For those who were/are unaware, there was/is some small controversy (because controversies never heal, the wounds only close momentarily, to be reopened again) over the "No Russian" level of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.  You play a CIA operative placed so deep undercover in the most evil organization of the most evil terrorist mastermind "Makarov" that you participate in a terrorist attack on the Moscow airport (on which no research was apparently done, as it looks nothing like its modern day incarnation) and butcher hundreds? thousands? with sweeps of your machine gun.  Predictably, a tizzy resulted.  There are two camps: developers Infinity Ward and their supporters—who cite freedom of expression and the moral point that results from the horror and terror—and their opposition, who cite the violence against running, screaming innocents as indicative of a deep depravity and desensitzation on the part of gamers in general and Infinity Ward in particular.

 It is important to establish some basic facts about the setting of the scene: though the events that transpire in the course of the level are integral to the Red Dawn fan fiction fantasy daydream (plus A-rab killin'!) that passes for the game's plot, the whole level is skippable, the player needn't kill any unarmed innocents themselves, and there are no points to be scored, no achievements to be unlocked in the course of the level.

 The problem is not the entirely pointless and irrelevant controversy; the problem is that the scene fails to recapture the "split desire to make something that’s fun and explodey as well as sombre and affecting" that John Walker of Rock, Paper, Shotgun cites as "the pearl-generating irritant" of the first two Call of Duty games.  As an enemy of compromise in artistic vision—even the sparse shreds of it that float about this weary blockbuster franchise—I take the position that the factions of the controversy have neglected.  It is not a matter of whether the scene should have been included or not.  It is a matter of whether it should have been skippable or not.  "No Russian" should have been a mandatory level. And the failure to slaughter  innocents should have been met with a Game Over.

 The problem with killing in games like Modern Warfare 2 is not its frequency, its ease, not even its supplantation of all other modes of existence as the one mode of existence.  The problem with killing in games is that the player is not made to feel it.  Not made to feel the vibrancy of the life extinguished, or the hollow left in the world by an abrupt burst of gunfire.  Not every game needs come with a moral disclaimer of YOU ARE KILLING PEOPLE THINK ABOUT IT FOR ONCE, lest all the  fun of mindless gunplay cease, but Infinity Ward set the bar for itself with its earliest games, and it expressed the desire to situate No Russian as the game's moral barometer, the horrendous nag in the back of everyone's mind for the rest of the game: what did I do?  What am I doing?  But by making it skippable, by not requiring the player to take part, to really attach themselves to what was going on in front of them, they gave the player an out.  This Get Out of Morality Free Card undermines everything Infinity Ward wanted to accomplish with the level, and relegates it to the silly, pointless, juvenile, needlessly controversial bloodbath that it is.