Reminds me of my father (who was in the Airborne) looking over my shoulder playing the training in America's Army.
"That's pretty realistic. Do they have a level where you have to go knock on somebody's door and tell them their son was killed in a training exercise?"
That said, I feel like this article, like the censors, gives video games much too much credit. Glorification of violence is everywhere in our culture and fiction; I'd imagine at least 95% of gamers understand intuitively that the games they play bear very slight likeness at best to the reality of war (although probably more in the sense that they might be killed themselves rather than that they might kill others.)
After all, one of the things (multiplayer) video games do teach you is that combat is seriously dangerous. Pop out of cover for one second and you can get shot in the head, bam, you're dead. In a game, that means respawning; nobody seriously believes that's how it works in real life. In that sense, I have to think that these games, as unrealistic as they are, are still the most realistic fictional depiction of war you can experience-- and the lessons you learn are much more valuable than those of, say, comic books.
Which is not to say that we don't have a bit of a violence problem in our culture (though I'm on the side of Steven Pinker in thinking that our violence problem is probably better than it ever has been). But the problem is not the kids running around playing cops and robbers. The problem is the kids who never properly learn the distinction between playing and hitting-- and worst of all, those who learn it by the maxim that "If you hit your brother, I'll hit you even harder."
I actually think a bigger problem is not the fear of violence leaving the screen and coming into daily life, but that we increasingly see violence as 'that things that happens behind a screen, its pretty entertaining'. I have no data to back this up, but the general population certainly seems to be more 'meh' about US military actions abroad. I think your father's reaction was responding to the issue that you've trivialized and turned into a game something that should be horrific, or at least unpleasant.
It reminds me of a piece on NPR about family members of the victims of homicide. One person pointed out that it's common fun to host "murder mystery parties" but nobody would ever think of hosting a "rape mystery party". Similarly Grand Theft Auto is fine, but Rapelay is highly controversial. Obviously part of the reason we're less sensitive to some types of violence is because we have less violence (I think many people have a friend that was raped, but very few have a friend who was murdered). However, even if this detachment comes from an increase in non-violence there are still effects of increasingly conflating violence with entertainment.
I really don't see how it could be true that US citizens are "meh" about military action. We treat military casualties in the single digits as tragedies. We're somewhat less adverse to collateral damage, but compared to Vietnam, let alone the wholesale firebombings of WWII, even that is (and I hope everyone will pardon me for saying it) pretty minimal.
That's the essence of Pinker's point-- the more aware we become of each individual death, the less violent we become, but the more violent we feel. Violent video games are probably the pinnacle of expression of that: our culture is so safe and so risk averse that we become upset by 100% fictional violence which hurts literally no one.
And I feel the comparison between murder and rape is pretty much invalid, for the reason you state. We do have a very serious rape problem, and again, it is obviously not because of all the rape video games out there, or glorification of rape in our culture. It's because real men do not learn to respect real women in the real world.
So now we make machines to kill for us. Pretty soon they will be nearly autonomous. All to remove our guilt.
My ex-boss, was a sniper in Vietnam. One phrase he hated over all others was "kill them all and let God sort them out". He always labeled those who used that as pussies. He had no respect for them.
We got all sorts of good stories out of him about his time over there, but never anything involving killing other people. That was discussed only with people who were there and even then rarely. He could tell us how he could take parts off a moving car from a long distance but never would mention the obvious connection.
I am quite sure a lot of them are sociopaths or just bastards. But did we give them any other choice, the nice guys don't even finish last, they just die first.
I bought and read SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL Sniper. In it, the author says that all snipers need to have a really strong faith, philosophy, or something like that to guide them so that they don't lose control of themselves and get intoxicated by the power. When you have someone in your scope, you really can feel like God, the decision to kill or let live is yours. He says that's why it was so easy for someone like the Washington sniper to get carried away and go on a killing spree. If you don't have something strong in you to guide you and keep you under control, you'll go wild, in his opinion.
"We treat military casualties in the single digits as tragedies."
There's obviously a huge difference between television "mourning" for a stranger, and knowing the pain of losing someone you care about, or experiencing violence first-hand. And frankly, most of the statements you hear in response to military casualties are, at some level, driven by politics.
I don't believe that becoming aware of death makes us less violent, and I don't believe it makes us more violent. I think the general effect is to intellectually separate us from the horror of real violence.
When I was younger, I remember playing a game called Aces Over Europe. I took a pilot character through to 1943 or so. Then he got shot down, and he was dead. Weeks of playing. No respawning. I spent about thirty seconds wanting to cry about him being dead, and then remember my grandfather surviving world war II, just, and spending the rest of his night waking up screaming from the memories, and didn't play war games after that.
Maybe things have changed, game wise. I can't say whether that means anything though.
Maybe the "closest" we can make CoD and other FPS to REAL war is ... make the first person die permanently and render the software useless after a fatal hit. Once & only once.
The loss of $39 for the video game should teach em fine.
Fighting games are incredibly realistic and advanced.
Games like Battlefield, with the right mix of realism and "fun", are the greatest possible war propaganda instruments ever created.
The "Department of Defense" and other agencies have too many smart people working in them and too much recruiting pressure not to be funneling money into these "video game" projects.
Iran is specifically depicted in Battlefield 3. This isn't an accident, whether it was simply the fact that video game designers knew that Iran has been a coming target for years or they were given instructions.
War propaganda is a real part of contemporary American media and video games. Its not something that happened in the 1940s and 1950s and then stopped as soon as color television arrived.
We are at war right now. There is a large multi-decade (multi-century depending on how you look at it) military campaign going on in the middle east and its surrounds that most people are completely unaware of because of how powerful the grip of the propagandists is on American media.
Take a look at this map, and think back to all of the lies we have been told about the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and everywhere else.
http://www.zeemaps.com/326199 Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Syria. All of these countries just happen to be adjacent to eachother.
We are told that these are all noble missions, vital emergencies involving "weapons of mass destruction", or glorious democratic revolutions, and led to believe that each is basically a separate case.
The order of the invasions and other deployments across these countries and regions continues to be tactical. The motivations are many -- territory, resource control, money control. The lies told to justify the next step, in each case, are not very material to the actual overall mission objectives.
Afghanistan -- a foothold, limited resistance, and it was key to restore the heroin funds used to back intelligence/covert operations and establishment bank accounts.
Iraq -- A key battle, money control, resource control. Made an Iran sandwich.
Eqypt / Libya
February 21, 1987
Early last year, President Reagan approved a secret directive under which United States military forces would support Egypt in the event of a ''pre-emptive'' attack on Libya...
...In March 1986, the semiofficial Egyptian newspaper Al Ahram said Cairo had rejected three requests from American delegations for joint military action against Libya...
...But several Administration officials who support President Reagan's policy on Libya insisted today that the meeting with President Mubarak and the subsequent planning were not an attempt to press Cairo to invade.
In April 2011, Mubarak was removed from power by a "democratic uprising" and by July rumors circulated that he was "in a coma".
Also in July 2011, "Libya Rebels" get formal backing by the United States and $30 billion. Within a relatively short period of time Qaddafi was killed.
Syria -- A key strategic ally of Iran, tactical position.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7GVSx7yMaA Battlefield 3 Launch Trailer illustrating storyline in which noble American fighters rescue one of their own from "Iranian terrorists" while searching for "the nuke". Players are to act out exactly the myth presented by the propaganda on other popular media.
There is certainly a propaganda campaign being run to encourage Americans to support war. It is being run by powerful people with vested political and financial interests who spend millions of dollars to project their message across all forms of news media.
If you think video games are anything more than a sideshow to this, you're delusional.
I don't think it's delusional at all. It is long known that if you can indoctrinate children at an early age (bonus points if you make it fun) that their beliefs will often have been shaped without them knowing it.
For instance, framing Iran as bad guys without giving it much thought--it just seems "self-evident" somehow...
The use of Iran as the enemy in a video game is not due to the fact that Dice is being manipulated behind the scenes by the government in an effort to breed a legion of living robots. This idea is in fact delusional.
When you look at the history of entertainment, from novels to video games, the most memorable content gives us something that is plausible and realistic, allowing us to relate better to the experience. This is why the political enemies of the United States are often featured in games, movies, novels, etc... Because they are currently extremely unfriendly to our country, it seems far more realistic that we may end up in a conflict with them in the future.
The most successful shooters are often the ones that follow this principle. The people who play them aren't a bunch of xenophobic, extremist, right-wing fascists, they are ordinary people who like the games for their realistic graphics and engaging stories.
I happened to be watching RT while at a hotel on business. I thought the obviously Kremlin slanted take on Syria was a bit amusing, that Syria was fighting an armed insurgency. You'd read the New York Times and think they were just mowing down civilian protestors. Sure enough, a few weeks later the cover of the Economist has Syrian "protestors" wielding machine guns.
Whats impressive is that both the "right" and "left" media in the United States pretty much run the same story, leaving some minor disagreements on detail making each seem to be at opposite extremes of each other. That's important when you have to you propaganda or marketing to get your message out.
Here is the latest AAA release by the studios on this theme, and I for one am impressed by it's authenticity. It is only available in certain territories at the moment, but will soon go global;
"That's pretty realistic. Do they have a level where you have to go knock on somebody's door and tell them their son was killed in a training exercise?"
That said, I feel like this article, like the censors, gives video games much too much credit. Glorification of violence is everywhere in our culture and fiction; I'd imagine at least 95% of gamers understand intuitively that the games they play bear very slight likeness at best to the reality of war (although probably more in the sense that they might be killed themselves rather than that they might kill others.)
After all, one of the things (multiplayer) video games do teach you is that combat is seriously dangerous. Pop out of cover for one second and you can get shot in the head, bam, you're dead. In a game, that means respawning; nobody seriously believes that's how it works in real life. In that sense, I have to think that these games, as unrealistic as they are, are still the most realistic fictional depiction of war you can experience-- and the lessons you learn are much more valuable than those of, say, comic books.
Which is not to say that we don't have a bit of a violence problem in our culture (though I'm on the side of Steven Pinker in thinking that our violence problem is probably better than it ever has been). But the problem is not the kids running around playing cops and robbers. The problem is the kids who never properly learn the distinction between playing and hitting-- and worst of all, those who learn it by the maxim that "If you hit your brother, I'll hit you even harder."
That's what we should be talking about.