New York Times has released an in depth article that looks into the upcoming Medal of Honor. The article sheds light on the controversy of the game, and offers some pretty interesting quotes from the mouths of the creators.
Some interesting factoids that surfaced in the article include requesting pentagon permission to record the audio of Apache helicopters taking off and landing, and firing their weapons at targets, that were also being recorded. They also fired weapons in a mock Iraq village that had been rigged with over 100 microphones. The military uses the village for training purposes. It puts some perspective into the amount of work and money that goes into the production of these triple A titles.
One of the most interesting quotes reveals the ever increasing risk of developing big budget blockbuster game releases. Greg Goodrich, the executive producer for the new Medal of Honor said that they won’t be able to produce a sequel if less than three million copies of the game are sold. To elaborate a bit, that means that if the game sells two million copies, EA will consider the Medal of Honor reboot a failure, and will likely not pursue future sequels.
The article is focused mostly on videogames, and their representation of war. Medal of Honor, "want[s] the player to feel not like they’re in a movie, but like they’re in Afghanistan,” according to the computer-graphics supervisor Waylon Brinck, which is why family members of soldiers have been protesting the game.
The article represents both sides of the argument well and is a worthy read.
