Talk:Special Force (2003 video game)/Archive 1

Archive 1

Controversial games

This game should be linked under controversial games too. Interesting theme but Israel is smart though and won't escalate the conflict by releasing a counter-game. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Exander (talk • contribs) 10:50, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

I added it to Category:Controversial computer and video games. There is probably no need for a counter game, they are already available. // Liftarn — Preceding undated comment added 12:44, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Socom, Counter-Strike, and America's Army for the win!--Exander 00:36, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Sri Lankan special forces link

when I click the link to take me to the article for the Sri Lankan Special Forces, I'm taken to this page (about a special forces game), which has absolutely no relation with what I was looking for. How can this error be corrected? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rayven1lk (talk • contribs) 06:19, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

I have changed the link target in the List of special forces units article so it doesn't link to here any more - it is now a redlink to an article yet to be created. FiggyBee 15:16, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Removed unsourced sentence

I removed the sentence "It carries a deliberate and specific political message, that is pro-Islamic and anti-Israel occupation." It has been tagged as an unsourced statement, and is really unnecessary, since the sourced statements below practically say as much. — Graf Bobby 17:26, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Page Protection

who is in favor of locking this page to non-registered wikians, seeing as it is subject to almost constant vandalism?Andurz 02:15, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

1. Support // Liftarn — Preceding undated comment added 09:41, August 24, 2007 (UTC)
2. Support As someone who knows nothing about the subject, but has reverted vandalism to this article on more than one occasion already. spazure (contribs) (review) 09:44, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

the IP address committing the vandalism was warned, if it happens again I will submit a request for protection. Andurz 18:08, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Where to Purchase

Is ther any information on its purchasability in the Western world. The game looks fun. Basejumper2 17:27, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

It really isnt unless you love the political messege embedded in it. I dont believe you can actually get it without pirating it though anymore. --206.223.233.65 (talk) 09:55, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

You may be able to get Special Force 2: Tale of the Truthful Pledge. // Liftarn (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 18:29, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

"Banned in US" - no source?

I'd love to see a source for that. I wasn't previously aware of any media outright "banned" in the US. By what law or policy is this the case? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.157.154.166 (talk) 09:26, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Game reviews

Although I do not doubt that the game both deserved and received low reviews even disregarding the political message, I think that there ought to be a link to at least one such review, as unbiased and dispassionate as possible. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.122.65.154 (talk) 21:16, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Special Force in Korea

Korean Special Force is an online-only shooter developed in Korea, not related to the Arabic game in any way. See http://pmang.sayclub.com/specialforce/specialforce_home.nwz (in Korean, IE only). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Noirum (talk • contribs) 03:01, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Special Force 2

"Special Force 2" Launch

Hezbollah launches another anti-Israel computer game.

Hezbollah was set Thursday to launch a computer game highlighting the defeat of Israel in its aggressive war on Lebanon last year.

"Special Force 2: Tale of the Truthful Pledge" allows players to engage in war with Israeli soldiers and to blow up Israeli tanks.

The game was to be launched at the Hezbollah "Spider's Web" museum which opened its doors last month in Beirut's southern suburbs.

A member of the design team said "Special Force 2" was intended to give Hezbollah supporters a chance to "feel the victory as if they were taking part in attacks they were cheering for from far."

Children living in the district, like Ali and Hassan Hammiyeh, have long been looking forward to the game. "I'm eagerly awaiting Thursday to go and buy it. I want to feel like a Hezbollah struggler," said Hassan.

Bilal, owner of a nearby computer shop, said: "In the West there are computer games that introduce the Arabs as terrorists. Here, in such games, we're telling the world we're fighting our occupiers."

The game is not Hezbollah's first. In 2003 it introduced Special Force 1, which allowed players to take the part in a battle with Israeli soldiers in areas in southern Lebanon.

On the Special Force 1 box cover a message to users said: "The designers of Special Force are very proud to provide you with this special product, which embodies objectively the defeat of the Israeli enemy and the heroic actions taken by heroes of the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon."

In the new game, Hezbollah use the same concept, but this time focusing on last year's battles with Israeli soldiers in areas like Bint Jbeil and Maroun al Ras.

Israel launched a massive attack on Lebanon on July 12, which lasted 33 days, after Hezbollah guerrillas snatched two of its soldiers in a cross-border attack.

"In this game you can be a partner in the victory. Fight, resist and destroy your enemy's Merkava tank in the game of force and victory," a Hezbollah member said.

"The game features the battles that took place in southern Lebanon in July between our strugglers and the Zionists. Special Force 2 also offers mental and personal training for those who play."

According to Hezbollah, the game can be played in Arabic, English, French and Farsi.

A large crowd was expected to attend the launch at the Spider's Web museum, which has been displaying damaged Israeli military equipment and vehicles gathered by Hezbollah during the July war.

The museum's name echoes a remark from one of the rousing speeches by Hezbollah leader al-Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, who said that Israel is "more feeble than a spider's web."

Ali Ahmed, a spokesman for the museum, said nearly 300,000 people had visited since it opened at the end of July. There were plans to make it a permanent museum, perhaps somewhere in southern Lebanon.

"We are expecting the crowd to be massive on Thursday when we introduced the new game in front the press," he added.

The museum is entered via a reconstructed Hezbollah bunker, where figures dressed in fatigues and holding Kalashnikovs represent Hezbollah guerrillas on the battlefield.

Photographs from the war and weapons and ammunition captured from the Israeli military are displayed, as well as pictures of dead Lebanese children in the Israeli bombings.

Some 1,200 people, mostly women and children, were killed in Lebanon, as well as 159 on the Israeli side, during the conflict.

A centrepiece of the museum is a big picture of an Israeli warship hit by Hezbollah fire, captioned by Nasrallah's televised announcement in which he said: "Watch it burn. It will sink taking with it tens of Zionist Israeli soldiers."

Hezbollah enjoys wide support in Lebanon, especially among the large Shiite Moslem community. The group is proud of thwarting Israel in its avowed objective to crush Hezbollah's military structure and release the two kidnapped Israeli soldiers.

On Tuesday, Nasrallah told a huge rally in Beirut's southern suburbs that Israel would face a "great surprise that could change the course of war and the destiny of the region" if it tried to attack Lebanon again.

Ahmad Husseini — Preceding undated comment added 17:44, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

File:Spf9.jpg Nominated for speedy Deletion

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GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Special Force (2003 video game)/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Shooterwalker (talk · contribs) 13:59, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

I'll take a shot at this one. Look for comments within a week, if not sooner. Shooterwalker (talk) 13:59, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm going to start with the body of the article, and then we can circle back for the lead.

Gameplay

• First sentence isn't bad, but might be a little easier to digest broken into two smaller parts.
• "including their geographic locations, land mines, number of Israeli soldiers, and weather conditions" -> "including their geographic locations, weather conditions, land mine arrangements, and number of combatants."
• " presented with some Hezbollah fighters" -> this is unclear. Is it referring to some type of collectable card system?
• This section is otherwise really well written. Good job.

Development and release

• "Special Force was conceived immediately" -> passive voice here kind of obscures who conceived it. The readers would benefit from knowing who created it, so it makes sense when you talk about "the group"
• "It was the group's first video game, although it had previously released fifteen software products and maintained twenty websites about the conflict." -> "While the group had years of experience developing software and websites, including pages about the conflict, this project was their first video game."
• This section is otherwise solid too.

Reception

• This isn't your typical reception section, which is fine. But it obscures reactions to the game's existence to actual critical reviews of the game experience. Try to separate those into different paragraphs, so we can distinguish between people who are reacting to what the game might mean or represent, versus people who went to the trouble of playing it.
• We might revisit this once it's organized somewhat better. But I like that the commercial reception is clearly in its own paragraph.

Sequel

• Following the 2006 Lebanon War fought between Hezbollah and Israel, Hezbollah produced Special Force 2: Tale of the Truthful Pledge, a sequel to Special Force based on the newer conflict. -> "Following the 2006 Lebanon War fought between Hezbollah and Israel, Hezbollah re-created the conflict as a game sequel called Special Force 2: Tale of the Truthful Pledge"
• "It was developed by the studio Might 3D, formed by the developers of the original game, using an unlicensed version of CryEngine." -> move this sentence so it swaps places with the previous sentence. And re-write, The developers of the original game formed a new studio, Might 3D, who made the game using an unlicensed version of CryEngine."
• "It was featured prominently in an exhibit around the conflict Hezbollah opened in the same month" -> this is a little unclear. Hezbollah set up the exhibit?
• "The author of the English version noted that not donating US$10 to Hezbollah or a local mosque after downloading the game for free would be haram." -> "The author of the English patch noted that it would be haram for someone to download the game without donating to Hezbollah or a local mosque."

This looks generally good. It shouldn't take much work to get it to GA status. Shooterwalker (talk) 16:54, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

@Shooterwalker: Thanks for your review! I made some quick alterations per your suggestions. Regards, IceWelder [✉] 17:52, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

You're doing great work. Sources all look good. We can wrap this up pretty easily.

• "Special Force was conceived immediately after the conflict ended in 2000 and developed over more than two years by the company Hadeel in cooperation with Hezbollah" -> "Hezbollah conceived the game immediately after the conflict ended in 2000, and developed the game with the company Hadeel over the span of two years."
• "Regarded as propaganda and a recruitment tool, it was condemned by Jewish organisations and Israeli officials." -> This is an accurate summary, but it feels incomplete without some mention of how the game itself was received.
• The reception section is basically fine. It feels a little odd to start the section with just people condemning it without playing it, since game articles consistently start with a game's direct commercial or critical performance. But granted, there isn't a lot to go on here. I'd consider moving the commercial impact to the beginning, and shifting the first paragraph to the second or third.
• "game sequel called Special Force 2: Tale of the Truthful Pledge, a sequel to Special Force" -> a little redundancy there. Could easily drop the second part.
• "Special Force 2 was released on 16 August 2007 and was featured prominently in an exhibit around the conflict opened by Hezbollah in the same month" -> "Hezbollah published Special Force 2 on 16 August 2007, and featured the game in a local exhibit about the conflict."

Won't take much more than that to get this across the finish line. Shooterwalker (talk) 23:59, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Made some more changes, including putting the sales first in the reception section. This is somewhat unusual -- in all of my other articles, sales come last -- but the section was generally difficult to structure since the vast majority of commentary is reactionary and few to no actual reviews exist, at least not in the publications I could find. IceWelder [✉] 08:37, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for your good work on this unusual article. This is certainly good article quality. Shooterwalker (talk) 00:34, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Vaticidalprophet talk 00:56, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

(

• Comment or view
• Article history

)

• ... that the militant group Hezbollah released a video game in 2003? Source: "Hezbollah computer game takes propaganda war on Israel to virtual battlefield" (ref #1 in the article)
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Alphington Paper Mill
  • Comment: Very unusual topic, so open for additional hook suggestions.

Improved to Good Article status by IceWelder (talk). Self-nominated at 10:25, 27 September 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Special Force (2003 video game); consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: Impressive work here. I do have a comment that's not really related. Is the original source from News Tribune? The hook's source I assume comes from this newspaper and the article doesn't give the best impression with references that look like spam. If you could clean that article up a bit, that would be great. Imcdc Contact 13:13, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

@Imcdc: That particular source is a wire story from The Associated Press, with the News Tribune being among its licensees. I am not aware of a public repository for AP articles, so this is the best we can do. Similarly there is a Reuters story via Wired because the original is no longer on Reuters' website. All of the sources given are reliable sources, though, and the article just passed GA with them. Could you clarify which of them "look like spam"? IceWelder [✉] 13:41, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

@IceWelder: I was referring more to this article. Can't really make out what the references are on that page. However as you stated, its a wire story from AP and News Tribune is its licensee. Plus it passed GA review. So there shouldn't be any issues with reliability from the original source. - Imcdc Contact 14:02, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Aha, thanks for the clarification. I see what you mean and it looked like vandalism to me, so I removed it. Regards, IceWelder [✉] 14:19, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Ok. I think we should be good then. - Imcdc Contact 14:24, 27 September 2023 (UTC)