Fox News has run an extended feature on EA's controversial decision to allow gamers to play as the Taliban in the multiplayer mode of Medal Of Honor.

The US TV station - which has butted heads with EA before, in more smirk-raising circumstances - remained surprisingly even-handed throughout the discussion.

The network's Fox & Friends presenter described the game as "allowing players to play as The Taliban against the US, with the objective of gunning down American troops".

He then passed over to Karen Meredith, a Gold Star Mom whose son died in the Iraq War.

She commented: "War is not a game, period. The fact that they've already done games about World War 2... that's far removed from our current history, people aren't dying in World War 2 any more.



"Right now, we're going into a really, really, bad time in Afghanistan. We've just come off of the worst month of casualties in the whole war. This game is going to be released in October, so families that are burying their children are going to be seeing this... It's disrespectful.'

An EA response read out on the show read:

'Medal Of Honor is set in today's war, putting players in the boots of today's soldier... We give gamers the opportunity to play both sides. Most of us have been doing this since we were seven. If someone's the cop, someone's got to be the robber, someone's got to be the pirate, somebody's got to be the alien. In Medal Of Honor multiplayer, someone has to be the Taliban.'

Fox's anchor then suggested that the average age of a gamer in the US is 39 - and asked Meredith whether adults shouldn't be allowed to choose whether or not to play the game.

Meredith showed decent knowledge of the subject - and said that public pressure led to Sony's Shock & Awe and Atomic Games' Six Days In Fallujah being pulled from release schedules.

She added: "My son didn't get to start over when he was killed. His life was over and I had to deal with that every day. There's 1200 families from Afghanistan that have to live with this every day.

"And we live it - it's not a game... EA is very cavalier about it: 'Well, it's just a game.' But it isn't a game to the people who are suffering from the loss of the children and loved ones."

DICE, which created the multiplayer section of Medal Of Honor for EA, has said it wasn't intending to "push or provoke too hard" with the Taliban content.