War and Peace On Your Xbox

By Emily Krauser

The average American can now annihilate freedom-hatin’ terrorists from the comfort of their Lazy Boy thanks to Army-endorsed and government-supported war games.

“People are interested in it and want to experience it for themselves a little bit,”said Timothy Blair, a junior psychology major and cadet in the U.S. Army ROTC. “This is a very low-consequence way of perhaps experiencing an aspect of war, and American culture is shifted to glorifying war because we’re in it.”

In 2004, videogame manufacturers released more than eight games that focused on war. After September 11, games based on “covert-ops” or militarism increased in  both in production and sales.

It isn’t that videogames about war weren’t in existence or popular before 9/11 or the current chapter of the war in Iraq. Combat in a foreign country has led to war on computer screens and television sets simply because of its consistent exposure in the news.

Blair said he plays military games because he thinks it’s an interesting genre. He attributes the increase in military gaming to the current war and it’s constant coverage in the media.

With new technologies making war realistic right in your warm, bloodshed-free living rooms, playing war has become easier and more fun. According to their website, Xbox released over ten first- and third-person wartime shooter games in the fall of 2004. These retail versions of battlefields depict actual wars, from World War II to the current war in Iraq.

These games have become so realistic that army recruits are even beginning to use war games. Katharine Goodloe of the Dallas Morning News interviewed Sgt. 1st Class Lawrence Kagawa as he led a one-day tournament of America’s Army, “a game developed by the U.S. Army to showcase Army skills and values.” The game, which debuted in 2002 and is used by the Army as a recruiting tool, shows that even the Army realizes this generation is a gaming one.  

To help meet recruiting goals, the games are being used “to reconnect armed forces with a generation raised on video warfare and recruiting them for the real thing,” the Army claims.

As an assistant manager at GameCrazy in Ithaca, NY, Jill Brazel sees gamers during every shift, from young teenagers searching for graphically advanced games to middle-aged men looking for older war games. She hasn’t noticed a real increase in sales of war games - people looking for those games in the past are the ones typically buying them now - but she has noticed a jump in the amount released lately. “They’re always really popular, strangely enough,” she said.

What worries her isn’t the people buying the games or the amount of games out there, but the time periods of the war games. “The games seem to be getting more and more recent, getting closer to home,” Brazel says. “There were three or four games released on Vietnam. They have games as recent as Desert Storm, which is unsettling to me since it’s so recent.”

Games like Ghost Recon, a stimulation war game, and Mercenaries, based on the Korean War, have helped make wartime games among the most popular video games sold. Brazel isn’t alone with her worried feelings.

Nina Huntemann, assistant professor of communication and journalism at Suffolk University, notes that video game violence isn’t new with the war in Iraq. It’s the relatively new theme of terrorism in video games that has increased recently.

Though the specific effect of wartime games hasn’t been studied extensively yet,  Huntemann, also the author of the website MediaCritica.net, says that the more realistic the real life depictions, the more likely the games are to influence the behaviors and attitudes of the gamers.

“Media researchers do know that stereotypical portrayals of people can reinforce the racist or sexist ideas of players,” says Huntemann. “So, if a terrorism video game uses Arab people as the enemy, this may reinforce the idea that all Arabs are terrorists. Also, video games rarely depict the real-life psychological consequences of violence. As a result, media researchers have found some evidence that players become desensitized to depictions of violence.”

The increased release of wartime games teaches a younger generation what being a soldier is like, the Army claims. But the more advanced graphics and the depiction of war only serve to glorify the concept of war. Rather than fighting overseas, waiting for commands and food, witnessing bloodshed, and shooting real guns—not simulations—people can fight with a Diet Coke next to them in the comfort of their own home.

Blair knows these games are popular because of their blend of fantasy and reality.

The problem he sees in these realistic games being played during a time of war is all of the parts of combat they leave out. “Video games are a romanticized version [of war],” says Blair. “Combat is not enjoyable. It’s a nerve-wracking experience. Video games leave everything that appears to be entertaining and remove the details that make it horrible.”

Huntemann also sees these omissions as an inaccurate and dangerous portrayal of war:

“War and terrorism games do an amazing job at accurately depicting the technologies of war and often use exact replicas of actual war-time strategy,” says Huntemann.

“However, war games do not accurately depict the consequences of war on civilians, soldiers, nations, the environment, and so on.

“Games rarely give detailed explanations as to why the player must fight the war.”

Emily Krauser is a junior writing major. She thinks Britney Spears can stop global warming. E-mail her at ekrause1@ithaca.edu.