gamepolitics: Jihadists Train on Commercial Video Game Mods

Game Politics (

gamepolitics) wrote,
@ 2006-05-05 08:05:00

Entry tags:

bf2, congress, dan devlin, dod, ea, iraq, islamists, jihad, saic

Jihadists Train on Commercial Video Game Mods

Are first-person shooters teaching kids to kill?

Islamist kids, that is...

Reuters reports that modified video games have become part of a "global propaganda campaign" in which jihadists encourage Muslim youth to make war against the United States.

As this week's controversial re-rerating of Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion has reminded us, video games - especially PC games - are relatively easy to modify, or "mod." That fact has not escaped notice of al Qaeda and other militant Islamist organizations, which have modded games like EA's popular modern combat game, Battlefield 2.

An official from the U.S. Deparment of Defense told Congress that the mods can be downloaded from jihadist websites.

"What we have seen is that any video game that comes out... they'll modify it and change the game for their needs," said Dan Devlin, a public diplomacy specialist with the DoD, who testified before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Also testifying were consultants from Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC), a Defense contractor based in San Diego which is under contract to monitor militant websites for the U.S. government.

In the BF2 mod, the game's original video trailer has been altered to show a jihadist carrying an automatic weapon into battle with U.S. forces.

"I was just a boy when the infidels came to my village in Blackhawk helicopters," the narrator says. Onscreen images in the trailer show video of firefights, helicopter assaults and President Bush calling the war on terrorism a "crusade" in a speech given shortly after September 11th.

EA spokesman Jeff Brown acknowledged that mods are increasingly common, with little game-makers can do about the issue.

"Millions of people create mods on games around the world," Brown said. "We have absolutely no control over them. It's like drawing a mustache on a picture."

GP: A shout-out to numerous GP readers who forwarded this story!

Want to talk about it? You can discuss this story via the "comments" feature (click below), or in the new GamePolitics Forums...

(42 comments) - (Post a new comment)

	Great hilaryduffgta 2006-05-05 11:14 am UTC (link)
	Something else now for the anti gamers to complain about and im sure He will go on and on and on. though i am curious to see how it is modded mainly cause i've never even played the original battlefield or bf2 (Reply to this)

evilrockstu
2006-05-05 11:30 am UTC (link)

I think it's about high time publishers started standing up for mod makers instead of this childish pointing and saying 'he did it!' whenever the press gets a dumb idea in their head. I mean, good grief... half the success of the Battlefield games comes from fantastic mod support, I'm talking the likes of Desert Combat making Battlefield super-successful, and EA calls it 'drawing a mustache on a picture'?

Give me a break. When is this industry going to start making a stand instead of shuffling along gazing at the ground with it's hands in it's pockets blaming everyone else?

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	dkh 2006-05-05 09:00 pm UTC (link)
	Well.... it is everyone else's fault. We complain about everything. Too much copy protection or game protection, we bitch. They allow us to mod, we feel like it's their fault. They can't win (sans money-wise). (Reply to this) (Parent)

Oh really?

enmitywithin
2006-05-05 12:12 pm UTC (link)

I mean seriously. because we ALL KNOW that games are responsible for violence, games can teach you how to aim a gun, and games can cause.... you know what? no. they don't.

Seriously. the closest I can think of this even to begin helping the terrorists is by being able to memorize a single route into a building to bomb. These are friggin TERRORISTS. I mean seriously. the most I can see coming out of this is a muslim network of B2 players.

This sounds suspiciously like that alabama case where it was tried to prove that GTA was able to teach a kid to accurately shoot a weapon.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	Re: Oh really? artheleron 2006-05-05 02:37 pm UTC (link)
	I also like how no one's pointing out that the US Army has its OWN murder-simulator. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	Bullcrap grimm24 2006-05-05 01:33 pm UTC (link)
	Is it just me or does this seem like a joke? Seriously terrorists are going to train using Battlefield 2?!?! Wow, they are in for a big suprise when they try to fight real soldiers. (Reply to this)

	dr_ian 2006-05-05 01:46 pm UTC (link)
	"I was just a boy when the infidels came to my village in Blackhawk helicopters" is a line from Team America: World Police. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	gamepolitics 2006-05-05 02:30 pm UTC (link)
	....sounded familiar. thx for reminding. America, F-yeah! ;-) Maybe they just dubbed the sound file in... (Reply to this) (Parent)

	jindewinter 2006-05-05 01:50 pm UTC (link)
	"I was just a boy when the infidels came to my village in Blackhawk helicopters," Wasn't this a line from Team America? (Reply to this)

	rhanlav 2006-05-05 02:04 pm UTC (link)
	"I was just a boy when the infidels came to my village in Blackhawk helicopters" I know that quote! Its from Team America: World Police! Its when Gary has to go undercover to infiltrate the terrorist organization! Oy vey. I'm going back to sleep now before this gets more strange. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	Hoooly crap startropics 2006-05-05 02:48 pm UTC (link)
	IT'S DERKADERKASTAN: THE GAME On online play, do the Americans play as Team America? (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Re: Hoooly crap

rhanlav
2006-05-05 09:52 pm UTC (link)

Now you have me wondering if the last 'boss' is the Korean leader. ;) Ok, so let me get this straight, someone ripping off the audio track of Team America and putting it in a video game is suddenly gunna make it a terrorist training simulator? Does that mean me playing Alien vs Predator 2 mean I'm trained to fight against hordes of evil bug creatures that want to lay their eggs in my chest?

I think not! Oh well, I'm sure this will blow over in a while, just because this probably isn't real. Hell, if this was gunna be a mod for terrorists, why in the heck would it be in English?

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	traiklin 2006-05-05 02:11 pm UTC (link)
	well let's just ban all modification to games! after all they are evil and horrible and only serve to get the ratings changed or train terrorists! oh wait, they used Battlefield 2? the game that started off as a MODIFICATION to Battlefield 1942? oh, oopsy. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	what about... asternmadkatz 2006-05-05 03:15 pm UTC (link)
	...America's Army...I realize this isn't a mod...but it's practically the same thing. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	Could be a fun game. startropics 2006-05-05 02:47 pm UTC (link)
	Do I get to have fun with my 71 Dark Haired Virgins before I respawn? (Reply to this)

primarylupine
2006-05-05 02:54 pm UTC (link)

Just like the "White Power" Doom mod taught kids to kill blacks. Oy.

What's wrong with a mod that turns the game around and lets you play the other side? After watching a special on firefights in Sadr City the other day I was pondering a version of Kuma:War that would turn things around a allow someone to play as the insurgents battling the US forces. Does the DoD freak out that you can already play as the Iraqi forces in Desert Combat and BF2?

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	WTF? grimm24 2006-05-05 05:50 pm UTC (link)
	Um, what do you mean whats wrong with playing the other side? To kill U.S. Soldiers?!? WTF is wrong with you?!? (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Re: WTF?

gamepolitics
2006-05-05 07:04 pm UTC (link)

grimm, have you ever played BF2? or any of the genre of historical or psuedo shooters? There are Iraqis, Nazis, terrorists, etc.

Particularly in multiplayer games, somebody has to be the bad guys. In fact, you often don't have a choice, you're simply assigned to a team.

I didn't like it, but it should be thought of as what it is - a wargame. even the military plays as the bad guys - and tries to win - in Opfors maneuvers.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	Re: WTF? premo_maggot 2006-05-05 09:35 pm UTC (link)
	not in america's army, no matter what the other team looks like terrorists/opposing armies and the objectives are set up so it's plausible that the US army could be on a mission there in either case. also, when do you get to be a nazi? in WWII shooters you are the Wehrmacht (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wehrmacht), not the nazis. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

MOH Multiplayer

timed95
2006-05-06 12:43 am UTC (link)

Meaning the first one from a long while ago, I haven't played the recent ones, you could play as an SS officer, regular soldier and so on.

I believe saying the Wehrmacht weren't the Nazi's is rather streching it- The German police force might not've been associated with them before they rose to power and might not be associated now after they're long gone, but if you play as an officer beating people down in the ghetto, people would lump that in with them regardless of semantics.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

Re: WTF?

jythie
2006-05-05 08:29 pm UTC (link)

Ahm.. so it's only ok to kill people in video game so long as they aren't american? Only 'foreigners'?

The basic plot of such a mod is nothing,... swtich around some nouns and this wouldn't get even a grain of press.

It also sounds like this mod is fighting soldiers rather civilian targets, which would bring in to question how 'terrorist' focused it is in the first place.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

Re: WTF?

primarylupine
2006-05-05 09:20 pm UTC (link)

Well, having played through Deus Ex for the eleventy-third time, where you're kind of forced into joining the other side, it does make a bit of a dilemma when you must turn on the same UNATCO troops that looked up to you as a hero.

I'm not saying that I enjoy playing one side over the other (unless you're talking Horde over Alliance), but having the option to play the "bad" guy can be interesting. Why else would they have made Half Life: Opposing Force or City of Villains if people didn't want to turn the original game around? Someone has to play the terrorists for the counter-terrorists to have someone to fight, right?

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	Re: WTF? braindead1 2006-05-05 11:31 pm UTC (link)
	I hope you realize that your not killing US soldiers in vidio games. Your not even killing people! Your not even killing anything. Its like firing blanks at cardbord. With no blanks. (Reply to this) (Parent)

monte924
2006-05-05 11:07 pm UTC (link)

There isn't anything wrong with playing as the otherside but that's not the real issue here. Playing the otherside is perfectly fine as long as the players remember that it's just a game and nothing more. The problem here is that the game wasn't just modded to allow players to play as the oppsite side but it was modded to be a form of propaganda. This mod is meant to send out a message and generate hate.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

"Modding", in truth, is really nothing new, even other media suffer

nightwng2000
2006-05-05 04:28 pm UTC (link)

How so?

Ahem. Ok, first off, I'm not singling anyone out. You'll see this all over.

A generic religious text. Take ANY. Christian, Muslim, etc, etc, etc.
How many times have you seen someone of any particular religion take their generic religious text and interpret it their own way? One person will read the text and come out an honorable intelligent individual. Taking the text word for word. Yet another will make minor interpretations from the text. Still others will completely read into the text things that another reader would think was coming from some other text entirely. It happens often, and though we call it "interpretation", it still amounts, in some form, a type of "modding" the text. Those "modded" forms of the text do tend to reach out to others and influence them.

Nor is religion alone. So can education be as well. History's recordings can be documented one way, but someone will always come along and "interpret" a different set of events. Sometimes, this is called "revisionism". But it still amounts to a form of "modding".

While they be treated different by giving them different names, it's still a matter of changing the original information to suit a personal viewpoint and/or agenda with the possibility of spreading that altered information to others.

So, really, we've been experiencing "modding" in a variety of forms for far longer than video games have existed.

nightwng2000

(Reply to this)

Good for the goose

eternallegenduk
2006-05-05 05:26 pm UTC (link)

America's Army is OK because both sides play as the US and see the other side as the Enemy. This BF2 mod is bad because you get to shoot at the US team.

Right.

The "training" is the same whatever the skin. Point gun at enemy-shaped polygons, pull trigger, move on. The overall look shouldn't really matter, should it? Otherwise, how did Doom train people to kill schoolchildren?

American-made games will as a general rule feature the US as the "good guys." They fight for freedom, etc. C&C: Generals is one example that springs to mind, in which the Chinese use propaganda towers and nukes, the GLA use anthrax and suicide bombers, and the US has an ambulance special unit and a no-fallout superweapon.

An alternative headline: "Non-Americans Use Games to Push Agenda"

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	Re: Good for the goose grimm24 2006-05-05 05:52 pm UTC (link)
	What?!? Are you saying that American soldiers deserve to die or somthing?!? Seriously, when has the U.S. not been the good guys?!? Don't use your liberal propganda on me (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Re: Good for the goose

jindewinter
2006-05-05 07:13 pm UTC (link)

Grimm, Good and Evil are realitive. There is no such thing as a true good or true evil in this world, the terms change from the point of view of every person. Take 9/11 for example, over here in America we saw that as an act of pure evil, but take the POV of an Al Queda(sp?) opperative and the attacks were holy and justified. It all just depends on where ones views and beliefs lie.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	Re: Good for the goose elricbrother3 2006-05-05 07:18 pm UTC (link)
	The incredible HULK. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	Re: Good for the goose jaykaos 2006-05-05 07:56 pm UTC (link)
	He's saying that American games always portray their side as the good guys, while other countries would make their troops/fighters/whatever the heroes. Are you being serious with these posts, grimm? You're acting pretty...obtuse. (Reply to this) (Parent)

Re: Good for the goose

jythie
2006-05-05 08:37 pm UTC (link)

Did you skip high school history?

The US, like any country, esp any powerfull country, has anything but a sparkling clean past, starting from all the wars with the various indian tribes that today would probably be considerd ethnic cleansing.

The US has done good, and it has done bad. As a country, we've done a lot of both,.. though I have noticed that some people get pissed at teachers that dare to say anything even vaugly negative or critical of the country so many history classes kinda glaze over the bad parts.

And there is no 'deserving' here. In conflicts, wars, soldiers fight and kill eachother. Under international law, our soldiers are as much fair game as anyone else's.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Re: Good for the goose

eternallegenduk
2006-05-07 06:33 pm UTC (link)

Curses. He saw right through my carefully-crafted statement and, reading between the lines, saw that I was saying Americans deserve to die. Really.

My point wasn't really about Americans at all. I wasn't trying to wax morical on who is right and wrong in terms of war. My point was simply that a game in which you run around with a gun and shoot enemy soldiers doesn't significantly change depending on what the enemy looks like. The training - combat tactics, aim, conditioning the kill response - is largely the same.

This is demonstrated admirably in America's Army, where the only difference between the teams is how they appear to each other.

And lest we forget one of the most popular mods of all time, in which half of the players take on the role of terrorists and have to set bombs and kill VIPs.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

Re: Good for the goose

mnementh2230
2006-05-06 04:24 pm UTC (link)

Grimm24, that's exactly the sort of attitude that will get you in trouble when you get to a center of higher learning... like HIGHSCHOOL. Take a few history courses. Here are some examples of the U.S. not being good guys:

- giving blankets of recently sick settlers to native americans. The settlers had resistances to the sicknesses (like small pox and mumps) due to having come from families from countries where those diseases were not uncommon. The native americans had no such resistances. In effect, we used biological warfare on native americans, just so they'd die off and we could take their land.

- There are numerous other examples of the American government commiting what ammounts to genocide against Native Americans.

- Ever seen the beginning of "Saving Private Ryan"? It was not an uncommon practice to shoot surrendering enemies (when the soldiers shot at all - getting our forces to actually shoot, and then shoot at the enemy, was a big problem. Some historians speculate that over half our soldiers never fired their weapons, and some of those that did intentionally missed so as not to take a human life.)

- in Vietnam, American forces napalmed entire villages. Men, Women, and Children. Just to kill a few Viet Cong.

- WW2's "Lend Lease" program. We provided incredible amounts of war material to England and other Allies during WW2, which was good. The bad part was that we overcharged our allies for said materials - England only JUST THIS WEEK finished paying off their debt to us. War profiteering, much? (yes, this one is a mixed blessing, as it kept an offshore threat to the Nazis and gave us a staging point for invasion)

- Gay Rights. More than half of the American people don't want to let gay people be happy, simply because of their sexual preference or a percieved threat to their religious morality (freedom of religion/from religion?). It's a very strange thing to me, because homosexuality has been observed in other species besides humans, and yet some people claim it is a concious choice. While America may be ahead of other nations in terms of civil liberties, we're behind on this issue and are moving in the wrong direction, IMHO.

I could go on (especially when you get to Latin America and the Spanish-American war), but I won't.

America has also done worlds of good - we give more humanitarian aid than any other nation in the world (in raw dollars, though not necessarily as a percentage of GDP - not sure on that one), for example.

Seriously, we've got our good and bad here in the U.S. Don't turn a blind eye to one side just to save your pride - you look rediculous. Accept it and move on. That's like saying American never lost a war... HELLO? Vietnam! (again, that's a toughy because we were lowering troop numbers and China was aiding N. Vietnam, among other things).

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	slayemin 2006-05-05 06:48 pm UTC (link)
	Using Battlefield 2 mods as a training tool for terrorists? 50% of me says "so what?" and the other 50% says "who cares". If there's any reason to love this idea, its that the game gives insurgents a false sense of hope and sense of immunity to make them stand still long enough so that we can shoot them before they run away. (Reply to this)

nijikongirl
2006-05-05 08:48 pm UTC (link)

I could see how a mod would encourage them, but not train them. Shooting a gun is way different then clicking your mouse.

I'm waiting for their mod of "dead or alive volleyball" where are the women are forced to wear those black robes and hoods (can't remember what they're called).

.... who am I kidding. Without boobs, that game is nothing.
(sorry if that was way off topic)

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	jythie 2006-05-05 08:57 pm UTC (link)
	From the article, it sounds more like a recruiting/publicity tool then a 'trainer'.. just a way to get young boarderline peeps to develop and interst in thier agenda. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	gamepolitics 2006-05-05 09:25 pm UTC (link)
	more like a recruiting/publicity tool then a 'trainer' Good point (Reply to this) (Parent)

From America's Army Website FAQ's...

premo_maggot
2006-05-05 09:22 pm UTC (link)

Q: At one stage of the game, players are instructed on the fundamentals of basic rifle marksmanship. Does this teach young adults how to shoot a weapon?
A: …there is no way that manipulating a keyboard and mouse, as players do in the Army's game, can provide vital cues on key elements of marksmanship…

We included the rifle range because that is a basic and obvious part of military training; something a new recruit will immediately become familiar with. While the game introduces players to the look and procedures of marksmanship training, clicking a mouse is absolutely not applicable to actual marksmanship training.

When we qualify Soldiers as marksmen we send them to a rifle range. We put a rifle in their hands, not a keyboard and mouse. There are a lot of physical mechanisms entailed in mastering a firearm that cannot be replicated in a game. Indeed, there is no way that manipulating a keyboard and mouse, as players do in the Army's game, can provide vital cues on key elements of marksmanship such as trigger pressure, weapon cant and body position. In the Army, under the guidance of expert coaches, our Soldiers first learn how to align their sights. They then fire many rounds to become accustomed to the recoil of a rifle and to learn how to get a good sight picture.

Even today, in an age when computer games are ubiquitous, teaching rifle marksmanship is a major hurdle in basic training and a major element of Army refresher training for Soldiers in the force. If games taught Soldiers to become marksmen, Army training would be greatly simplified. However, games don't teach our Soldiers how to shoot so we train them with real weapons and ammo on real rifle ranges.

Games may simulate the real world but they do not recreate it. No one would believe that a child could master a racecar by playing a racing game. Likewise, clicking a mouse, as a player does in the Army game, will never teach a person how to shoot.
(Last Updated: 2004-02-02)

(Reply to this)

	father_time89 2006-05-06 12:56 am UTC (link)
	Maybe the secret service will develop a virus or hire some hackers to destroy the mods . . . it might work. (Reply to this)

	father_time89 2006-05-06 12:59 am UTC (link)
	Times like this I'm glad Jackie boy can't comment, we'd know he'd go off on a stupid rant about video games helping terrorists and how he's going to sue EA games and how video games purposely give aid to terrorists, never once checking his facts. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	finaleve 2006-05-06 01:29 am UTC (link)
	or reading the article for that matter. I don't think an american company would actually stem so far like that to begin with... (Reply to this) (Parent)

	finaleve 2006-05-06 01:25 am UTC (link)
	If swear, if politician's do not bash on this, then obviously they are in it for the money. This mod seems to be far worse than a lil boob. (Reply to this)

(42 comments) - (Post a new comment)

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