EA has faced a flare of controversy over the ability to play as the Taliban in Medal of Honor, even leading to a ban on Army and Air Force bases. But GamesIndustry.biz reports that at a Media, Communications and Entertainment conference yesterday, CEO John Riccitiello said the media is to blame for sensationalizing the story.
“The controversy kind of caught my by surprise,” he said. He pointd out that the public beta had been running for weeks, and “no one noticed… until a journalist decided to put the game box in front of a mom who’d lost her son in Afghanistan to create some controversy. I think that says more about the newspapers than it does the game industry.”
But Riccitiello is careful not to vilify the grieving mother herself. “Having said that, we’re incredibly sensitive to the challenges that a non-gamer who doesn’t really understand what I’ve just described might imagine when a journalist who also doesn’t understand a game describes it to her. It tends to excite a little bit of angst.”
