Originally Posted by E-Male

More from the rough draft of the article I am working on...

Leonard’s analysis argues that video games contain preferred meanings that support ‘American hegemony, the militarization of everyday life, and the all-pervasive rhetoric of warfare.' Here we see a one-to-one relationship between text and the current neoconservative experiment underway in America. Thus, in this one-to-one direct relationship between text and dominant ideology, the ‘trigger happiness’ of video game players is a reflection of ‘their happiness with American military efforts.’ Yet this conclusion naively positions the gaming community as holding a uniform set of opinions on American foreign policy. But do the preferred meanings of videos games truly generate an increasing acceptance of war, consent for U.S. foreign policy, and support for ‘murder without remorse’ among the millions who participate in online gaming?

Leonard is attributing substantial power and overwhelmingly negative effects to this media form when he asserts that video games have clearly defined meanings that overwhelm the participant’s critical capacities. His claim that the video game somehow ‘regulates’ its own meanings lacks any recognition of the contradictory nature of media texts such as video games. One is left wondering exactly whose preferred meanings are being identified here – that of the text (video games), or the left-wing textual interpreter.

Philosophical Excess Versus Ethnographic Insight

It easy to make claims about how a distant audience is overwhelmed by supposed preferred meanings embedded within nefarious video games. Yet what happens when the audience itself is told of their subordinate position to the military industrial pedagogy of video games? Where the analysis of audiences was once done at a distance and produced within the isolated texts of academia, it is now possible to bring our texts back to the audience for immediate and interactive interrogation by the Internet audience. To demonstrate this process, as well as the overstated character of Leonard’s analysis, I posted (published) his conclusions to a community of online video gamers know as Tactical Gamers. My post, made under the name of my own online character, E-Male, and the community’s response can be found at tacticalgamer.com.

When confronted with Leonard’s conclusions, online gamers who actively participate in many warfare-style games clearly reject the distant scholar’s interpretation of their own experience. Thus one gamer named Backlash-7 wrote, ‘Only a jackass would believe this ... really. I’m in the military and believe me my HALO and BF2 trigger happiness in no way makes me happy with our military efforts’ (HALO and BF2 are popular video games in the war genre). Likewise, Beatnik, another gamer, replied ‘Just because the games “simulate” war doesn’t mean that we confuse military games, which I see as being more glamorized versions of paintball that I used to play than actual military conflict, with blind acceptance of the waging of war.’ The theorist collapses the virtual and the real into one seemless moment of hegmony wherein the gamers are said to ‘consent’ to the neoconservative agenda of Bush’s foreign policy. Yet the gamers themselves are clearly capable of maintaining their critical capacities, and many do indeed reject the current war on terror and find real-life violence odious.

It would be a mistake to assume that video games that immerse the individual into a story of war and conquest somehow compel the player to respond with acceptance, consent, and support for the hegemonic beliefs of a highly militarized social order. This type of interpretation is reminisent of the very early days of media studies, which saw members of the Frankfurt School reject all mass entertainment as irressitable forms of false consciousness. It also brings to mind the moral hysteria that was directed towards comic books in the first half of the 1900s.

Such analysis as Leonard’s represents a form of philosophical excess often found within critical theory. It fails to test confident claims about the audience mindlessly consenting to the ideals of imperialism against the gaming community’s own diversity of opinions. While I do not intend to dismiss such connections or deny the hegemonic character of empire’s belief system, it is quite clear that theorists are often interpreting the gamer's experience from too great a distance. What is left out is an adequate interrogation of the gamer’s own experience, as well as an adequate experience of their experience.

So this is whats always distracting you in game. lol

On a more personal note I'm gonna agree with you without proper experience of not only the game envirment but actuall conflict this guys arguments hold no merit as far as I'm concerned. Can I get a link to this guy to get more background on him, as it stands he sounds like one of those criminal libral media types.