When EA eventually decided to scrap the idea of allowing players to be the Taliban in the recently released Medal of Honor reboot, some took issue with the publisher backing down from the controversy. Danny Bilson, THQ’s head of Core Games, has a different issue. Bilson has told Eurogamer that EA shouldn’t have even considered having the Taliban in the game.
"I wouldn't have put them in in the first place," said Bilson.
Bilson referenced EA’s Medal of Honor in an interview surrounding THQ’s Homefront, which focuses on an attack by a unified North and South Korea. He explains that the title is speculative fiction and not based on real events, even using another EA franchise, Battlefield, as an example.
"In Battlefield, when you had the Mid East Alliance and the Chinese and the Americans, it was all fantasy and I didn't mind playing one side or the other,” he explained. "When you get into reality – and that's real, that's not speculative science-fiction like ours – people are dying at their hands. I take my games seriously. That's why they're fun to play, because you care about them. I don't want to play as the Taliban, particularly."
"If we [the U.S.] were in a shooting war with them [North Korea] and people's children were dying at their hands, you'd have to watch a bit what you do, as Medal of Honor ran into a little bit in Afghanistan,” he added.
Bilson explained that a generational gap may be at work in the plethora of World War II titles that preceeded Activision’s game-changing Modern Warfare game.
“No offense, but I don't like playing as the Germans in World War II, either. That's just me. I just don't, because I take my games seriously and I have my heroes and villains in my psyche. I immerse myself in a game and care. Also, I'm older. I grew up with World War II as a big part of reality for my parents and my grandparents,” he said.
“For a younger generation, it's just a strategy game, like with board games or RTS. I'm not as sensitive as I was when I was younger but it's emotional and it's personal. I lost some relatives in World War II, so I always have that somewhere in my mind - some relatives in Poland. The next guy goes, oh, I don't relate it to that. It's a videogame.”
Surprisingly, Bilson used to work on the Medal of Honor series during his tenure at Electronic Arts.
"I had a lot of friends and family members who worked on that Medal of Honor game. They worked really hard to create an incredibly respectful experience of the American soldier. But we don't have to worry about respecting the Taliban. We don't because there are a lot of issues we have with them socially and politically,” he said.
In the end, Bilson says that he aims to entertain at THQ, not to make a political statement.
"I'm not here to do politics. I'm not here to make a political statement. We're making entertainment. But we don't want to offend. We really don't, because if people are dying in the real world that becomes sensitive,” he closed. "When it's up to me, I'll make certain sensitive choices in all of these things."
