In response to last week's terrorist attacks, game makers have modified or delayed the release of games with scenes that might now be considered insensitive. But some game players have gone on the offensive.
One group of players who took matters into their own hands made use of a feature in the game Rogue Spear that lets players create their own missions.
PHOTO: NY TIMES
The group, working over the Internet, threw together a mission in which the objective is to enter Afghanistan and assassinate Osama bin Laden, the principal suspect in last week's terrorist attacks. They released it on the Web on Sunday evening.
Andrew Baye, a 28-year-old Web developer in Altamont Springs, Florida, worked on the graphics for the mission, including the likeness of bin Laden. He said that the mission was not intended to make light of the current crisis. "A lot of people feel powerless to act, and this gives them a chance to vent," Baye said.
Marcus Beer, a spokesman for UbiSoft Entertainment, the publisher of Rogue Spear, said the company had no control over player-generated material and that he could not comment on the Afghanistan mission.
But some game companies did act regarding their own games. Before last week, Microsoft's Flight Simulator, one of the oldest and best-selling computer games on the market, was also one of the least controversial. Then television reporters began showing viewers how the game allows players to fly a virtual airliner into a virtual World Trade Center.
In about a week, Microsoft will offer a downloadable software patch that will allow owners of Flight Simulator to remove the World Trade Center from its model of New York City, said Matthew Pilla, a company spokesman. The 2002 version of the program has been due for early October but has been postponed indefinitely.
Flight Simulator also got some attention last week because of speculation that the software might have helped the terrorists learn to fly commercial airliners.
A spokesman for FlightSafety International said that the program is among those used to train new pilots at the company's school in Vero Beach, Florida. But he said reports that some of the terrorists had attended the school had so far proven to be false.
Pilla said that as a licensed pilot, he could verify that Flight Simulator is "not what it takes to learn to fly an airplane." "The speculation about this product is unfortunate," he added. Nevertheless, he said, Microsoft was removing removing the towers from the software, he said.
Several publishers are changing their plans for violent games. Activision and Konami have said they will alter New York scenes in games that have yet to be released.
And Electronic Arts, a major game publisher, temporarily suspended Majestic, a conspiracy-heavy game with online and real-world elements, including panicked phone calls from game characters in trouble. The company restarted the game a week after the attacks.
Electronic Arts will also make changes to the boxes of two products to remove scenes of world landmarks' being engulfed by war.
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