Activision Wants Video Games to Be Treated as Movies by Mainstream Public

Right after releasing the controversial Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Activision has talked about the perception of video games in recent years, and how, through the voice of its publishing CEO, Eric Hirshberg, it hopes that they’ll soon be viewed in the same way as movies.

The gaming industry has tried to evolve in recent years by approaching more sensitive subjects in a serious manner, while still entertaining players. Sadly, some of these experiences, like Six Days in Fallujah which focused on the ongoing war in Iraq, were immediately attacked by the mainstream media, which said that games were making fun of a serious issue.

Activision’s Eric Hirshberg, however, wants the media and the general public to abandon these misconceptions and look at games in the same way as movies, equating the company’s own Call of Duty game with war movies like The Hurt Locker.

“There's a sense that games are more exploitive in a way that The Hurt Locker —which also was designed as form of entertainment—isn't,” Hirshberg told Kotaku. “I think they are an art form and I think that 'too soon' criteria is not applied to things like Green Zone. Or United 93. There will be a time when we look back and find it quaint that video games were so controversial. I think the active ingredient to changing that attitude is time.”

In terms of popularity, video games, specifically Activision’s Call of Duty series, has overtaken movies, with Modern Warfare 3 selling millions of units and grossing over $775 million in sales during its first five days of availability.

Previous Call of Duty titles have always flirted with controversy, especially with Modern Warfare 2’s infamous ‘No Russian’ level, where players were able to gun down innocent civilians in a Russian airport.

Modern Warfare 3 also had a similar sequence, involving a terrorist attack on London, but it didn’t attract the media attention that badly, so perhaps some progress is being made.