The Politics of Video Games - military or otherwise

[Billy Ruffian]

UK Defence Secretary Calls for Medal of Honor Ban. Liam Fox 'disgusted' at EA's game.

"I am disgusted and angry," Fox continued, "It's hard to believe any citizen of our country would wish to buy such a thoroughly un-British game. I would urge retailers to show their support for our armed forces and ban this tasteless product."

Medal of Honor has also come in for criticism from Fox News for its subject matter. "We've just come off of the worst month of casualties in the whole war," anchor Karen Meredith said in a recent report, "and this game is going to be released in October - so families who are burying their children are going to be seeing this, and playing this game."

While games drawing upon contemporary battles are no new thing, few have been as explicit as Medal of Honor which features multiplayer modes that draw upon the conflict and that have come in for criticism from fellow developers. "I find it quite unsettling with Medal of Honor," Codemasters' Sion Lenton, producer on Operation Flashpoint games, "I'm not sure if I want to play as the Taliban shooting American soldiers. That's a live conflict and you have to treat it with maximum respect."

EA has hit back at the comments, telling IGN "Medal of Honor is a highly authentic depiction of the soldier's experience in Afghanistan – matching US forces against the Taliban in today's war.

An interesting point of debate.

When I was a lad, we had violent, militaristic video games too, but they were primarily side scrollers in which the player memorized certain actions, movements and, if it were a two player game, team work in order to win. These games were heavily dependent on patterns and had very little AI. I recall when Mechwarrior 2 came out and we thought it looked so realistic and lifelike. In the words of a friend at the time: "Eye-candy this good is hard to find."



I have some sympathy with the UK minister's comments. I recall when the first Call of Duty came out, beginning a long franchise of WWII first person action shooter games. It was around the same time Saving Private Ryan came out in theatres. I recall thinking at the time, would WWII vets feel that their experiences were being trivialized by making games of them. Especially since movie making and video game technology had advanced to the point where it was much more realistic. Games these days have rag-doll physics and can now render spirit models to be decapitated or disemboweled. I haven't seen that in any of the contemporary military action shooters, but you are starting to see it in the fantasy and sci-fi games. Games like Fallout, which came out in the 90's, actually paved the way for rather graphic depictions of violence, though they were limited by the video technology of the time.



The sequel, and upcoming sequel to the sequel of Fallout continues this tradition.



I even recall a news story where people were up in arms about radical Islamic websites posting images from Fallout 3, gleefully stating that this is what they were working towards. No one did any fact checking to see if the image in question had been generated by Islamic extremists. It was purely a work of conceptual art, to help the game designers render their game.

Over-reaction ensued.

Other points of criticism have come into play over supposed "militainment" regarding such games as America's Army which is provided by the United States Army. Controversy developed over the morality and appropriateness of using a video game as some kind of recruiting tool. Similar issues of depicting a live conflict ensued.

A more recent example would be the advertisements for HALO ODST. When you watch that commercial, it is clear they are trying to evoke some kind of parallel with Heinlein's Starship Troopers. However, I remember a friend of mine criticizing the commercial's use of a military funeral carried out by actors who are clearly stand in's for US Marines during a time when thousands of US Marines are currently engaged in combat and clearly, many of them were going to die. When I asked if it was ok just to show it in Canada, where we were resident, since the CF doesn't have Marines, he indicated that he still thought it was in exceptionally poor taste.

My own opinion is that you cannot call the newest Medal of Honor [sic] "Un-British" as minister Fox seems to insist on doing so. As a librarian, I'm committed to the freedom of information and art, regardless of content. (DISCLAIMER: Librarians generally withhold nothing, but sometimes we do, depending on the context. It is very rare.) And that really comes down to the crux of it doesn't it? Military action shooters are in themselves... art. It's up to the consumer to decide what is and isn't appropriate, when it comes down to something as subjective as art, right?

I know Roger Ebert disagrees with that assessment, and he is a man who clearly knows a lot about art, but for the people of my generation, and younger, video games have become the new art. The writing in games has become better, especially as the shift away from Japanese produced console games was taken over by American, Canadian and European game developers, who wrote stories and plots in their language and from their points of view.

The graphical detail is lightyears away from the polygon rendered models of MechWarrior 2. Eye-Candy that is good by today's standards isn't hard to find anymore. It's everywhere.

And Music? Sound FX? Well, let's just say the Wilhelm Scream is no longer as ubiquitous as it once was.

So, I return to the starting point of this post. Is Medal of Honor [sic] inappropriate? Is it disrespectful to the troops?

I think so. And that is why it must not be banned. I have tried to make the case that video games are art, and that like all art, it contains much controversy, especially in regards to deeply emotional conflicts such as war. We can't pick and choose what we will or won't allow artists, or even game designers, to produce without violating the freedom of expression.

Besides, it's not all bad. Have you ever seen Portal? I use this video a lot to teach information literacy to university students. The example of a spatial reasoning and logic game is useful in teaching them to unlearn what they have learned about searching for information. It, as the video says, encourages them to start thinking with portals, to make that cognitive leap in order to master the skills they need to be good scholars... but that's another subject for another post.

What do you guys think?

[Rex Brynen]

I remember similar calls to ban the boardgame War in the Falklands in 1982, during or just after the war in the Falklands.

[Billy Ruffian]

I remember similar calls to ban the boardgame War in the Falklands in 1982, during or just after the war in the Falklands.

Aha, an oldie, but a golden one.

I think the sticking point is that with War in the Falklands, it's more obviously an abstract simulation/recreation of the event. When I've sunk your battleship, you don't watch the sailors swim for their lives or drowning. You simply remove the game piece from the board.

Games these days are much more visceral. I mean, for instance, in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare - the game depicts what some would term a http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftcO94AdFa8

Obviously it's a fictional occurence, but it's the sort of thing that people who oppose violence in video games reach for on the basis that it's too closely linked to what is going on in the world today.

[Rex Brynen]

Indeed, there's an entire research study on international humanitarian law, war crimes, and video games. The authors argue:

The goal is not to prohibit the games, to make them less violent or to turn them into IHL or IHRL training tools. The message we want to send to developers and distributors of video games, particularly those portraying armed conflict scenarios, is that they should also portray the rules that apply to such conflicts in real life, namely IHRL and IHL....

Games which portray conflict situations, law enforcement measures or intelligence operations in a very realistic manner, but not the rules that apply in international and national law to such operations, send the erroneous message that there are no limits in conflicts and in other extreme situations, e.g. in counter-terrorism operations.

[Billy Ruffian]

Thank you Rex. I greatly enjoyed that resource.