After seeing a response to it on Twitter, I read the piece “Who cheers for war” on Kotaku, and honestly I think it’s a little misguided. I’m not attributing that same malice to the author, but it certainly smacks of the same misguided assholes like Hillary who think that games like MW2 are “training simulators for killers” – FPSes have been putting up with this shit since Columbine.
Those people gasping in silent awe at the trailer for MW2, saying things like “fucking awesome”? Show them real footage of war with similar events, telling them that it’s real footage and not a game nor a movie, and you’ll find very few people who you get the same reaction out of.
The fact is that it’s a game – no matter how realistically it might portray you sticking a semtex to someone’s head, the average well-adjusted human being is going to comprehend that it’s still a game. It is not the same thing as sticking semtex to someone’s head in real life, and almost everyone knows that. The few who don’t? They need help anyway, and yanking the violent video games away from them isn’t going to stop them (we had serial killers and mass murderers long before video games came along).
Tying the popularity of violent video games into the deplorable manner in which journalism presented the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is just silly. The reason for the presentation (with the missile stats screens reminiscent of a football game) was to maintain public support for what was essentially a corporate money-grab on contracts work for the rebuilding and security process. They’re about as related as Tiger Woods’ extra-marital activities are to the latest EA Sports golf title.
Find the most top-ranked (in terms of XP and hours) MW2 player online, assuming he has no prior military experience, and drop him into basic training and then into Iraq, and I’d wager he’d fare about the same as every other kid who left his summer of dog days and wound up in basic. The idea that he (or she, to be fair) would be better prepared for real warfare in any measurable sense after playing a video game is just silly.
It’s just a game. When I “kill” someone in an FPS, they come back. Maybe it’s in 10-15 seconds (Call of Duty, most common modes), maybe it’s next round (SOCOM, most common modes)… but they come back. Try selling a massively multi-player warfare game where if a person was killed, they couldn’t ever play again… see how well that sells. Heck, try even selling one where a person’s character grows with XP (a la MAG), but when they’re killed once they have to re-roll, I bet that doesn’t even sell so great.
For all the talk about “realism”, the fact is that that’s basically the last thing gamers want. Arguably the most realistic multi-player mode on MW2 – Hardcore Search and Destroy – isn’t, from my experience, on of the most popular modes. The game enforces hardcore rules, which removes the HUD and makes bullet damage more accurate to real life scenarios (two in the chest with most weapons is enough to stop almost anyone), and when you die it makes you sit out until the next round. I happen to like it, but sometimes I have a rough time finding a game of it. Most gamers don’t want that realism to get in the way of the fun.
Awesome graphics, realistic physics, that feeling that you just might be the hero that turns the tide of war – that’s the realism gamers want. When it gets a little too real, it ruins it… I would also hazard a guess that a fair portion of the MW2 audience isn’t even pro-war, so I think drawing any kind of social commentary out of the fact that MW2 is one of the most popular is taking some pretty grand leaps.