BBFC cools Medal of Honor ban talk

UK ratings board the BBFC has said it is satisfied with Medal of Honor's 18 rating, ruling out a ban as called for by UK defence secretary Liam Fox. Fox had attacked the upcoming first-person military shooter for being set in the Afghanistan conflict and for letting players assume the role of Taliban fighters in the game's multiplayer mode. Fox said he was "disgusted and angry" about the "thoroughly un-British game." He called for a retailer boycott, urging stockists "to show their support for our armed forces and ban this tasteless product."

Sue Clark, head of communications for the BBFC, said Medal of Honor is "at the lower end" of the 18-and-over classification, implying the adult content in the game is not extreme, with the PEGI online classification system covering the multiplayer activity. She added that if Medal of Honor had included British soldiers, it would not have been exceptional. "The game does not involve British troops," Clark said, "but there are games both in modern and historical settings which do involve British troops."

In a statement responding to Fox's criticism, EA pointed out that the Sunday Times story in which the comments originated contained significant inaccuracies, including the involvement of British forces. "Medal of Honor does not allow players to kill British soldiers. British troops do not feature in the game," EA said. The EA spokesperson said that although Medal of Honor will let players take on the roles of both US forces and the Taliban in multiplayer mode, multiplayer combat often involves players fighting on either side of a conflict. "Many popular video games allow players to assume the identity of enemies including Nazis and terrorists."

Richard Wilson, of UK games industry body TIGA, told GameSpot UK that though he understands "why some people feel sensitive about this issue," Medal of Honor will not be the first game to feature a modern war scenario and will be age-rated as is appropriate. "The crucial point is that this game is 18-rated, so should therefore only be played by a mature adult audience able to understand the difference between a computer game and actual events in Afghanistan. Consumers will be the ultimate judge of this game," Wilson said.

Medal of Honor, a reboot for the long-running first-person shooter series, is due for release in October. Fox's high-profile criticism of the game superficially resembles last year's row over Modern Warfare 2's "No Russian" level, in which similarly high-profile comments came from MP Keith Vaz--though the content under attack in that case, in which the player fights alongside terrorists in an airport massacre, was a scripted single-player section, not the ability to play as the enemy in a multiplayer mode.