T/S: Video Gamers vs. Pacifists?

Killing Games

By Gerard Greenfield

How will the history of the U.S.-led military aggression against Iraq be told? For many activists in the peace and antiwar movements this question is less urgent than the task of resisting U.S. imperial interests in occupied Iraq. But in many ways this question for tomorrow was answered yesterday. The history that favors military aggression, racism, and state violence, and that justifies domination and exploitation (all essential elements of the capitalist world in which we live), has been written.

A challenging new mode of learning or experiencing this history is through computer games, particularly interactive online gaming and historical simulation gaming. These games are often presented as based on “real events,” involving “real people and places,” and of course “real battles.” Maps, chronologies, biographies, and “official sources” add to this reality. Indeed, the authenticity of games may be considered as important as the quality of its graphics, player options, and sound effects. Advertisements promoting military computer games cite the role of military advisors, including advice and support from the U.S. Department of Defense, in ensuring the accuracy of the games.

An innovation that has boosted the degree of authenticity in computer war gaming is the use of real images from wars, including video footage of actual bombings, replete with the destruction of “targets,” shots of the U.S. military in action, and firefights in real scenarios. The new online game, Kuma War, developed with the assistance of the Defense Department, includes the bombing of Iraq, the U.S. military capture of Saddam Hussein, and the killing of Uday and Qusay. Like several best-selling games depicting Operation Desert Storm, newer games on the U.S.-led aggression against Iraq use video footage of the war blended into digital effects—diminishing the line between game and reality, truth and fiction.

In many Vietnam War games, the advice of decorated U.S. war veterans and high-ranking officers is presented as proof of the historical accuracy of the scenarios and strategies recreated in the game. Of course, this “authentic” history necessarily excludes other histories told by war veterans whose experience led them to oppose the war and the current acts of U.S. aggression. More importantly, the histories of oppressed peoples, those who fought on “the other side” and the victims of war cannot be told. For war gaming to be “authentic,” the killing must be justified and must continue.

Defenders of the objectivity of war games may argue that games like ShellShock: Nam 1967 portray the atrocities of war (through the eyes of a U.S. draftee), while Battlefield Vietnam allows ambitious players to choose to take sides with the North Vietnamese Army. But the fact is that moving from “grunt” to Special Forces is a measure of progress in ShellShock and killing racks up the scorecard, whichever side is chosen. Choosing to be the “enemy” adds no objectivity, it just makes it harder to win—the enemy is still depicted in racist terms.

Reinforcing the racism that justifies domination and mass killing becomes a key part of the authenticity of “historically accurate” war gaming. That is how we find players killing “gooks” in Vietnam and “towel heads” in Libya. It is how First Nation peoples are relegated to the status of “savages,” without technology and skills (or even language), and thus the “civilizing mission” as a battle between good and evil is recreated. Players can choose to be the “baddies,” the “savages”—making it more challenging to play with a handicap. But the context of this violence and its necessity, is a given. The genocides are digitally recreated. The bombings relived. Acts of military aggression endlessly justified.

There have been a few instances when the historical representations in these games have been seriously challenged. One example is a strike by workers at a Japanese-invested software manufacturing plant in China in 1997. The workers went on strike because a game they were producing contained scenes that glorified the Nanking massacre. The massacre of civilians by the Japanese imperial army in Nanking is depicted as another battle led by war heroes (complete with biographical data on their heroism) and counted as another high score. So while debates rage in Japan over a new history textbook by right- wing nationalist scholars and its glorification of war and denial of the Nanking massacre, few have asked whether more pernicious modes of learning history need to be examined.

Which is more influential in making history in the minds of a younger generation: learning through a computer game played endlessly over several days or weeks (or for days without a break as the gaming culture now entails) or through a school history textbook? Both are important. But one seems to pose a greater challenge globally, in terms of what history is learned through war gaming.

It is true that the commodification of war and violence as entertainment and the subsequent misrepresentation of history are not new. The history of Hollywood is rife with this, as with nationalist/fascist cinema in so many countries past and present. But it is important to recognize the unique role of computer games as a tool of learning and as a source of so-called historical truth about war and oppression.

I am not suggesting that we promote peace games as an alternative. (Non-violent games certainly exist and should be encouraged.) But non-violent games coexisting with the killing-as-entertainment majority are a dead-end.

Neither am I suggesting censorship. Censorship is the right-wing reaction that will tap religious fundamentalism of all kinds—recall the burning of Harry Potter books in the U.S. for their evil witchcraft. What is needed is a critical response that engages the gaming population, that provides another view—a view that, at the very least, reminds them it’s just a game and that the information depicted in games is not historical fact. Critical reviews of war games that present the truth behind the aggression are very much needed, and must be part of a sustained, critical, popular education based on a people’s history against military aggression and imperialism, past and present.

As long as the U.S.-led war on terror is an endless war, so too is the task of recording, teaching, and popularizing the real history of what is happening. Looking forward into the past, the struggles of the peace and antiwar movements today are rendered meaningless if today’s history is learned through racist, militarist, and imperialist eyes. The more vivid and engaging the technology, the more difficult the task. This task is even greater given the U.S. empire’s commitment to infinite war. Ironically, it’s here we find some truth in the online war games. The developers’ diary of the online version of Kuma War describes it as “the game that never ends....”

I find this interesting because I am something of a pacifist, but I'd definitely play these games if you sat me down in front of them.