Comments on: Our Rentaquote Future: Games As Warcrimes

By: godwin

godwin — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 10:43:23 +0000

Just want to say thank you to TeeJay and many others for the contributions to this discussion, all this has made for a thoroughly insightful read. I’m doing some personal (art practice) research on perceptions of war and its relationship to militarist attitudes so all this proves very interesting for me. Being a gamer, and also living under what is effectively conscript-serfdom (yet as a pacifist), there is a lot I am trying to reconcile here. I think with regards to this article, the real danger lies in the indifferent brushing aside (or an unconscious suppression) of a study like that and the ease at which such reaction occurs. This defensiveness already signals a refusal to approach such serious issues which games (like MW2) and its audience clearly ought to be dealing with – and this in itself is a problem endemic to the gaming community, and consumers of mass cultural media at large. It can be argued that most can tell the difference between ‘reality’ and ‘fiction’, but I am firm in my belief that images, especially the kind we get with an interactive and participatory medium like gaming, go a long way in building perceptions; precisely because it engages decisions, it creates experiences, and these can invariably define a person. Very exciting stuff for me, because I think this is where games and art meet.

By: Gap Gen

Gap Gen — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 10:41:41 +0000

The zombie apocalypse is when the FPS generation hits 50, goes mad and starts eating people.

By: no

no — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 07:16:22 +0000

First, blowing up churches and crap in games is rarely (if ever) the goal of the protagonist, but demonstrated as the actions of the antagonist – just like in movies. Second – ““[We] call upon game producers to consequently and creatively incorporate rules of international humanitarian law and human rights into their games.”” — that sounds an awful lot like “I’m Richard M Stallman and I insist that you call everything with Linux GNU/Linux to promote my project”.

This group can suck it.

By: J. Santo

J. Santo — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 21:25:31 +0000

Isn’t ‘warcrimes’ an oxymoron? Is war not a crime? What’s so special about a church or mosque, physically and psychologically man-made structures, compared to a living thing?

By: Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 20:57:26 +0000

How about a game where you play as a Dyncorp employee who kidnaps children to be used as sex slaves, then the US government defends the contracts and you change the name, thus eluding further bad press. I wonder if those industrious Swiss would include that in their studies.

By: always_black

always_black — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:44:18 +0000

You’re assuming a rigorous discipline in suspension of disbelief. If you say that a work of fiction can’t inspire or add to a world view, even through say, metaphor, then you’re flying in the face of common sense.

It’s fine to argue that playing these game won’t lead to more warcrimes being committed, but to say that’s because fiction has no effect on the real world is over-salting the soup.

What about ‘cautionary tales’?

By: MajorManiac

MajorManiac — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:51:17 +0000

If playing games about war (be it computer, table top battles with rules or throwing pebbles at those cheap green plastic soldiers) will lead to people being unafected by war crimes do to over-exposure. I can only imagine the massive negative impact showing real dead bodies on the TV News must be having.

By: oisomeguy

oisomeguy — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:37:15 +0000

I understand your points of view, and they make nice existential justifications. The fact remains though, that when we sit down to play Call of Duty or Metal Gear Solid we knowingly engage ourselves in a work of fiction. We suspend our disbelief for the sake of entertainment. If some information bleeds over into our factual conception of the world, I call that an anomaly. I don’t watch Jurassic Park and come away convinced that there are dinosaurs roaming tropical islands, and, in the same way, I don’t play Modern Warfare 2 and come away convinced that its cool to violate human rights.

By: MajorManiac

MajorManiac — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:37:04 +0000

Personally I’d argue that books are more immersive.

By: Funky Badger

Funky Badger — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:21:23 +0000

Yeah, what he said. ;-)

By: TeeJay

TeeJay — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 21:31:38 +0000

@ oisomeguy

…having an ‘impact on” or ‘influencing’ perceptions isn’t the same thing as an inability to distinguish.

Movies, TV, games all influence peoples’ perceptions. For some people more than news reporting (which itself may well not be accurate either).

For almost everyone their experience of warfare is mediated by other people – be it writers, directors, developers, journalists, editors, military press liason or islamist youtube-ers. In fact it is worth asking what is the “reality” which people can or can’t distinguish from the ‘non-reality’? It is not clear cut – all reality is ‘invented’ or curated – cobbled together from different sources and everyone will arrive at a slightly different version.

By: Funky Badger

Funky Badger — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:21:17 +0000

Trouble is, one makes the other more likely.