Originally Posted by gunjunkie

Wow, I don't even know where to start. I read that guys "article" and I find his grasp of history, both real and video game to be sketchy at best. First off, let me set my bias. I am by no means a supporter of the war in Iraq, and in most things, I would consider myself to be liberal. Maybe not liberal in the stereotypical way its normally cast in the US, but liberal in terms of socially progressive, humanist vs. nationalist, etc. Bear in mind I grew up in apartheid South Africa, and there is not a direct mapping of political spectrum to US politics.

This guy sounds like he has an agenda, and he's desperate to pin it on video games. I'll answer the direct questions first, then dig some holes in the rest of the piece.

[1] ‘[video] games employ and deploy racial, gendered, and national meaning, often reinforcing dominant ideas and the status quo.’

Yeah, tell that to the guys who keep gettin pwnd by the MEC forces in BF2. Other than a few poorly implemented games. Most game developers choose a fictional setting for their work, and with good reason. Even the so called hi-reality offerings are generally set in a near future or fictional conflict. I'd say some of the more high conflict games out there have no real bearing on the modern status quo. In other cases, they turn his dominant ideas on there head. For example, Mercenaries, a recent console game that is basically GTA in a war torn North Korea allows the player to control a deadly female operative. I see a pretty good mix of racial types in BF2, and most of the good games (the ones people play anyway, who tf actually plays Kuma:war) represent multinational task forces (Rainbow Six, Counterstrike) against "Terrorists" who are often ideological dissidents vs ethnic/religious enemies. Hell , the terrs in CS remind me more of the Bader-Mienhoff gang than Al Qaida. Those games set in the real reality of now are few and far between, and are generally set there because the game is crap, and the developers are desperately trying to get a few extra sales. Things like Americas Army don't count here, because even though you play as US Army, the other guys see you as OPFOR. The guys who wrote that game took a pretty good route around the exact issue he's trying to push here.

[2] ‘virtual conquering [is] the basis of video game popularity and power’

Well, duh, I'm no neurobiopsychologisthingamjiggie, but conflict, and some kind of reward for it are the basis of pretty much all gaming. Humans like that, we're bloody good at it. Better get used to it cause its going to be that way as long as we exist. Other than a few "special" games (Barbies funhouse adventures anyone?), just about every game we play features conflict and competition as its core motivator.

[3] ‘[video game player’s] trigger happiness becomes a metonym for [a reflection of] their happiness with American military efforts’

I'm not even sure how to approach this. The game, available right now, that features the most expansive conflict, is Eve-Online (which, if you are studying this stuff, E-Male, you really need to check out). Currently in Eve, a galactic conflict with probably as many as 10000 people (for real, actual people) participating, is raging. The reasons for it are many, but the war is bloody, and fought with venom on both sides. It has absolutely nothing, but nothing, to do with how happy the (prolly 60% euro) players are with Americas military efforts. No one take this the wrong way, but the world is a much bigger place than just America. I'm not saying people don't use video game aggression to burn off steam, but saying its specific to American military performance is amazingly naive and egotistical at best, and a total propagandist statement at worst.

[4] ‘the bloodlessness [within video games] contributes to an increasing acceptance of war’

Most of the good games aren't bloodless, it ruins the immersion. TBH, anyone with a clue know the difference.

[5] ‘Although war may seem harmless on the computer screen, this very harmlessness ironically elicits consent for U.S. foreign policy.’

Again, wtf does a war in space have to do with US foreign policy? The main problem here, is that he specifically wants to seperate games that he can make a point about from the rest of them. You can't. Modern/historical conflict is just a part of the spectrum of what is offered in gaming's whole. Just because a couple of game feature the US armed forces as protagonists, doesn't mean the rest of the world suddenly supports Bush.
His argument that the desensitizing nature of video games, somehow makes us all "ok" with US foreign policy (read, War in Iraq). Again, amazingly naive or alarmingly propagandist. I think the problem with a lot of career academics is that they massively underestimate people.

[6] ‘We are teaching children to associate pleasure with human death and suffering. We are rewarding them for killing people. And we are teaching them to like it.’

Oh god, won't someone think of the aliens...

[7] ‘[video] games teach … citizens to support murder without remorse.’

Sigh, another, viewpoint rammed down my throat. First, we need to define murder. Is shooting an enemy on a battlefield murder? Not all would agree with either side of that line. Some games have taken violence to a pretty hectic level. Manhunt probably the most extreme of these. Even here, you are murdering other crims, not innocents. One of my all time favorites is Syndicate. Here, hours of amusement could be gotten by flamethrowing entire citys to lifeless burned out wastes. I'm pretty stable in RL.

I don't know. First off, I really hope none of the US taxes I pay are going into this guys pockets. Seems like an aweful waste of money. He has an agenda, and is grasping at straws to push it. There are some really big holes in his "evidence" and assertions anyway.

"Two things have occurred since 9/11. One is that there has been an interesting trend in the kinds of [video] games released"

I think anyone who has played games long enough knows that war based games against terrorists were there before 9/11. In fact, some of our most popular titles are mearly continuations of long lines of games who's basic story, premise and gameplay elements were fixed long before this event. R6, GR, CS, OFP, to name a few, good ones.

"Particularly important is the work of Baudrillard (1991), who argues that "[w]e have created a gigantic apparatus of simulation which allows us to pass to the act 'in vitro.' We prefer the exile of the virtual, of which television is the universal mirror to the catastrophe of the real" (p. 28). Claiming that the Gulf War never happened, Baudrillard challenges scholars..."

I mean seriously, wtf??? People actually get payed to write this crap. Claiming the Gulf war never happened, and this twerp uses this guys apparently brilliant paper as a basis for his own, equally brilliant paper. You shouldn't build on landfill...

Buadrillard can argue it all he wants, it doesn't make it so.

"One signpost of this is the expanding cooperation between the military and the video game industry."

If he'd bothered to do even one iota of research into this, he'd have found out that the military have been programming simulators a lot longer than the game industry has pretty much existed. The reason the Military has gone to the game industry to help with this is two fold. The military simulator programmers have, for the most part, moved into the game industry because there is more money, more fun and less restrictions there. Faced with this, the military has found out that its actually cheaper to go to these same game companies than it was to run their own development houses. Games and battlefield training simulators only look similar. They operate very differently and have very different requirements.

"Call to Duty and Medal of Honor, both of which allow players to return to World War II, also fall into a similar trap of erasure. In these two games, black soldiers are completely missing. Selective memory of this kind reinforces hegemonic ideas about western dominance, emphasizing white/western/non-Arab participation. White people are presented as praiseworthy fighters and heroes; blacks are simply missing in action. I like to compare these video war games with pictures and statistical tables that show all-black regiments in World War II and integrated Marine units of today. "

There is so much wrong with this sentence...

For one, by his own admission, Black units in the US military were segregated in WWII. The stories these games follow involve units that were not black units. I'm pretty sure I would buy a WWII game featuring a black unit, but you can hardly call racism on Activision, because they decided to tell the story of the 101st AB. Wtf do "integrated marine units" of today have to do with WWII shooters. I can, and often do, play an ethincally diverse set of avatars in BF, so...?

Wow, I could just go on and on here. It's patently obvious this guy doesn't know a thing about the subject matter he is dealing with. He's made a half assed attempt at research, projected some agendarific points into it and called it research.

Great, now I'm angry... Time to go kill so virtual things...

I am humbled by this response. Thank you for posting.