Dubai Mulls 'Spec Ops' Censorship
With the new Army of Two staging the destruction of Shanghai by terrorists, not to mention the ongoing Modern Warfare 2 terrorism brouhaha, we should be used to a new kind of political sensitivity circling the game world.
But the just-announced Spec Ops: The Line and its setting in post-apocalyptic Dubai (which is, of late, more of a reality than a morbid fantasy) has officials in the United Arab Emirates pondering a ban:
"We will have to review the game first before issuing any decision on whether to ban it or allow it," said Mohammed al Mutawa, a video-games censor at the [UAE's National Media Council].
But despite the troubles that have seen the streets of the once-decadently rich city, the largest in the UAE, littered with abandoned luxury cars and broken windows, Spec Ops producer Greg Kasavin says that not only was the game planned long before Dubai's fall, but it was the city's beauty that lured designers:
"It's such a fantastic location from an architectural standpoint," said Kasavin. "The contrast between the exterior devastation and the interior opulence and beautiful architecture seemed to be a really beautiful and effective image."
Previously, Dubai has been called 'the shopping capital of the Middle East' and made itself a competitive global metropolis by building successively taller buildings and hotels with designs fantastic enough to rival the imagination of any Final Fantasy set designer - like Atlantis The Palm.
Dubai Considers Censoring New Spec Ops Game [GamePolitics]
[via The National]
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Posted to Miscellany on 17 December 2009
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