Militarism in video games
July 29th, 2008 by Justin Richards in Gaming, News, Politics
I don’t object to violence in video games. It’s fun and cathartic. The human destruction drive is not going to go away any time soon, and maybe digitized bazookas are a good way to exorcise it.
But why, so often, is the character you control in a video game a U.S. soldier, or a supersoldier, or a mecha-destroyer module for the American federation? I’m talking about games like Call of Duty, Splinter Cell, Halo and Crysis. That’s not to mention America’s Army and Future Force Commander — addictive, realistic first-person shooters developed as recruitment tools for the armed forces. The Pentagon spent millions on these games, and it distributes them for free on the Army’s Web site.
Command and Conquer at least allows you to direct the communist army if you so choose, but otherwise, I mean, why do the video game companies kowtow to the military-industrial complex? It seems to me that gaming ought to be an individualized, subversive experience because it empowers the player beyond his marginalization by the ruling class.
Where are the video games about rebellion, anarchy and revolution? A nod to Half-Life, but how about a game where you subvert the CIA instead of some aliens?
Check out this interview with Nina Huntemann, who wrote Game Over: Gender, Race & Violence in Video Games. She compares militaristic video games to the propaganda film Why We Fight, which was commissioned by the U.S. government before WWII in efforts to sway public opinion. Excerpts after the jump.
Well, the way that I think about current video games that are focused on militarism and warfare is, they’re sort of like Why We Fight films, except they’ve morphed into ‘how we fight’ video games, which takes away from a lot of the other ‘why’ questions, and all the moral questions that are connected to that. I think that the ultimate purpose of these games is [for them to serve as] recruitment tools. They are, to use a recent turning phrase, a kind of ’shock and awe’ display of what the American military is capable of, without the consequences of context. That is seductive. It’s very powerful clearly, both in its destruction capabilities and in the fear that our military can provoke in other countries.
And again, on the change in gaming post-9/11:
The ads for Splinter Cell read something like this: “I alone have the fifth freedom — the right to spy, steal, destroy, and assassinate to insure that American freedoms are protected. If captured my government will disavow any knowledge of my existence.” That just gives you a sense of what’s being set up here. The lead character that you’d play is commanded to go out and commit what under the UN Human Rights Charter or even International Rules of Engagement, would be illegal. Assassinating a political leader is illegal under International Law; it’s a war crime, and you can be brought to trial for it. What this game is setting up is that you are going to commit these illegal acts for a government; and, in this case, the United States is the auspice.
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