The virtual field medic

America's Army was developed by the US Government as an unabashed recruitment tool for the actual Army, using realistic situations to show the experience of war. If you don't run away traumatized and terrified, you might just be cut out for to be all that you can be. Part of this realism is a virtual medical training course, which gamer Paxton Galvanek was very familiar with. So, when he saw a flipped SUV with a dismembered victim in South Carolina, Galvanek didn't hesitate to hop out of his own car and use what he learned in Army to slow blood flow and ultimately preserve the victim's life until actual paramedics arrived. A little bit of information went a very long way.

Most offensive stereotypes in video games

As with any form of fiction, video games can be pretty dumb when it comes to portraying diverse characters as well-rounded humans (or aliens, or robots…), and occasionally stray into some pretty weird stereotypes. It's a lot easier to fall back on an easy cliche than to write a real character, but most of the time, simplifying a character down to overused stereotypes is just a horrible thing to do for everyone involved, from the gamers on up to the producers. Here are a few offensive video game characters that shouldn't get any extra lives.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Letitia
It's hard to imagine what voice actress Amanda Straw was thinking when she voiced the character of Letitia, aka "The Trash Lady," but she's wise to leave the credit off of her resume. Though the game's events occur in the future, Letitia affects a pretty ridiculous accent, reminiscent of what one might expect to hear from an unpaid employee on a gross exaggeration of an 1850s Southern plantation. We're pretty sure that saying "pacifics" instead of "specifics" infantilizes a character's intellect, and while there's a pretty good diversity of characters of all races represented in many ways through the game, all it takes is one bad apple to spoil the bunch. Square Enix apologized and was mostly forgiven.