Also that mission, while designed for shock and awe to a large degree, is really, really story critical. Without it your going to have a hard time understanding what's going on later on in the game and why it's happening.

@Keichel

I apologise for going off topic, but why would an under cover agent go along with flying a plane into ANYTHING? Going on a murder spree as part of an undercover job is one thing, but to suicide bomb? I can't imagine any mole doing that, ever.

so is anyone in Russia going to actually buy the retail version now? i would feel ripped off and head straight for a pirated copy.

on a side note, i'm beyond sick of killing Germans and Russians. South Americans? North Dakotans? Fijians? surely there is someone else left to kill. no more WWII shooters!

@Jonathan Howland and Christopher Wragg

You logic is strange, it sureley doen't make any sense to send somebody on a undercover mission, were he has to assist one of the most dangerous enemies of you own goverment, in mass murdering hundreds of civilians, like it happens in COD5.

It would be much easier and much safer and much more rewarding in capturing this particular enemy of your own goverment, especially when you can do this with the help of the russian authorities.

If one person is this dangerous, and COD5 says Makarov is such a dangerous person, then it arresting him, would be much more effective then assisting him in atrocious crimes.

The plot isn't logic here, it was developed for pure shock value.

PS: sorry for the typos, the batteries of my keyboard were empty and I didn't realize that.

I found myself rolling my eyes at the undercover mission, but I stopped playing the game after the subsequent mission.

Russia invades the US in response? For real? Paratroops? Really?

Lets ignore, just for a moment, any controversy surrounding the lead-up and look at the ludicrous response (both diplomatically and tactically). The Americas are lucky to have the worlds largest anti-tank ditches on both sides them, and I don't think that air-superiority over North America is really an option for Russia. Just how, exactly, do these hypothetical-Russians plan on making this a successful campaign?

Maybe they were going for an epic story, and I'm not giving them a fair shot at telling that story. It is just my opinion that if you want to weave that kind of a story, that simply saying, "It's fiction!" is not sufficient. If one were to re-cast the players in MW2 into a sci-fi universe, there would be no(t as big of a) controversy.

Setting your game in the real-world, using real places and peoples as an inspiration is like licensing IP. You save time in content creation, because your developers already have a very clear vision of what they are trying to make, and you piggyback off of the notoriety that IP brings. At the same time, though, you must follow the guidelines of the IP holders. In the real world, though, the "IP holders" are the cultures, and places you portray, and they have little recourse to protect how their property is interpreted. Instead it is the responsibility of the developer to treat the IP with respect, and it is the responsibility of the consumer to hold the developer accountable.

In my opinion, people could go around in circles about art vs. not art, controversial vs. non-controversial, but I feel that the "licensed IP" was not respected and that is the larger wrong. Just because a nation can't send a C&D for misuse of their property, does not mean that we developers can cast their country or people in any way we chose, under the banner of "it's fiction."

@Pat Wilson

Again, what you have here is a bad comparison between real Russia and Fictional Russia. Fictional Russia has been overtaken by a highly equipped and trained Ultranationalist force. Through several years of propoganda they have most of the country hating the other developed western nations, they also have a 5 year military buildup. Actually considering the people who have control of Russia at that point in the game, (I really hate to think what fictional Russia's economy is like after this Ultranationalist Coup and Militant Buildup). *Spoiler warning* As for the armed response, considering allready high tension between Russia and America at that point, Makarov and Shepherd conspire to cleverly pose a situation that would blow that tension into open conflict. While it's fantastical in nature, it's no less reasonable than a Tom Clancy Novel.

@Christian Keichel
I....I think you're missing the point. It's in fact plausible, if you try to capture the lower rung of a group all you do is scare away the bigger fish, the operative was to become close to Makarov so as to infiltrate higher up. That's how the mission was posed.... Lets also not forget that *spoiler again* Shepherd was in on the entire thing, so sending an operative into such an overblown terrorist act makes sense for him, all he had to do was get it passed by central, hence the clever wording.